Hello and welcome to Almanac, the Oxford Middle East podcast.
My name is Piotr Schulkes and on today's episode we spoke with the incredible woman entrepreneurs from Jordan, Egypt and Palestine.
They discussed a journey. What they've learnt and the importance of nuance when discussing the circumstances around their situation.
In the last few years,
women's access to education in the Middle East and North Africa has increased rapidly and women are now outperforming men in teacher education.
But unfortunately, this change has not led to representation of the job market.
The Middle East, North Africa account for the lowest female labour participation rates,
with an average of around 21 percent, and representation in management also remains low.
But entrepreneurship is booming. More and more companies in the Middle East and Africa are run by women.
An increasing number of start-ups are established or co established also by women, and their sources don't agree on the exact percentages.
In any case, the percentages don't really matter.
What matters is that strong and driven women are creating businesses and spaces that reflect the way they would like to see the world.
Spaces where women lift each other up, where existing gender norms are challenged,
and where women are encouraged to take their place in the public sphere.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with three women who have established their own successful businesses.
In 2010, Lina Halifa from Jordan said she fighter a self-defence academy where women are trained in
self-defence techniques to combat violence against women and to increase women's self-confidence.
Not only does Lena hold a black belt in taekwondo and grew, she fired into a global organisation.
She also developed herself into a public speaker, addressing audiences across the world.
I'm just thinking, Jesus mean usually the founder of New Collective up to very recently, baby, this collective,
which is an intersectional feminist and political fashion collective based in Palestine, despite the significant obstacles that they face.
Noufal, as it was baby faced, continues to produce that clothes in the West Bank and Gaza.
The third guest on Almanack today is Tanya.
He founded the Egyptian social enterprise entrepreneur, which trains and supports women who want to establish their own businesses.
Entrepreneur has worked with over fifty thousand men and generated over a thousand projects since Runyon's started in 2015.
So the first question that I wanted to ask you is simply what inspired you to set up your business?
Nina Oh, so I am in martial arts. I started training taekwondo and I was really young, maybe five, six years old.
And I always felt like taekwondo and I was obsessed about taekwondo.
And I felt that it was an escape for me all the time from life.
So every time I had problems at school, even when I was a teenager.
For me, the tech Wando was the best thing that would happen.
And during the day, because I would train, I would be happy.
I have this adrenaline rush. I have this kind of discipline. And it gave me a lot of confidence and a boost in why.
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.
You go to play, you do activities you you enjoy. It helped me build my self-confidence.
It helped me know who I am and also be responsible later on when I built my business.
So what's happened is I realised when I was early 20s that there's not much women in self-defence and martial arts.
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.
And they said, we need to stand up for yourself. And she said, women are weak.
We cannot stand up for ourselves. And of course, talking to a martial artist to fighter, women are not weak.
They're just not trained in martial arts.
And they never use their bodies to to know how to fight.
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.
So women do not really practise these kinds of things.
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.
And that's how I started. Amazing. Thank you. How was that for you?
Yes. I mean, to be honest, more than anything else, when I said I really wanted a space,
a space for conversation and more than anything, a space for healing.
It was around the time that I started maybe this was around the time that I was having
a really difficult confrontation with a lot of the manifestations of the patriarchy.
For the first time in my life, I think, well, obviously had affected me in other ways.
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.
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,
but just in general, when I was really having a hard time now that I had sobered up to them,
I was having a hard time dealing with them and healing from them.
And I felt like the best way to do this was to have conversations with other people who were also going through
similar experiences and to heal from those conversations and from that shared from sharing those experiences.
And so, baby, first, first and foremost, was more about hosting and fostering a space to be able to do all that.
And then everything kind of sort of happened naturally afterwards.
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.
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.
Yeah. How did you go about that? So there were two aspects of what I was doing.
I started out buying these like denim. This used denim jacket from second hand shops.
And I was hand painting them and then selling them. So that was sort of generating income very, very slowly.
And at the same time, I was hosting workshops regarding sexual harassment, regarding gender based issues.
