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Hello and welcome to Almanac, the Oxford Middle East podcast.

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My name is Piotr Schulkes and on today's episode we spoke with the incredible woman entrepreneurs from Jordan, Egypt and Palestine.

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They discussed a journey. What they've learnt and the importance of nuance when discussing the circumstances around their situation.

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In the last few years,

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women's access to education in the Middle East and North Africa has increased rapidly and women are now outperforming men in teacher education.

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But unfortunately, this change has not led to representation of the job market.

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The Middle East, North Africa account for the lowest female labour participation rates,

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with an average of around 21 percent, and representation in management also remains low.

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But entrepreneurship is booming. More and more companies in the Middle East and Africa are run by women.

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An increasing number of start-ups are established or co established also by women, and their sources don't agree on the exact percentages.

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In any case, the percentages don't really matter.

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What matters is that strong and driven women are creating businesses and spaces that reflect the way they would like to see the world.

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Spaces where women lift each other up, where existing gender norms are challenged,

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and where women are encouraged to take their place in the public sphere.

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Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with three women who have established their own successful businesses.

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In 2010, Lina Halifa from Jordan said she fighter a self-defence academy where women are trained in

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self-defence techniques to combat violence against women and to increase women's self-confidence.

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Not only does Lena hold a black belt in taekwondo and grew, she fired into a global organisation.

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She also developed herself into a public speaker, addressing audiences across the world.

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I'm just thinking, Jesus mean usually the founder of New Collective up to very recently, baby, this collective,

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which is an intersectional feminist and political fashion collective based in Palestine, despite the significant obstacles that they face.

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Noufal, as it was baby faced, continues to produce that clothes in the West Bank and Gaza.

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The third guest on Almanack today is Tanya.

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He founded the Egyptian social enterprise entrepreneur, which trains and supports women who want to establish their own businesses.

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Entrepreneur has worked with over fifty thousand men and generated over a thousand projects since Runyon's started in 2015.

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So the first question that I wanted to ask you is simply what inspired you to set up your business?

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Nina Oh, so I am in martial arts. I started training taekwondo and I was really young, maybe five, six years old.

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And I always felt like taekwondo and I was obsessed about taekwondo.

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And I felt that it was an escape for me all the time from life.

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So every time I had problems at school, even when I was a teenager.

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For me, the tech Wando was the best thing that would happen.

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And during the day, because I would train, I would be happy.

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I have this adrenaline rush. I have this kind of discipline. And it gave me a lot of confidence and a boost in why.

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And it's like boosting my self-confidence. Of course, later on I realised all of this patiño growing up, you kind of just do what you like to do.

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You go to play, you do activities you you enjoy. It helped me build my self-confidence.

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It helped me know who I am and also be responsible later on when I built my business.

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So what's happened is I realised when I was early 20s that there's not much women in self-defence and martial arts.

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And then when when my friend was beaten up one day by her brother and father, I did not know why this happened to her.

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And they said, we need to stand up for yourself. And she said, women are weak.

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We cannot stand up for ourselves. And of course, talking to a martial artist to fighter, women are not weak.

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They're just not trained in martial arts.

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And they never use their bodies to to know how to fight.

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And it's always like it's a patriarchal society where men are mostly the ones that are sent to either military or martial arts.

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So women do not really practise these kinds of things.

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So they feel very vulnerable at some point. So I decided, that's it, I'm going to start training them how to stand up for themselves.

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And that's how I started. Amazing. Thank you. How was that for you?

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Yes. I mean, to be honest, more than anything else, when I said I really wanted a space,

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a space for conversation and more than anything, a space for healing.

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It was around the time that I started maybe this was around the time that I was having

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a really difficult confrontation with a lot of the manifestations of the patriarchy.

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For the first time in my life, I think, well, obviously had affected me in other ways.

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But I think it was the first time that I had been sobering up to the way that it had manifested itself in my life.

