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Some women lost their control over their lands to their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers. In Intilaq, most of the women who had no control over their lands were married. Their husbands took complete control over the land and its direct benefits. I met five women out of fifteen whose husbands controlled their lands. Om Saydiya, for example, complained to me that her husband does not allow her to go to training sessions like some other GWLs.

Om Saydiya was married in her thirties. She met and married a graduate landholder in the Imam Malik village. She has two young daughters (between the ages of 8 and 12).

“She was a very successful entrepreneur,” Om Omar reported. Together with Om Omar, she used to buy peanut and other planting seeds and sell them to local farmers. “Since she got married,” says Om Omar, “her husband forbade her from interacting with the outside world. When her father was very sick, he did not allow her to go see him. Om Saydiya’s father died without seeing her. ” “Om Saydiya used to manage the land and foresees all its transactions, but since she got married, her husband took over all these tasks,” says Om Abdallah.

Remaining with the children back in town seems to limit women’s involvement on their lands. Many GWLs stayed back in town while their husbands farmed the land due to a lack of proper schooling. In Al Shohada village, Om Amr reported that she is not much involved in managing the land or controlling its benefits. “He [her husband] does everything. He decides on all aspects of the land. I only come here [to the desert] when it is harvesting season to help out. I stay in town with the girls who attend school, and my husband and son oversee the land,” Om Amr explained. “My life did not change because of the land. My freedom is still the same: it is confined to the house. Perhaps, if I had a job, then I would have been freer, but the land made no difference,” Om Amr continued.

Lack of family members and subsequent support in the New Lands seems to increase women’s obedience to their husbands and encourage them to leave land control aspects to the husbands. In Al Safa wal Warwa, Om Hasaballah emphasized that, “I leave everything related to controlling and managing the land to my husband. He sells the products of the land. He decides on what farming practices need to be done. I leave everything to him. I do that because I am here alone. If I became upset with my husband, there is nowhere to go in this desert. Also, if my children saw me dictating orders to my husband, they would tell other people, and this would look bad on me.” The case of Om Hasaballah also shows that the social taboos against a woman being ‘too strong’ over her husband also restrict women’s ability to take control over their lands.

In many cases, husbands’ or male relatives’ assistance in land applications mean that they have a stake in the land. Women landholders themselves and their male kin feel that male kin have a stake in the land whenever they help with the application to land processes. This was the case of Om Hasaballah but also the case of Om Omyan:

Om Omyan is a GWL who was sick since her childhood with a degenerative joint disease. She had a high school diploma in commerce. Om Omyan’s father helped her apply for land by completing extensive paperwork for her and accompanying her to

related interviews. Om Omyan got land. Her father had her sign a paper in which she declared that half the land she accessed was her father’s land. She then married a man who worked as a school inspector in the Old Lands. Her husband told Om Omyan that he did not want anything to do with the land, because he did not want to interfere between her and her father. Om Omyan’s father cultivated the land for years while she was away in town with her husband and family. Her brother also worked on the land and raised cattle and cultivated fruit trees without her benefitting from the land. Another case of a father’s attempt to take half the land of his daughter was made by the father of Om Abdallah, “Om Abdallah’s father at some point told her that he wanted half the land, but that did not happen,” explained Om Omar. Along the same lines, many male relatives felt unjustifiably entitled to women’s land. Local engineers and other GWLs

claimed that a brother in Intilaq resisted the marriage of his sister landholder in fear of losing his benefits from her land. “Every time I get her a suitor, her brother would convince her not to marry him. Now she is past due, but her brother is the reason. He wants her to stay

husbandless to benefit from her land alone,”explained a local Village Engineer.

In Sa’yda, similarly, staying back in towns also seemed to contribute to a lack of decision-making power for women with regards to their own lands. One Bedouin WL in the Samaha village, Om Mitwali, who was living away in Edfu was not involved in land

management aspects of her land. One of her sons was the person farming the land and benefitting from it, his wife reported, because he is the one who labours and pays for the expenses of the land. Another son who works in Saudi Arabia takes care of the WL mother. Om Mitwali begged me one day to convince her sons not to sell the land. Her son who lives in the Sa’yda and farms lost access to water because entrepreneurs, he reported, take all the water. “We had to sell all the cows. There was no more berseem. It dried out,” his wife

lamented. “Just recently, we dug a ditch in our backyard to install a fence. We found the water table not even half a meter below the soil surface. This place will drown sooner or later. My husband and his brother want to sell the land. We are leaving,” she told me. The sons decided to sell the land without consulting their mother who does not want to sell the land but feels powerless, as if the land is not even hers.