And I was hosting those workshops in my living room, in my apartment, in the girls room.
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.
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.
So that shop space, when I opened it after selling enough jackets, I could open up shop space that would allow me to sell.
The clothing that we produced and then also operate as a social space,
and so that was how the I guess the more logistical side of things came to fruition.
So you sort of rolled into entrepreneurship. Was that different for you?
Ronnie, did you have an idea in mind? No, this is I want to start my own business.
I believe I a second. But a lot of what you just mentioned, because when I started the entrepreneur,
I had the idea of starting a business, but I did not have a solid idea to start a business with.
But it started with a person that been that when I used to have another Start-Up,
I used to have an advertising agency, a simple reason book, Eric Dyson agency that do work for clients.
But I found the challenge myself in order to proceed because I felt like the only lady in the of meeting you.
Not a lot of events happening. And then from here, I found out, like, it's not my problem and my only problem.
It's the problem of a generation. Like, it's it's not my company, my community.
Back then, when I started five years back to have lots of women starting their own business,
especially if their businesses are not their typical or they haven't got a D,
or they want to start something which is not very, let's say, established or an industry that doesn't have many women working,
especially when it comes, for example, in Egypt, like in tech, you don't have many.
So a surgeon with a pheno. I started doing workshops. I started doing small events.
As is mentioned, this was more what I need is myself, I start with.
And then things went through from there. I started from basic racism, basically shops to where we are now entrepreneur.
Now we serve more than 50 Saudis, Egyptian woman, different going rates, which I do support them with.
So benefits they need. So it started from personal pain.
And then with lots and lots of research and the community support itself,
we turned to be a business even where we tried to support the women and ourselves in the process.
Lena, you said that your business started with your passion for taekwondo. Then what happened?
How did you grow from informally training women to establishing a business?
Oh, yeah. I mean, it starts always with an idea. Everything starts with an idea.
The thing is, a lot of people have ideas, but they never act upon their ideas.
They they neglect their ideas. They neglect their dreams. But what's happened with me, I had an idea.
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.
I wanted women to be more confident, especially starting in the Middle East.
You know, it's a it's a region where women are mostly oppressed by society.
They believe that they cannot do a lot of things men can do and they're happy living that way.
So maybe they pretend to be happy. I'm not sure. I mean, working with them for like nine years, definitely they pretend.
Some of them to be happy and comfortable because it's hard to be a fighter in that society.
It's hard to say, you know what? I'm going to stand up for myself. I'm going to take care of myself.
Nobody really wants to do that because a lot of work, especially if they have kids.
And, you know,
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,
it means like she might get some some fights with men in her family especially.
So is she willing to do that? Is she willing? Does she have work?
Can she finance her? Can she independent financially? Like a lot of questions.
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.
It's just just mentally and emotionally. Yeah, it's it's culture.
It's society. But I started anyway because I was younger and I feel like I'm gonna solve the problem.
OK. I started training women's self-defence at the basement of my house.
I started having first, like friends coming to their sessions, two, three, you know, and slowly I started having 10.
And then I'm like, I need to take this seriously.
I need to turn it into a business like the first Self-Defence Academy School for Women in the Middle East,
because I search and there is nothing for women. And everybody told me, like, don't do this.
You know, you're going to waste all your investment and money. You know, I've been working like part time in another company.
And then I'm like, I should, you know, take a risk and I should invest all this money.
When am I going to invest it? I should invest it now.
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.
And that's how it started. Fantastic. Thank you.
As you both slowly started sort of building this brand and building these companies, were there any difficulties that you experience as a woman,
specifically in terms of funding legislation, training cetera, or expectations from your from your environment?
How was that for? How was that for you? Yes. I mean. It's difficult, I think.
And the difficulties that I faced are in any way specific to Palestine.
When you're talking purely from a gendered perspective, the struggles that I endured and continue,
I mean, this is not like it ever was an issue that I resolved.
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,
whether it's like manufacturers or graphic designers or so on and so forth.