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So, for example, a lot of the street harassment, a lot of the sort of oppressive gendered practises not I'm not going to stay in Palestinian culture,

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but just in general, when I was really having a hard time now that I had sobered up to them,

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I was having a hard time dealing with them and healing from them.

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And I felt like the best way to do this was to have conversations with other people who were also going through

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similar experiences and to heal from those conversations and from that shared from sharing those experiences.

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And so, baby, first, first and foremost, was more about hosting and fostering a space to be able to do all that.

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And then everything kind of sort of happened naturally afterwards.

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So there was never a point right setup. I set out to start a business from from the beginning, it was more of a personal space.

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If that makes sense. So once you had this idea of making a space because there was a practical elements to to starting a business.

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Yeah. How did you go about that? So there were two aspects of what I was doing.

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I started out buying these like denim. This used denim jacket from second hand shops.

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And I was hand painting them and then selling them. So that was sort of generating income very, very slowly.

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And at the same time, I was hosting workshops regarding sexual harassment, regarding gender based issues.

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And I was hosting those workshops in my living room, in my apartment, in the girls room.

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And so I started off doing everything very kind of DIY. And very soon those practical elements kind of allowed me to have the funds.

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Like I sold enough jackets that I could be able to invest in more stock and invest in opening a shop eventually and then fusing the two.

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So that shop space, when I opened it after selling enough jackets, I could open up shop space that would allow me to sell.

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The clothing that we produced and then also operate as a social space,

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and so that was how the I guess the more logistical side of things came to fruition.

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So you sort of rolled into entrepreneurship. Was that different for you?

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Ronnie, did you have an idea in mind? No, this is I want to start my own business.

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I believe I a second. But a lot of what you just mentioned, because when I started the entrepreneur,

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I had the idea of starting a business, but I did not have a solid idea to start a business with.

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But it started with a person that been that when I used to have another Start-Up,

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I used to have an advertising agency, a simple reason book, Eric Dyson agency that do work for clients.

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But I found the challenge myself in order to proceed because I felt like the only lady in the of meeting you.

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Not a lot of events happening. And then from here, I found out, like, it's not my problem and my only problem.

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It's the problem of a generation. Like, it's it's not my company, my community.

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Back then, when I started five years back to have lots of women starting their own business,

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especially if their businesses are not their typical or they haven't got a D,

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or they want to start something which is not very, let's say, established or an industry that doesn't have many women working,

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especially when it comes, for example, in Egypt, like in tech, you don't have many.

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So a surgeon with a pheno. I started doing workshops. I started doing small events.

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As is mentioned, this was more what I need is myself, I start with.

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And then things went through from there. I started from basic racism, basically shops to where we are now entrepreneur.

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Now we serve more than 50 Saudis, Egyptian woman, different going rates, which I do support them with.

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So benefits they need. So it started from personal pain.

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And then with lots and lots of research and the community support itself,

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we turned to be a business even where we tried to support the women and ourselves in the process.

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Lena, you said that your business started with your passion for taekwondo. Then what happened?

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How did you grow from informally training women to establishing a business?

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Oh, yeah. I mean, it starts always with an idea. Everything starts with an idea.

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The thing is, a lot of people have ideas, but they never act upon their ideas.

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They they neglect their ideas. They neglect their dreams. But what's happened with me, I had an idea.

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I said, I'm going to start. You know, I wanted to solve the problem of violence against women and domestic violence and also self-confidence in women.

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I wanted women to be more confident, especially starting in the Middle East.

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You know, it's a it's a region where women are mostly oppressed by society.

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They believe that they cannot do a lot of things men can do and they're happy living that way.

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So maybe they pretend to be happy. I'm not sure. I mean, working with them for like nine years, definitely they pretend.

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Some of them to be happy and comfortable because it's hard to be a fighter in that society.

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It's hard to say, you know what? I'm going to stand up for myself. I'm going to take care of myself.

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Nobody really wants to do that because a lot of work, especially if they have kids.

