Violence against women in Egypt, particularly in public spaces, is no longer as shocking as it once was, after reaching its peak with the killing of Naira Ashraf in front of her university in Mansoura, in broad daylight.

Noura, just nineteen years old and a student at the Faculty of Physical Therapy in the Faqous district of Sharqia governorate, is the latest case. According to official statements, Noura was assaulted and beaten in a public place by her relatives over inheritance-related disputes. Security authorities later announced the arrest of four of her relatives on charges of assaulting her and her maternal uncle.

The attack on Noura reveals a deeper reality: inheritance disputes, the denial of women’s inheritance in Egypt, and the violence directed at women to force them to relinquish their rights or deprive them of them entirely. Just days earlier, a young man kidnapped his sister, tied her up, and filmed her in what were described as “indecent” situations to coerce her into giving up her inheritance. This crime is not an exception. Similar crimes against women are repeatedly documented and often escalate to murder.

Social norms prevent many women in Egypt, especially in Upper Egypt and the Nile Delta, from claiming their inheritance or resorting to the courts. This is rooted in a widespread belief that “courts take forever,” a reference to the prolonged litigation process in such cases, in addition to social stigma, as women who seek legal action are blamed for “exposing the family’s private affairs.” This is compounded by the prevalence of customary councils in villages and Upper Egypt, which settle disputes according to the whims of those who run them rather than in accordance with the law.

These incidents occur despite the issuance of the amended Inheritance Law, which criminalizes the denial of inheritance. The law was issued by presidential decree under No. 219 of 2017, amending certain provisions of Law No. 77 of 1943 on inheritance. The amendment added a new article to Chapter Nine on “Penalties,” Article 49, which states: “Without prejudice to any harsher penalty stipulated in another law, anyone who deliberately refrains from handing over to any heir their lawful share of the inheritance, whether by consent or by a final judicial ruling, shall be punished by imprisonment for a period of not less than six months and a fine of not less than twenty thousand pounds and not exceeding one hundred thousand pounds, or by one of these two penalties. The same penalty shall apply to anyone who withholds a document proving an heir’s entitlement, or refrains from handing over such a document upon request by any of the lawful heirs.”

Rania Rashwan, one of the women who suffered from the denial of her mother’s inheritance and, consequently, her own, recounts her story to Daraj. She says the story began with her grandmother’s marriage to her grandfather and the birth of her mother, “Gamila.” The grandmother came from a wealthy family and had children from a previous marriage. According to Rania, the grandfather exploited his wife, seized her property, and built an economic empire that included agricultural land, real estate, and factories.

The grandfather died first, and the sons did not issue a legal inheritance declaration. Instead, they verbally agreed that the son would cultivate his share of the agricultural land and give part of the proceeds to his sister, because “girls do not inherit agricultural land.” But Rania says her maternal uncle took over his sister’s share and gave her only scraps.

Rania’s mother refused to pursue legal action to claim her rights to the land, justifying her decision by her desire to raise her eight children and avoid lengthy disputes. When Rania’s grandmother later died, her mother tried to claim her share of her own mother’s inheritance, only to discover that her uncles had forced their mother to sign documents relinquishing her inheritance rights. As a result, the mother received nothing.

Rania went to obtain a family registry document and was shocked to discover that her mother’s birth certificate had been falsified. She says she then understood the real reason her mother had avoided going to court: the falsification of birth records. Her grandmother, who had married at the age of nine, had been “aged up” so that her marriage certificate listed her as fourteen.

Rania and her siblings endured harsh financial conditions, despite the fact that their share of the inheritance is estimated at millions and could have secured them a far better life. Rania’s story is a condensed example of the complexities surrounding the denial of women’s inheritance in rural areas: from denying daughters agricultural land, to the failure to issue inheritance declarations, the absence of officially registered documents for properties and land, and ultimately the reluctance to pursue legal channels due to financial costs, lengthy litigation, or the desire to avoid family conflict.

Ownership Is for Men Only

Women in Egypt face widespread obstruction when it comes to the denial of inheritance or the withholding of documents that prove their entitlement. A field study titled “Women’s Inheritance Between Sharia and Practice,” conducted in a village near Benha, shows that inheritance is often seized through evasive methods such as sham sales, excluding women from estate inventories, or substituting inheritance with a cash sum known as radwa, that is, giving a woman part of her share in cash to appease her and push her to relinquish her right to agricultural land or real estate.

The percentage of women’s ownership of agricultural land in Egypt reflects this reality, as it does not exceed 5 percent.

Feminist initiatives have documented testimonies from girls and women who were denied their inheritance for recurring reasons such as: “women don’t inherit,” “so the house doesn’t leave the family,” or “it’s enough for women to take the land’s yield every year.”

Aya Mounir, founder of the Super Woman initiative, tells Daraj that through joint campaigns with other feminist initiatives, she has documented numerous cases in which women were deprived of agricultural land and real estate in exchange for radwa, so that assets would not leave the family. These cases are concentrated mainly in Upper Egypt.

Mounir adds that some women resort to the courts to claim their inheritance, but this path is financially and socially costly. The girl who “complains about her family” is blamed for “dragging them into court.” She argues that there is a need for legislation that takes into account the context in which women are wronged, and the pressures that push them to accept bargaining or forced relinquishment of their rights.

The War on Social Customs

In the village where I was born and raised, I clearly remember Friday sermons devoted to women’s veiling, clothing, and behavior—what should and should not be done. I also remember Sheikh Al-Shaarawi’s sermons about the wisdom behind a man inheriting twice the share of a woman. But I do not recall a single sermon about the ruling on “consuming women’s inheritance,” which is widespread in my village, as in many Delta villages, where the idea of the “family house” prevails. This house is difficult to divide and usually ends up as the property of the family’s men and their male descendants.

While some religious figures see a solution to these disputes in fathers transferring their wealth to their daughters during their lifetime, to spare them conflicts after death, others oppose this idea because it deprives paternal uncles of inheritance, thereby putting the principle of ta‘seeb (agnatic succession) into question. This principle, which grants paternal uncles a share alongside daughters, is in fact challenged by some sheikhs and religious scholars, who argue that there is no explicit Qur’anic text supporting it and that it represents a narrow reading of scripture, especially given the disputes it causes, disputes that often end with women relinquishing or bargaining away their inheritance.

From a human rights perspective, denying women their inheritance cannot be treated merely as a religious or customary issue, but rather as a form of gender-based discrimination, prohibited under international human rights standards to which Egypt is committed. The Egyptian Constitution explicitly enshrines the principle of equality between men and women and prohibits discrimination on any grounds, while affirming the state’s obligation to protect women from all forms of violence.

At the international level, Egypt is a party to key conventions that oblige it to take effective measures to ensure equality in the enjoyment of economic and social rights, including the right to property and inheritance, and freedom from coercion or violence. Yet reality reveals a clear gap between legal texts and practice. In practice, the denial of women’s inheritance is left to the power of custom and family pressure, without effective protection mechanisms to guarantee women’s access to justice. This situation is further aggravated by the absence of enforcement policies that take into account the coercive context in which many women are forced to relinquish their rights, turning inheritance from a legal right into a tool of social and economic control used to reproduce discrimination and dependency.

The denial of women’s inheritance and the prevention of their access to rights in agricultural land or real estate is one of the main drivers of the feminization of poverty, that is, higher poverty rates among women compared to men. As a result, women remain dependent, without ownership, without control over family decisions, economically unindependent, and more vulnerable to violence and more likely to tolerate it, in the absence of alternatives, especially within a harsh and frightening economic reality.