A lot of industries are male dominated. And the issue with that, of course,
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,
that he dismisses you, especially when you're not only woman, you're a younger woman.
Did you see that? Did you experience this kind of pushback when you established Chief?
Oh, yeah, all the time. Even though all the time.
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.
It's it's hard. It's. That's why you have to be born with that kind of mission.
You have to be a fighter. And the dream has to come in the hunt to in order for you to do it.
Sometimes I would wake up many days and like, why am I even bothering to do this?
Even women don't want to change anything. They're happy living that way.
They live big boy. They live a big lie because the laws and rules are not are not with women.
It's so frustrating to be continuously dismissed or even being taking a taking advantage of in various ways.
And so that is one of the struggles that I struggled with in the beginning and I continue to struggle with.
And of course, it's one of those things where because you're dealing with the struggle,
perhaps you didn't really realise it before or you kind of knew that this was an issue.
But I think dealing with it firsthand illustrates it to you.
And then you're it even gives you like more fuel. Really? OK. I'm pushing these conversations about the issues that women face.
And while I'm trying to even push those conversations, I'm unearthing more issues that have to do exactly what I'm doing.
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,
putting occupation aside, I was just struggling to be taken seriously in male dominated industries.
We now say occupation aside.
But I mean, the fact that you are in Palestine, which remains occupied, must add a layer of difficulty to your experience.
So do you feel like there is perhaps an intersectional element to the obstacles you face as a female and a Palestinian entrepreneur?
We had we were talking about this earlier,
but I don't think most people even expect that occupation manifests itself in Palestinians everyday lives from e-commerce,
for example, not being able to operate so many payment gateways that allow people to actually purchase the products that you're making.
Because, of course, PayPal doesn't operate in Palestine and neither do so many other payment gateways.
And so that's just what I call I kind of came up with the term like fintech apartheid.
It's just another way, another industry that's compliant with apartheid practises.
And so that's just one of the many examples of ways that it feels like there's so many layers of
oppression kind of weighing down the shoulders of so many female smart women entrepreneurs in Palestine.
Do you prefer the Tetum women entrepreneur? Yeah, I actually don't like the word female.
It feels like so scientific. It goes so imparting them on like sterol.
I would say second, that's also I would like the word of empowering movement.
I don't like the idea that women are power and we're going to.
Yeah. I feel like we're not that desperate. Thing is that we don't have access to the resources.
We only need some support in order to get to know things.
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.
End of the day, we're all humans. We feed the same challenges. I remember the question itself.
It stated, when it comes to God, it isn't. And registrations and stuff, everyone faces the same issues.
I don't know if it's the same as this meme, but in Egypt,
we don't have a gender challenge when it comes to liberties restrictions and it's the same process.
Nothing would change. But I think it's just when it comes to getting access to funds or getting access to investments used,
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.
My my mother's generation and the generation before were raised. It's Nick.
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.
They don't. Facilitates the process. Now the central bank is working with that.
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,
they will have the courage to strike whatever they want because they are always afraid of failure and what their families and
friends would say about them because they are facing the personal interpersonal challenge of what I'm doing is different than not.
No one is accepting it. So it's more challenging. It's good that I wouldn't even think about being a female entrepreneur.
I only think about myself as an interpreter, because if you think about yourself as a female entrepreneur in Jordan,
you will kinda have a headache every single day, like, oh, why?
They're not giving us, like, some grants or nothing.
It's like the the funny thing is they treat you equally when it's intrapreneurship and businesses.
But then in real life, they don't treat you equally. Such as is, you know, like.
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.
Or if you want to even like, you know, have a voice and speak, you're not really allowed to do that sometimes.
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.
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.
But it's not for everyone because she has the courage to do that, but not everyone.
So this is basically what entrepreneur tries to do.
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.
Maybe you would work. So how you see the main challenge.
Sorry. Yeah. So how. With entrepreneur. What kind of things do you teach the women predominantly who come to entrepreneur with an idea.
OK. So basically we don't tell them that you are unique or you're special or you are.