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And, you know,

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I have a lot of kids and they have to take responsibility for all the kids because once a woman wants to be independent in that kind of society,

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it means like she might get some some fights with men in her family especially.

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So is she willing to do that? Is she willing? Does she have work?

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Can she finance her? Can she independent financially? Like a lot of questions.

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I mean, at the beginning when I started, I wanted to just to solve a problem. But then I realised the problem is way bigger than this.

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It's just just mentally and emotionally. Yeah, it's it's culture.

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It's society. But I started anyway because I was younger and I feel like I'm gonna solve the problem.

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OK. I started training women's self-defence at the basement of my house.

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I started having first, like friends coming to their sessions, two, three, you know, and slowly I started having 10.

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And then I'm like, I need to take this seriously.

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I need to turn it into a business like the first Self-Defence Academy School for Women in the Middle East,

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because I search and there is nothing for women. And everybody told me, like, don't do this.

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You know, you're going to waste all your investment and money. You know, I've been working like part time in another company.

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And then I'm like, I should, you know, take a risk and I should invest all this money.

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When am I going to invest it? I should invest it now.

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So I found a small space in 2012 and I launched the first she fought to of self-defence to do for women in the Middle East.

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And that's how it started. Fantastic. Thank you.

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As you both slowly started sort of building this brand and building these companies, were there any difficulties that you experience as a woman,

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specifically in terms of funding legislation, training cetera, or expectations from your from your environment?

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How was that for? How was that for you? Yes. I mean. It's difficult, I think.

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And the difficulties that I faced are in any way specific to Palestine.

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When you're talking purely from a gendered perspective, the struggles that I endured and continue,

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I mean, this is not like it ever was an issue that I resolved.

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Is that when you're operating a business or really any kind of initiative, it's inevitable that you're going to be working with others,

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whether it's like manufacturers or graphic designers or so on and so forth.

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A lot of industries are male dominated. And the issue with that, of course,

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is that it's way too common that when you're dealing with a male dominated industry and you're dealing with the men specifically,

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that he dismisses you, especially when you're not only woman, you're a younger woman.

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Did you see that? Did you experience this kind of pushback when you established Chief?

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Oh, yeah, all the time. Even though all the time.

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I mean, just just I think if if you want to start a change in any society, of course, depends on the site and how much they accepted.

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It's it's hard. It's. That's why you have to be born with that kind of mission.

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You have to be a fighter. And the dream has to come in the hunt to in order for you to do it.

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Sometimes I would wake up many days and like, why am I even bothering to do this?

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Even women don't want to change anything. They're happy living that way.

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They live big boy. They live a big lie because the laws and rules are not are not with women.

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It's so frustrating to be continuously dismissed or even being taking a taking advantage of in various ways.

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And so that is one of the struggles that I struggled with in the beginning and I continue to struggle with.

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And of course, it's one of those things where because you're dealing with the struggle,

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perhaps you didn't really realise it before or you kind of knew that this was an issue.

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But I think dealing with it firsthand illustrates it to you.

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And then you're it even gives you like more fuel. Really? OK. I'm pushing these conversations about the issues that women face.

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And while I'm trying to even push those conversations, I'm unearthing more issues that have to do exactly what I'm doing.

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So it just gives you more fuel to keep doing what you're doing. And so my biggest thing, though, specifically from a gender and social perspective,

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putting occupation aside, I was just struggling to be taken seriously in male dominated industries.

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We now say occupation aside.

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But I mean, the fact that you are in Palestine, which remains occupied, must add a layer of difficulty to your experience.

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So do you feel like there is perhaps an intersectional element to the obstacles you face as a female and a Palestinian entrepreneur?

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We had we were talking about this earlier,

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but I don't think most people even expect that occupation manifests itself in Palestinians everyday lives from e-commerce,

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for example, not being able to operate so many payment gateways that allow people to actually purchase the products that you're making.

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Because, of course, PayPal doesn't operate in Palestine and neither do so many other payment gateways.

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And so that's just what I call I kind of came up with the term like fintech apartheid.