In addition to sons, in Sa’yda when WHHs are married, some lose control over their lands to their husbands, willingly or unwillingly. Om Mohamad, for example, was quite happy to stay off the land and in her house after marriage. It is considered an honour to be

confined to the household with the husband spoiling the wife by taking care of almost all aspects of the outside world, such as going to the market to get all the groceries himself. There is even a word for this, satitha, which essentially means cloistered. Such was the case of Om Mohamad. Although she wanted to sell her land, her husband refused to do so, many settlers reported.

Some women had more, but not complete, control over their lands. Some strategically chose not to have the final word on the management of their lands, as mentioned in the case of Om Hassaballah above and Om Fathi below:

Om Fathi has a high school diploma in agriculture. She feels much respected in the community. She speaks about how hard she worked in the early stages of settling in. The irrigation system provided by the GARPAR was based on portable rods and was laborious. The cold in the morning made irrigation using long, aluminum rods even more difficult. Om Fathi said that she often leaves the final word to her husband to make him more respectful and looking stronger in the community. Om Fathi emphasized that even if she knows she was right and her husband was wrong, she keeps quiet. Her view point of being right would show up with time, she emphasized. She does participate in decision-making related to the land. Especially since her husband is the local school principal and is absent from the house. She participates in all the labour aspects of her land. With the profits she got from the land, she bought another piece of land in her husband’s name because again she wants to be prouder of her husband and increase his status in the community.

From the profits of her land, another GWL woman in Intilaq, Om Azeez, bought two more pieces of land and a car all in the name of her husband for the same reason: to feel prouder of her husband. “If you do not write the property you buy in the name of your

husband, your husband would suffer. Look, for example, at Om Najib. She bought land in her own name. People speak about her as being selfish and belittling her husband. Her husband is ashamed of that. When you see him, he doesn’t feel comfortable,” explained Om Azeez.

Om Azeez has three boys and two girls. One boy is married with two young girls, and the two daughters are married as well. The other two boys are engaged to be married. All the boys live in the new lands. Her husband is an agricultural engineer at the local irrigation department. Her four sons work the land under her management. She is bright and has attended many farming training sessions on many topics. She knows how much fertilizer to apply and when and what kind of fertilizer works on which pest. When she goes back to town to see her married daughters and parents, her children are lost, she reported. One time, she had to leave to town for two months and her boys did not fertilize at the proper time: the flowering stage. The harvest that year was thin. Om Azeez is also the only female board member in the local agricultural

cooperative. She is well respected by engineers at the LAC and LDU and in the local community.

Many women in Sa’yda initially enjoyed full control over their lands when their children were young, and they had to farm their lands to avoid eviction. Although some were accompanied by their brothers or fathers, many came into the New Lands only with young sons and daughters. During these years, they developed farming skills that they transferred to their sons. Their sons kept taking advice from their mothers, and the mothers kept giving their advice. The women who had the most control over their lands were those who kept participating in all labour tasks on their lands and dealing with unrelated men even when their sons grew up. Women who participated in only women-related tasks, such as cleaning planting seeds, collecting fallen wheat or hibiscus seeds during harvesting, and cooking on the land during harvesting seasons, were less appreciated by their male sons and thus less able to control their lands. WLs who stopped going to the land due to age, disease, or who were forbidden by the sons who saw that their mother’s participation on the land is shameful, had a lesser degree of control over their lands. Om Badee’ told me how she is frustrated with her inability to plant onions, garlic, and herbs for home consumption.