So we we we do some sort of a reality cheque. This is the situation and this is where we are.
So we're not equal. We tried to get it done, as I told you earlier. We tried to support the business needs.
They want in order to be in the same.
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.
They can share their experiences, what they learnt. And perhaps even in this network, it's not only women.
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.
They're not creating a parallel ecosystem. We're trying to to do some sort of a homogeneous ecosystem where everyone is welcome, everyone.
What we basically do that we give them the business support.
We do exploration incubation programmes, we do theatre programmes based on their business needs.
We do it for tech and not tech because there's this fight and hype around tech start-ups.
But not all women would be able to do that.
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.
I believe it's out of sight. It's way bigger than Egypt, but still great. We still have this issue.
What's really interesting is that in the Middle East, it does seem like a lot more women are getting into.
Yes, exactly. In the region. And so what do you think thinks is growing percentage?
Oh, probably because they have the money.
You know, something of business you need to be financially also a case of some kind of investment or someone to support you.
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.
But usually women who start their businesses,
they have some kind of support from their husband or the father or some kind of support coming to like financially to start.
I mean, I know almost most of the businesswoman in Jordan that started any kind of initiative or business.
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.
I mean, you're still dependent on men.
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.
I'm going to give you some money. Exactly. So they do that.
It's very common in the Middle East because women were at certain age, let's say, in their 40s.
They're not going to go look for a job. They want to have their own businesses,
whether it's like like a restaurant or even like a cooking initiative or even like
some kind of app where they help some kind of entrepreneurs or they it's very common.
It's very, very common.
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.
Probably it's very low, lower than, you know, the American. Definitely.
Because also, if you consider the Middle East also is like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and they're all supported by men in that region.
I mean, I've seen it in my own eyes in Jordan who, like most of the entrepreneurs, are like financially dependent on someone.
Usually men basically. I believe it comes out of necessity because lots of women now they are raising families.
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.
And we have.
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.
So lots of them started their businesses out of that because they wanted to pay their debts.
They wanted to raise their children properly. So it's more of a necessity.
And I believe this could be one of the reasons. Yes.
I mean, you find yourself in what Ronia saying about the motivations for women to start their own business.
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.
One, there has just been this ridiculous, ridiculous influx of euro in their money in to try and quote unquote,
empower women in the Middle East, because apparently we need more help in their eyes compared to euro American women.
And so I feel like this ridiculous influx of money and investment has definitely given us a push.
On the other hand,
I do believe that there's so many stereotypes that have been fabricated by by the global Nords about Middle Eastern and Muslim women,
like the fact that we're so helpless. The fact that we're oppressed, so on and so forth,
that we've almost had to prove ourselves more directly against these stereotypes to try and shatter them on the global stage.
So to put these two side by side,
we've had to prove ourselves and shatter these stereotypes that are your American counterparts don't have to deal with.
I don't think you can answer this question without really taking a step back to look at the global framework that affects it.
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.
And so I was wondering, what are the advantages for you personally in establishing your own business?
How have you grown as a person? Okay. I was saying that I prefer to classify myself as a social entrepreneur.
And I believe the value I see out of me being a social entrepreneur or the added thing that I see the impact.
Day by day, I see the development in the community I'm serving and the amount of facilities and
services provided by the community in the past five years instead of growing and growing.
This is something that motivates me, that keeps me going every day. The.
What is it brought to you personally, Nina? It was a growth journey for me, not just for my business.
I feel like I'm totally separated from what I started.
I sought the chief out there for a reason, and then the reason was self growth and also helping women to,
you know, like how to defend themselves and rise. But at the same time, it was my own self growth.
When I started 2.0, I did not have a voice to speak or like I was very shy.
I thought that speaking is not something I want to do.
At some point, I'm just going to hold the site. He told me not to speak.
Every time I tried to speak, they're like, Oh, so you have a voice? No, why don't you shut up?
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.
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.
At some point you'll be like, who wants to hear me speak? Anyway, I have really nothing to add.