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It's just another way, another industry that's compliant with apartheid practises.

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And so that's just one of the many examples of ways that it feels like there's so many layers of

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oppression kind of weighing down the shoulders of so many female smart women entrepreneurs in Palestine.

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Do you prefer the Tetum women entrepreneur? Yeah, I actually don't like the word female.

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It feels like so scientific. It goes so imparting them on like sterol.

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I would say second, that's also I would like the word of empowering movement.

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I don't like the idea that women are power and we're going to.

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Yeah. I feel like we're not that desperate. Thing is that we don't have access to the resources.

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We only need some support in order to get to know things.

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Forces are out there for everyone. Maybe we're facing different challenges or the challenges we're facing are a bit more than than the other.

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End of the day, we're all humans. We feed the same challenges. I remember the question itself.

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It stated, when it comes to God, it isn't. And registrations and stuff, everyone faces the same issues.

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I don't know if it's the same as this meme, but in Egypt,

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we don't have a gender challenge when it comes to liberties restrictions and it's the same process.

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Nothing would change. But I think it's just when it comes to getting access to funds or getting access to investments used,

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the thing is it's in the mindset, it's in the culture. And I believe it goes back to the culture and how the past generation.

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My my mother's generation and the generation before were raised. It's Nick.

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It's not safe to we the women out there doing whatever they don't know about because we usually get scared of what we don't know.

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They don't. Facilitates the process. Now the central bank is working with that.

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And from the latest, them said they don't have the courage. I believe the main challenge that women face in our region, not only Egypt,

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they will have the courage to strike whatever they want because they are always afraid of failure and what their families and

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friends would say about them because they are facing the personal interpersonal challenge of what I'm doing is different than not.

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No one is accepting it. So it's more challenging. It's good that I wouldn't even think about being a female entrepreneur.

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I only think about myself as an interpreter, because if you think about yourself as a female entrepreneur in Jordan,

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you will kinda have a headache every single day, like, oh, why?

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They're not giving us, like, some grants or nothing.

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It's like the the funny thing is they treat you equally when it's intrapreneurship and businesses.

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But then in real life, they don't treat you equally. Such as is, you know, like.

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And realise they don't treat you equally. Like, for example, if you want to join the government or they're like, oh, there's not much space for women.

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Or if you want to even like, you know, have a voice and speak, you're not really allowed to do that sometimes.

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Or if you want to sort of seek some kind of position or do a job that a man is doing, you cannot really do that for you.

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I mean, I believe it's she said it's the food, but it's not that. It's the fuel for it for her.

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But it's not for everyone because she has the courage to do that, but not everyone.

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So this is basically what entrepreneur tries to do.

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We try to push those other women who don't have the courage to start in order to, like, give it a shot, give it a try.

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Maybe you would work. So how you see the main challenge.

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Sorry. Yeah. So how. With entrepreneur. What kind of things do you teach the women predominantly who come to entrepreneur with an idea.

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OK. So basically we don't tell them that you are unique or you're special or you are.

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So we we we do some sort of a reality cheque. This is the situation and this is where we are.

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So we're not equal. We tried to get it done, as I told you earlier. We tried to support the business needs.

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They want in order to be in the same.

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We tried to integrate them in the ecosystem in logic because they go to events we don't know women only events we try to connect them to.

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They can share their experiences, what they learnt. And perhaps even in this network, it's not only women.

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We tried to support women, but we're not exclusive on women because we believe that we have to integrate women, not segregate them from the ecosystem.

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They're not creating a parallel ecosystem. We're trying to to do some sort of a homogeneous ecosystem where everyone is welcome, everyone.

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What we basically do that we give them the business support.

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We do exploration incubation programmes, we do theatre programmes based on their business needs.

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We do it for tech and not tech because there's this fight and hype around tech start-ups.

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But not all women would be able to do that.

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We tried to make that technical because as it's been said that we have in the region many challenges regarding the events and the money speculation.

