EGYPT: Cheap Bread Frees Women to Work

• by Cam McGrath (cairo)
• Tuesday, December 22, 2009
• Inter Press Service

'It's busy like this all day,' he says, estimating that 20,000 loaves pass through the window bars on an average day.

Bread is an essential part of the Egyptian diet and served with nearly every meal. Access to cheap, ready-baked bread has helped liberate Egyptian women from the kitchen, allowing them to enter the workforce or spend more time with their children.

'It would be difficult to find work if I had to spend all morning baking bread,' says 51-year-old Magda El-Sayed, a widow with two children living at home. 'It's much easier to buy it on my way home from work… and it's the only food that is still affordable these days.'

Traditionally, Egyptians baked bread in their own home. The women of the household would mix flour, water, yeast and salt, then leave the dough to rise. Fist-sized balls of dough were flattened out and left in the sun for an hour, then baked in an oven for 20 minutes.

The bread was made in large quantities and what wasn't eaten fresh was consumed the following day.

'This is the way my great grandmother made bread, and it' still done like this in the villages, but not in Cairo,' says sociologist Madiha El-Safty. 'Very few houses in the city have those special ovens for baking bread.'

Consumption habits have changed since the 1950s due to the proliferation of bakeries, continued subsidisation, and the practicalities of modern living. Urbanised Egyptian families no longer bake bread at home. Instead, they buy it from bakeries and street vendors, sacrificing a degree of quality for convenience and cost savings.

For the 40 percent of Egyptians who live below the 2 dollars per day poverty line, the decision to buy their daily bread is largely an economic one, says El-Safty. 'Because of subsidies, it costs much more for a woman to bake bread at home than to buy it.'

Subsidies on basic food items including bread were introduced in the late-1940s. Late president Anwar Al-Sadat attempted to phase them out in 1977, but quickly rescinded the order after rioting that left at least 70 dead. Successive governments have avoided confrontation, leaving bread subsidies in place at a cost of 2.5 billion dollars a year, more than the country's annual spending on health and education.

Over 50 million Egyptians, or two-thirds of the population, eat subsidised 'baladi' bread. The small round flatbread is sold at state-monitored bakeries and distributors for five piastres (less than a U.S. penny) a loaf, its price unchanged in decades. Better quality baladi bread is available at 10 piastres a loaf, while the same bread made using unsubsidised flour is available at market prices five times the cost. Poor families often buy a mix of qualities as their budget permits.

'When you have a family and eat bread with every meal the cost difference adds up,' says Amani Sarwat, a sales clerk with three children. 'All prices are going up so the more cheap bread I can get the better.'

Sarwat is one of over 5.5 million women in the Egyptian workforce. Purchasing bread from bakeries frees up her time in the kitchen, allowing her to keep a part-time job and still have time for the family.

'I need the time [saved by not baking bread] to look after my children,' she says. 'Besides, where would I make it?' She points out that her flat in Cairo's Imbaba district is too small for a bread oven and the roof is cluttered with television antennas and satellite dishes.

Egyptians have traded their ovens for bakery bread, but it is an arrangement that only saves time and money provided the queues remain short. Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, with shipments of seven million tonnes a year. Periodic wheat shortages and endemic corruption can result in lengthy bread lines, such as those seen in early 2008 when world grain prices skyrocketed.

'Sometimes I arrived at 5 am and there was already a queue' El-Sayed recalls. 'I would wait for hours just to buy 10 or 20 small loaves, because that's all the bakery would sell us. I had to return every morning. Sometimes the bakery said it had run out of flour, which we all knew was a lie. They are thieves. They sold the subsidised flour on the black market for huge profits.'

Bread lines are shorter now, confined mostly to mornings, says Sarwat. It takes her about 10 minutes to walk to the nearest bakery and buy bread. Her husband, a factory worker, often pitches in by picking up bread on his way home from work.

'Some days he buys it, some days I do,' she says. 'Many parents send their children to buy bread if they don't have school. It's not just housewives there.'

Egypt boasts over 80 varieties of bread. In the countryside, where the pace of life is more relaxed, it is still possible to find families who prepare these breads at home the traditional way.

'It’s the tastiest bread in the world,' Sarwat says, reminiscing about the fluffy sun-baked 'shamsi' bread that her family in southern Egypt bakes. 'But for this you need lots of time.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service