But then the journey of starting Xi fighter helped me discover my voice back.
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.
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.
But I said, You know what? I have this fear and I'm going to break it.
So I took the step. I went to that school. They had like 500 students.
I spoke and everybody was like, interacting, happy, laughing.
I made them laugh so much. I spoke for, like, 30 minutes on that stage.
And then I thought about it like, I can affect people faster if I speak.
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.
And when I say personal life, I mean my personal emotional development.
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.
I had a really difficult time. I'm still struggling with this.
How I have a really difficult time demanding respect from people who should be my equals.
But look down upon me because of my gender also. Kind of.
Unravelling my because I'm a Palestinian, Muslim, Palestinian, although I was raised in the US in a very much racist south.
I had to undo a lot of internalised whiteness that I had adopted over the years.
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
rebuild a new foundation of who I want to be and who I need to be in order to continue growing.
So Baby Fist is is like you said, it's not just a space.
It's not just a brand. It's a space for conversation. And also sort of your project for your own healing almost.
Yeah, I would I would like to say that it's a space for healing.
For more than one that. Yeah.
Yeah. Aranea. What about you. What is your. Do you have a long term vision for entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurial. I believe my vision is to not have the need of having entrepreneur and entrepreneur.
I want it to be like a community support for upscaling, not for striking.
I don't like the thing that we're still stuck in, the idea of starting and shaping new businesses.
My vision, my long term vision as an entrepreneur would be just a place where it support further,
you know, not only the early stage of an entrepreneur. I once I believe in five years from now, those who want entrepreneurs,
would they believe and change the norm where entrepreneur services itself would go beyond.
So my vision is not only to do whatever we're doing now. Definitely.
I would love to support more women, but those women who are serving now,
I want them to be like the base for the years that are coming years, but would be fantastic.
Imagine we were sitting here with people who are policymakers in your respective countries who do have a lot of influence.
What would you like to ask them to change in order to lower the barriers for women to become entrepreneurs?
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.
This would make things go through with a better because when we keep mentioning that women need support.
This makes them feel like they need the support.
But thing is, if we neutralise and normalise the thing that women are equal and we all need further support, they're not desperate.
This will sort of the issue. I don't believe that creating more women focussed rules and regulations were sort of the thing.
I believe integrating the women component in each and every rule or regulation would would facilitate the thing.
So it's it's about being aware of women's needs without constantly being hyper aware.
Yeah. OK. Interesting. OK. What about you.
You mean. Well to be honest it all depends on which policy makers are talking to us.
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.
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.
They all step down. I can't imagine asking them to change early.
To start tackling barriers regarding gender when the entire system in and of itself just needs to be scrapped.
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.
It would be so many things. I mean, it would be you'd need to be tackling education.
You need to be tackling infrastructure, which in turn affects access to education and so on and so forth.
But I really can't. I can't imagine even answering this question without just acknowledging that one.
We're under occupation. So it's hard to answer to kind of isolate this question regarding gender.
It is a difficult question in the case of Palestine, because, yeah, the reality is that, you know,
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.
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.
And so a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, are really struggling.
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?
We can't discuss the effect of Cuban 19, of course,
without discussing occupation while the rest of the world is struggling against this global pandemic.
We're also breaking underneath the weight of both occupation and the pandemic.
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.
Much Two-Handed for one country. Exactly. It really is too much.
Rendel. It's you know, we struggled, of course, with the lockdown's and not affected everyone across all spheres of life.
But then on top of that, there's the the effect of occupation with borders being closed.
So, for example, right now there's the Jewish holidays.
And because of those holidays, Israel has decided not to close down the country for three weeks.
And so when this happens, it's crazy that to quote unquote another country,
even though it's not another country because we're occupied, their holidays actually ends up affecting us.
So when their borders close, our borders close, for example, we can't ship out orders.
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.
And I just I guess every aspect of it has been that there's just been no business.
We've had we've killed of course, we've closed to all not just tourists, but even Palestinians who can't return.
And so that affects business. And it's really all sectors of life. It's financially, socially.