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I believe it's out of sight. It's way bigger than Egypt, but still great. We still have this issue.

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What's really interesting is that in the Middle East, it does seem like a lot more women are getting into.

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Yes, exactly. In the region. And so what do you think thinks is growing percentage?

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Oh, probably because they have the money.

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You know, something of business you need to be financially also a case of some kind of investment or someone to support you.

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Well, we do have. I'm also talking like I'm talking about my experience because I started from scratch with no support coming from any men.

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But usually women who start their businesses,

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they have some kind of support from their husband or the father or some kind of support coming to like financially to start.

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I mean, I know almost most of the businesswoman in Jordan that started any kind of initiative or business.

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The support is they started like either the husband financially support them or someone, you know, in the family, which is men most of the times.

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I mean, you're still dependent on men.

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If you're a woman wanting to establish your business, you still need to have the men in your surroundings saying, hey, I support you.

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I'm going to give you some money. Exactly. So they do that.

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It's very common in the Middle East because women were at certain age, let's say, in their 40s.

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They're not going to go look for a job. They want to have their own businesses,

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whether it's like like a restaurant or even like a cooking initiative or even like

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some kind of app where they help some kind of entrepreneurs or they it's very common.

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It's very, very common.

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But it's too if you look at the percent, I'm sure they don't have that kind of percent of women starting by themselves from scratch.

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Probably it's very low, lower than, you know, the American. Definitely.

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Because also, if you consider the Middle East also is like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and they're all supported by men in that region.

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I mean, I've seen it in my own eyes in Jordan who, like most of the entrepreneurs, are like financially dependent on someone.

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Usually men basically. I believe it comes out of necessity because lots of women now they are raising families.

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Egypt is one of the very high divorce rate countries. And we have lots of mothers who are actually getting their children into and out of the jobs.

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And we have.

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A high unemployment rate, so women started to do the basics, start to think, OK, because it's easy for them to start a business, then to find a job.

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So lots of them started their businesses out of that because they wanted to pay their debts.

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They wanted to raise their children properly. So it's more of a necessity.

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And I believe this could be one of the reasons. Yes.

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I mean, you find yourself in what Ronia saying about the motivations for women to start their own business.

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There's no way to properly know this, of course. But my theory as to why the percentage is higher here in the Middle East is that for two reasons.

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One, there has just been this ridiculous, ridiculous influx of euro in their money in to try and quote unquote,

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empower women in the Middle East, because apparently we need more help in their eyes compared to euro American women.

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And so I feel like this ridiculous influx of money and investment has definitely given us a push.

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On the other hand,

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I do believe that there's so many stereotypes that have been fabricated by by the global Nords about Middle Eastern and Muslim women,

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like the fact that we're so helpless. The fact that we're oppressed, so on and so forth,

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that we've almost had to prove ourselves more directly against these stereotypes to try and shatter them on the global stage.

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So to put these two side by side,

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we've had to prove ourselves and shatter these stereotypes that are your American counterparts don't have to deal with.

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I don't think you can answer this question without really taking a step back to look at the global framework that affects it.

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I don't just want to talk about the negative sides and the obstacles for women in the Middle East and North Africa to become women entrepreneurs.

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And so I was wondering, what are the advantages for you personally in establishing your own business?

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How have you grown as a person? Okay. I was saying that I prefer to classify myself as a social entrepreneur.

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And I believe the value I see out of me being a social entrepreneur or the added thing that I see the impact.

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Day by day, I see the development in the community I'm serving and the amount of facilities and

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services provided by the community in the past five years instead of growing and growing.

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This is something that motivates me, that keeps me going every day. The.

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What is it brought to you personally, Nina? It was a growth journey for me, not just for my business.

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I feel like I'm totally separated from what I started.

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I sought the chief out there for a reason, and then the reason was self growth and also helping women to,

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you know, like how to defend themselves and rise. But at the same time, it was my own self growth.

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When I started 2.0, I did not have a voice to speak or like I was very shy.