Om Badee’ has four sons. Only three were involved in farming the land. When her sons were young, and her elder was employed with the government in Edfu, she had to cultivate the land to avoid eviction. She gained a lot of knowledge about farming through farming her land, interacting with other farmers, and involvement as a board member in the LAC, where she was exposed to farming practices. She cultivated hibiscus and bought a donkey cart with the profit of the hibiscus. When her sons grew up, she was prohibited from going to the land. One time her son Nazeer, who had no experience with farming and was known in his family to be stubborn, refused to fertilize the land upon her request. The result was that the hibiscus crop was very light, “as thin as paper,” she reported, due to lack of nourishment. She participated in decision-making on the land and her children benefit from her informed opinions. Both she and her children kept saying that “difference in opinion does not mean that people cannot still be cordial”. Often, her son Kareem brings her a crop sample from the field. From the size and weight she could tell, for example, whether the crop is ready for harvesting or whether the crop is growing well. She reported, however, that the final decision stays with her sons because they are the ones who farm the land. She rarely goes to the land, only for picnics, she said. Also, when there is not enough labour, she helps on the land. Few farmers knew that the land is hers. The driver and I went asking about her land in the fields with no success. It turned out that the land is locally known as belonging to her son Kareem.

Om Waleed, on the other hand, kept going to the land with her son on a daily basis to collect berseem, and she interacted with men on professional grounds, such as the

veterinarian and one of her business partners in cattle production. She controlled almost all aspects of her land, what to plant, when to harvest, which labourers to hire, and she reared a dozen goats, which fed on vegetation in the local village.

Om Waleed went everyday to the fields as a young girl with her father. She has three girls and two boys. Two of her girls are married, one in Cairo and another in town. Om Waleed has a grocery store in her house in town. One of her boys has a BA in social work but cannot find a job. He works on the land. Her younger son must serve in the army for another year. Her dora (wife of her husband) also received land as a WHH. She managed the land of her dora as well. “I manage the lands because I know best,” she told me when I asked her who manages the land. She rents out the land of her dora to an entrepreneur. “The land [of her dora] is not greening. The land is salty. I am thinking about returning the rent money to the man who rented the land. It is bad money if we keep it,” Om Waleed said. Her dora has one son and two daughters. The son also labours on Om Waleed’s land. Because the land could be taken away if there is not permanent residency on that land, Om Waleed and her dora switch back and forth staying in the New and Old Lands every six months.

In Sa’yda, many WHHs whose husbands were disabled faced land grabbing attempts by their husbands. These husbands felt that they had put labour into the land to reclaim it and green it and were thus entitled to own it as well. During my stay in Sa’yda, three cases of land grabbing by husbands were reported. One of these cases was that of Om Hadi.

Om Hadi’s husband asked her to sign over two acres of land for him. She refused because she worried that he would give her land to his children from a different wife. He hit her and took away the pump, which he claimed to have paid for. He warned Om Hadi that if she planted crops or she rented the land out, he was going to destroy the crop. In fear of his anger, the land was left fallow up until my second visit in January 2013.

In Sa’yda, due to WHHs’ poverty, and the nature of the soil profile that had limited drainage, many lands did not produce profitably after the usual three year period of

reclamation. Many sons pressured their mothers to sell the land after seeing that the land was not profitable and that their labour was going nowhere. Sons thought that land sales could be a way out of their poverty. Their mothers ended up selling the land due to pressure. Many WLs in Samaha reported that one son went as far as hitting his mother with a molokhiya dish demanding she sell her land. Many of these mothers, nonetheless, felt regret for selling their lands. One WL went as far as regaining her land a few months after selling it and paid the

person who bought it an extra 5,000 EL to give it back. Similarly, Om Majid, below, regretted selling her land:

Om Majid had two daughters and one son. She was a widow and in her fifties. She could not read or write. She was described by many WLs as the guardian of the ‘Widow Village’. Many women settlers described her as resourceful, strong, and brave. Om Majid was popular, as she was outgoing and sang in local weddings. “She would even yell at engineers and the Heads of the LDU. Engineers and heads are scared of her,” explained Om Hussien, a WL. Om Majid sold her land and house and left the settlement a couple of years ago. Nonetheless, she still visits ‘her land’, as she called it, and friends, who are women settlers. Many government workers at the LDU told me that her land was of poor quality. It was full of pebbles. She tried to change her land by speaking with the Head of the LDU at that time, but he could not find her an alternative piece of land. Her cousin and many WLs told me that she sold the land because her son wanted to marry, and he did not like farming. Om Majid, however, reported that she did not want to sell her land but felt that someone had used witchcraft to make her sell the land. During the month she sold the land, Om Majid reported, she had no control over her behavior. “I spent a month drinking, sleeping,