Kind of Palestinians, I think, are feeling a lot of added stress or heartbreak underneath all of this,
particularly this year under the Trump administration. It's really in all spheres of life.
And so right now, you see a lot of women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurs.
So how do you feel like what what impact have you seen on all these entrepreneurs due to the Corona virus?
Definitely. I mean, even lots of businesses affected big time, especially in the first two or three months of the pandemic.
But luckily, it is a very demanding company, control when it comes to the crocheting for.
So lots of businesses flourished. And this is very strange in the time of pandemic.
Most of the online stores, shops and attractions,
actually their profits raised by two and three times in the pandemic because of the fear shooting power.
People are saying at home they're terrified of going out.
So they do more online shopping. So in some sectors, we've seen development and we've seen you drays in sales.
But on the contrary, other businesses, they were super affected that we had to open our space.
We have premises here. We opened our space for free for start-ups to operate in because lots of
start-ups they lost their offices and they had to lay off lots of their things.
So we've seen we've seen both. We've seen businesses that flourish.
And we've seen businesses that are almost shut down and just tried to support as much as we can.
But by the end of the day, it's it's way bigger than entrepreneur where entrepreneur can do.
I believe it needs more part this quite this quick on the damages and path of excess.
But from our end, we've seen both the demo are working together in order to survive.
And we've seen the others actually the some of them, like they they shut down operations because of the fund them,
especially the food industry, because in Egypt, the food industries and within the beverage, they have a huge market share.
But unfortunately, lots of them, they they laid off people and they their operations,
but in the garments and the fashion and those businesses know they're operating more than before.
They weren't affected by the first two months. But after that. And you feel like.
Do you feel the effects on women entrepreneurs have been different than men entrepreneurs?
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,
better the violence against women because they look down and have shown a very
mean and ugly faces of violence and that's coming out of stress and depression.
And the victims were women who had to keep working at home.
Yes. Taking care of the stress Tammany's yet taking care of the business and the children.
So they faced the challenge of the convent twice, actually, because they were responsible of their businesses and of their homes.
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.
For me, the subject of women entrepreneurship. I'm always suspicious of.
I normally actually don't take interviews or any kind of events that discuss this subject because I just feel like it's a.
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.
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.
And so I just it's always so tricky to try and discuss this subject without almost like reinforcing stereotypes, if that makes sense.
I like reinforcing dangerous practises.
I also hope that we do exactly not that which is create kind of like a strange, exceptional lastic conversation about women entrepreneurs.
I really hope that it's quite the opposite, that it's more of an honest conversation.
I also don't want to generalise and make this about, you know, all women in the Middle East because that would be ridiculous.
Let me add something to what you're saying. If she's a Muslim and if she's a hijab.
This is another whole situation. Like sometimes people talk to me like I'm an an alien or something.
They don't believe, like where you guys don't print that as a regular people having regular brains.
So I totally understand what you're saying.
If you spoke in Prague and in Czech Republic, Prague, and they did not expect someone from the Middle East,
a woman that looks like me, they thought I'm going to be completely covered.
They thought that I don't know how to speak. And they thought that oppressed.
But I looked how they introduced me on stage because they do have this kind of.
Yes. Do you talk about Middle Eastern women?
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.
How do you imagine she looks like. And they left the people.
Audience for like one minute and then I come up on stage.
So their eyes were even older women, you know, in Prague.
They're like they even asked me after that. Like where?
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.
So they laughed. They took my car. They I even gave them like a self-defence seminar after.
And there's like hundreds of people came to join.
So it's good to present a different kind of mindset off or like stereotype about women in the Middle East or even people.
There are people who are different. Not everybody does the same.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elimelech, the Oxford Middle East podcast.
Join us next week when we discuss the language used to talk about the Middle East and the problems related to the.
Elimelech is a student for the initiative of.
The opinions expressed in the podcast are not in any way represent the official opinions of the University of the Middle East.
It is it is, it is Lily.
Felix Walker, Michael Mama. Max Randall.