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I thought that speaking is not something I want to do.

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At some point, I'm just going to hold the site. He told me not to speak.

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Every time I tried to speak, they're like, Oh, so you have a voice? No, why don't you shut up?

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I was raised in a society where they said they tell a woman to shut up because they don't know how to say anything.

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And imagine I was a fighter and I am a fighter. But imagine if you hear that phrase most of your life, you're going to be affected by it.

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At some point you'll be like, who wants to hear me speak? Anyway, I have really nothing to add.

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But then the journey of starting Xi fighter helped me discover my voice back.

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What's happened is I started getting invited to schools at the beginning to speak and the first son I was like, No, I cannot do it.

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I can speakable. I was very nervous and I even said, you know, I'm going to shake what were you and all these things.

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But I said, You know what? I have this fear and I'm going to break it.

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So I took the step. I went to that school. They had like 500 students.

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I spoke and everybody was like, interacting, happy, laughing.

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I made them laugh so much. I spoke for, like, 30 minutes on that stage.

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And then I thought about it like, I can affect people faster if I speak.

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And how was that for you? I mean, I don't believe that there's too much of a separation between my work and my personal life.

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And when I say personal life, I mean my personal emotional development.

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And so what I realise in establishing baby first and trying to grow it was how I was I I couldn't speak up for myself.

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I had a really difficult time. I'm still struggling with this.

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How I have a really difficult time demanding respect from people who should be my equals.

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But look down upon me because of my gender also. Kind of.

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Unravelling my because I'm a Palestinian, Muslim, Palestinian, although I was raised in the US in a very much racist south.

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I had to undo a lot of internalised whiteness that I had adopted over the years.

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And so that's been really interesting. So running my own my own business has really given me the space to kind of step back to kind of

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rebuild a new foundation of who I want to be and who I need to be in order to continue growing.

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So Baby Fist is is like you said, it's not just a space.

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It's not just a brand. It's a space for conversation. And also sort of your project for your own healing almost.

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Yeah, I would I would like to say that it's a space for healing.

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For more than one that. Yeah.

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Yeah. Aranea. What about you. What is your. Do you have a long term vision for entrepreneur.

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Entrepreneurial. I believe my vision is to not have the need of having entrepreneur and entrepreneur.

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I want it to be like a community support for upscaling, not for striking.

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I don't like the thing that we're still stuck in, the idea of starting and shaping new businesses.

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My vision, my long term vision as an entrepreneur would be just a place where it support further,

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you know, not only the early stage of an entrepreneur. I once I believe in five years from now, those who want entrepreneurs,

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would they believe and change the norm where entrepreneur services itself would go beyond.

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So my vision is not only to do whatever we're doing now. Definitely.

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I would love to support more women, but those women who are serving now,

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I want them to be like the base for the years that are coming years, but would be fantastic.

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Imagine we were sitting here with people who are policymakers in your respective countries who do have a lot of influence.

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What would you like to ask them to change in order to lower the barriers for women to become entrepreneurs?

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OK. Fingers. I don't know if it's the right way to phrase it, but stop winking at women that they are woman and baby for their support.

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This would make things go through with a better because when we keep mentioning that women need support.

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This makes them feel like they need the support.

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But thing is, if we neutralise and normalise the thing that women are equal and we all need further support, they're not desperate.

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This will sort of the issue. I don't believe that creating more women focussed rules and regulations were sort of the thing.

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I believe integrating the women component in each and every rule or regulation would would facilitate the thing.

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So it's it's about being aware of women's needs without constantly being hyper aware.

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Yeah. OK. Interesting. OK. What about you.

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You mean. Well to be honest it all depends on which policy makers are talking to us.

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We're talking about P.A. policy makers or if we're talking about Zionists, I don't know if I'm sitting in the room.

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Let's just let's just imagine that it's only been a I guess if I was even sitting in a room with them, I would just demand that he stop.

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They all step down. I can't imagine asking them to change early.

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To start tackling barriers regarding gender when the entire system in and of itself just needs to be scrapped.

