The status of Egyptian women physicists

Abstract

We present a survey of gender distribution in Egyptian governmental universities for undergraduate, master's and PhD students, along with a survey of physics staff members. The distribution of the enrolled students of various faculties in Ain Shams University for the academic year 2015-2016 show that we are still facing a gender bias regarding what we denote as "more feminine fields of study." However, gender balance is found for BSc, MSc and PhD physics students at Ain Shams, Sohag, Alexandria, and Kafr El Sheikh universities. Academic staff positions over 3 years at Ain Shams University show a gender imbalance at the level of full professor. Women hold only 15% of full professor positions, while they account for 42% of associate professors, 39% of lecturers, 52% of assistant lecturers, and 49% of teaching assistants. Although the percentage of female physicists continues to increase at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as in the early stages of academic careers, the gender imbalance at the full professor level is striking. This result, which is also observed at other universities, such as Alexandria, Sohag, and Kafr El Sheikh, is discussed.