‘Are you a spinster?’: A poster campaign stirs controversy in Egypt

According to its organizers, the campaign aims to urge ‘spinster or unmarried women’ to share their stories of suffering with spinsterhood under the hashtag, “You are a Parable”.

In her phone call with “Aziza, Beauty Ambassador,” a show aired on the DMC channel, El-Keliny said on Saturday that the campaign does more harm than good for women.

She added, “Whoever created this is definitely not a professional for the poster campaign lacks of the clarity of the purpose and the positivity of the message. Such publicity at the expense of women is cheap.”She noted that she was taken aback once she saw the posters that are using such material that harms and degrade women, in 2017, the special Year of the Woman.

On the other hand, Ahmed Alimi, the campaign manager, said: “The main objective of the campaign is not to demean women but to support them in the context of community service. We are actually supporting women by dispelling common misperception and wrong notions, breaking social taboos and waging war on some traditionalist assumptions that tend to belittle women in Egyptian society.”

Alimi went on saying: “We have already removed all posters yesterday, which he described as promotional posters. In a few days, we will be sticking up other posters that would explain the aims of our ‘pro-women campaign’.

In 2016, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) issued an official report that the total number of women in Egypt is estimated at around 44 million, with a staggering 13 million women, in marriage age, who are still unmarried, according to official records.