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So that's one thing. But I guess if we're gonna play if we're just playing the game, we're like Palestine had its own government.

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It would be so many things. I mean, it would be you'd need to be tackling education.

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You need to be tackling infrastructure, which in turn affects access to education and so on and so forth.

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But I really can't. I can't imagine even answering this question without just acknowledging that one.

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We're under occupation. So it's hard to answer to kind of isolate this question regarding gender.

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It is a difficult question in the case of Palestine, because, yeah, the reality is that, you know,

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who is going to be that super powerful person in the room because the P.A. obviously so limited in in their scope, in their power to things like this.

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The last question that I wanted to ask you was regarding Koven 19, because we cannot ignore the impact that it has on literally every sphere of life.

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And so a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, are really struggling.

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And so I wanted to ask you this curious mean to start with. How has the Corona virus impacted you and your business in Palestine?

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We can't discuss the effect of Cuban 19, of course,

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without discussing occupation while the rest of the world is struggling against this global pandemic.

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We're also breaking underneath the weight of both occupation and the pandemic.

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So it's it's almost it's gotten to a point where it's difficult to ascertain which one is affecting us anymore because it's so it's so much of both.

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Much Two-Handed for one country. Exactly. It really is too much.

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Rendel. It's you know, we struggled, of course, with the lockdown's and not affected everyone across all spheres of life.

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But then on top of that, there's the the effect of occupation with borders being closed.

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So, for example, right now there's the Jewish holidays.

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And because of those holidays, Israel has decided not to close down the country for three weeks.

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And so when this happens, it's crazy that to quote unquote another country,

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even though it's not another country because we're occupied, their holidays actually ends up affecting us.

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So when their borders close, our borders close, for example, we can't ship out orders.

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We can't import fabric. So on and so forth. And so that's a very clear kind of marriage between occupation and Koban 19.

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And I just I guess every aspect of it has been that there's just been no business.

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We've had we've killed of course, we've closed to all not just tourists, but even Palestinians who can't return.

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And so that affects business. And it's really all sectors of life. It's financially, socially.

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Kind of Palestinians, I think, are feeling a lot of added stress or heartbreak underneath all of this,

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particularly this year under the Trump administration. It's really in all spheres of life.

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And so right now, you see a lot of women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurs.

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So how do you feel like what what impact have you seen on all these entrepreneurs due to the Corona virus?

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Definitely. I mean, even lots of businesses affected big time, especially in the first two or three months of the pandemic.

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But luckily, it is a very demanding company, control when it comes to the crocheting for.

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So lots of businesses flourished. And this is very strange in the time of pandemic.

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Most of the online stores, shops and attractions,

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actually their profits raised by two and three times in the pandemic because of the fear shooting power.

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People are saying at home they're terrified of going out.

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So they do more online shopping. So in some sectors, we've seen development and we've seen you drays in sales.

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But on the contrary, other businesses, they were super affected that we had to open our space.

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We have premises here. We opened our space for free for start-ups to operate in because lots of

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start-ups they lost their offices and they had to lay off lots of their things.

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So we've seen we've seen both. We've seen businesses that flourish.

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And we've seen businesses that are almost shut down and just tried to support as much as we can.

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But by the end of the day, it's it's way bigger than entrepreneur where entrepreneur can do.

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I believe it needs more part this quite this quick on the damages and path of excess.

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But from our end, we've seen both the demo are working together in order to survive.

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And we've seen the others actually the some of them, like they they shut down operations because of the fund them,

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especially the food industry, because in Egypt, the food industries and within the beverage, they have a huge market share.

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But unfortunately, lots of them, they they laid off people and they their operations,

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but in the garments and the fashion and those businesses know they're operating more than before.

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They weren't affected by the first two months. But after that. And you feel like.

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Do you feel the effects on women entrepreneurs have been different than men entrepreneurs?

