“Moreover, for women in Egypt and its Arab neighbors, having a husband is key: a woman’s social value is still tied to her status as a wife and mother, no matter how accomplished or professionally successful she might be. In recent years, the phenomenon of ‘unusa – spinsterhood – has become the stuff of Facebook groups, blogs, best-selling books, and TV series. As they say in Egypt, “The shade of a man is better than the shade of a wall.”