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Or do you think the corona virus is about the same yet? I believe so, because it's not related to entrepreneurship, but it's more of the agenda,

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better the violence against women because they look down and have shown a very

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mean and ugly faces of violence and that's coming out of stress and depression.

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And the victims were women who had to keep working at home.

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Yes. Taking care of the stress Tammany's yet taking care of the business and the children.

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So they faced the challenge of the convent twice, actually, because they were responsible of their businesses and of their homes.

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That is all the questions I had for you guys today. But I was wondering whether you have any questions like to each other, to me or anything.

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For me, the subject of women entrepreneurship. I'm always suspicious of.

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I normally actually don't take interviews or any kind of events that discuss this subject because I just feel like it's a.

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It's a tricky subject and Ron, you really she she put it so well earlier, maybe you could repeat it better than I could.

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But that by providing a space to support women entrepreneurs, you also want to be sure that you're not creating like a parallel ecosystem.

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And so I just it's always so tricky to try and discuss this subject without almost like reinforcing stereotypes, if that makes sense.

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I like reinforcing dangerous practises.

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I also hope that we do exactly not that which is create kind of like a strange, exceptional lastic conversation about women entrepreneurs.

380
00:37:42,590 --> 00:37:47,030
I really hope that it's quite the opposite, that it's more of an honest conversation.

381
00:37:47,030 --> 00:37:52,850
I also don't want to generalise and make this about, you know, all women in the Middle East because that would be ridiculous.

382
00:37:52,850 --> 00:37:58,160
Let me add something to what you're saying. If she's a Muslim and if she's a hijab.

383
00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:04,580
This is another whole situation. Like sometimes people talk to me like I'm an an alien or something.

384
00:38:04,580 --> 00:38:10,730
They don't believe, like where you guys don't print that as a regular people having regular brains.

385
00:38:10,730 --> 00:38:12,790
So I totally understand what you're saying.

386
00:38:12,790 --> 00:38:20,770
If you spoke in Prague and in Czech Republic, Prague, and they did not expect someone from the Middle East,

387
00:38:20,770 --> 00:38:25,520
a woman that looks like me, they thought I'm going to be completely covered.

388
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:31,430
They thought that I don't know how to speak. And they thought that oppressed.

389
00:38:31,430 --> 00:38:36,800
But I looked how they introduced me on stage because they do have this kind of.

390
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:39,110
Yes. Do you talk about Middle Eastern women?

391
00:38:39,110 --> 00:38:48,590
They introduced me like imagine a woman like coming on stage right now speaking and she is going to speak and she's from the Middle East.

392
00:38:48,590 --> 00:38:52,180
How do you imagine she looks like. And they left the people.

393
00:38:52,180 --> 00:38:56,840
Audience for like one minute and then I come up on stage.

394
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:01,400
So their eyes were even older women, you know, in Prague.

395
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,840
They're like they even asked me after that. Like where?

396
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:13,190
Well, how come you different? I said, not everybody is the same. You know, the media is not all the time telling you this truth.

397
00:39:13,190 --> 00:39:19,910
So they laughed. They took my car. They I even gave them like a self-defence seminar after.

398
00:39:19,910 --> 00:39:22,910
And there's like hundreds of people came to join.

399
00:39:22,910 --> 00:39:33,290
So it's good to present a different kind of mindset off or like stereotype about women in the Middle East or even people.

400
00:39:33,290 --> 00:39:40,540
There are people who are different. Not everybody does the same.

401
00:39:40,540 --> 00:39:44,650
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elimelech, the Oxford Middle East podcast.

402
00:39:44,650 --> 00:39:50,800
Join us next week when we discuss the language used to talk about the Middle East and the problems related to the.

403
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,960
Elimelech is a student for the initiative of.

404
00:39:54,960 --> 00:40:01,610
The opinions expressed in the podcast are not in any way represent the official opinions of the University of the Middle East.

405
00:40:01,610 --> 00:40:07,080
It is it is, it is Lily.

406
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:19,107
Felix Walker, Michael Mama. Max Randall.