Saturday June 16, 2018                       By: Women of Egypt Staff

In a historic victory for Egyptian women, 8 female minsters were appointed in the new government that was formed on Thursday June 14^th. The new Prime Minster, Mostafa Madbouly, appointed two more females to the cabinet, raising the overall number of the female ministers to 8, and a total representation of 25 percent of the cabinet.

The newly appointed ministers are Hala Zayed for the Ministry of Health and Yasmine Fouad for the Ministry of Environment.

1- Inas Abel Dayem: Minister of Culture

Dr. Inas Abdel Dayem was appointed Minster of Culture to become the first Egyptian woman to hold this post. She is the chair of the Cairo Opera and the president of the Arab Academy of Music. She graduated from the flute department of the Cairo Conservatory and continued her studies in France, where she obtained a PhD from the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.

She held the positions of director of the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in 2003 and the Dean of the Cairo Conservatory in 2004.

2- Yasmine Fouad: Minister of Environment 

Yasmine Found, 43, is the third female minister to serve as the Environment Minister after Laila Rashid Eskandar and Nadia Makram Ebeid. She is also the youngest minister in the new cabinet. Fouad is an assistant professor of economy and political science in Cairo University. She also worked 4 years as an assistant to the Minister of Environment for sustainable development and international relations.

Fouad has served as the acting director of the Center for Economic and Financial Research and Studies since 2014.

She represented Egypt in a number of international conferences and events related to the Green Climate Fund. In 2017, Egypt, under a committee she managed, was able to get a fund of $154 million to support Egypt’s environmental program for renewable energy.

Fouad had published several national and international papers in the fields of finance and economics, especially about the Egyptian stock market, micro-financing, financial supervision and direct foreign investment.

She was responsible for the Bank of Ideas at the Ministry of Environment, founded to develop the environmental work, work environment and relations within the ministry.

3- Nabila Makram:  Minister of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates’ Affairs.

Makram, 49, studied Political Science at Cairo University, graduating in 1991. The Minister joined the Diplomatic circuit and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993. She worked as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs in 1995. In 1997, she was the Third Secretary in the Egyptian Embassy in Brazil, and the Second Secretary in the Egyptian Council in Chicago in the United States in 2004.

She continued her diplomatic work as First Secretary at the Egyptian Embassy of Rome, Italy in 2007. She also represented Egypt as Vice-Consul at the Egyptian Council in Dubai in 2013.

4- Rania Al-Mashat:  Minster of Tourism

Rania Al-Mashat was the first Egyptian woman to hold this position. Prior to that, she worked as an advisor to the International Monetary Fund Chief Economist

AUC School of Business Alumna, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat ’95 has been appointed by the International Monetary Fund as advisor to the Chief Economist. One of her duties was the investigation of multilateral surveillance issues for emerging countries.

In her 11 years as the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), Al-Mashat developed a monetary policy strategy and coordinated between CBE and the international credit rating agencies.

She also witnessed and supported the Central Bank of Egypt as it managed to withstand the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the repercussions of the Egyptian revolutions in 2011 and 2013.

Al-Mashat is also known for her role in negotiations the financial and economic reform program, during which she represented the Central Bank in the parliament in 2011 and 2013. In light of her many remarkable achievements, Dr. Rania Al-Mashat was chosen as a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum in 2014.

She graduated from the AUC and received her Ph.D., Economics, University of Maryland at College Park, 2001.

5- Sahar Nasr : Minister of Investment and International Cooperation

Sahar Nasr, 53, was initially appointed to the Cabinet in 2015 as the Minister of International Cooperation. A year later, the ministry of investment and ministry of international cooperation were merged and Nasr was appointed as its minister. She was the second Egyptian woman to be appointed in the investment field.

Nasr has also worked with the World Bank for 17 years. She was regional lead economist in Finance and Private Sector Development Department.During her years with the World Bank, she worked in technical and managerial positions in financial sector reform, banking restructuring, access to finance, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), microfinance, private sector development, corporate governance, economic management, and gender.

Nasr obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the Cairo University, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, and worked as an associate professor of economics at the American University in Cairo, as well as other local and foreign universities.

Throughout her academic career, she published over 60 research papers, technical reports and books

6- Hala Helmy El Said: Minister of Planning

Prior to resuming the responsibilities of her office, Hala El Said, 61, was Dean of Faculty of Economics& Political Science Cairo University, Egypt.
Sh was also an assistant to Cairo University President for Research and External Relations and a member of the board of the Central Bank of Egypt. She served as an Advisor to the Governor of Central Bank of Egypt and Executive Director of the Egyptian Banking Institute. In addition to her membership in many research centers like the Center for Economic and Financial Research and Studies, and the Cairo Demographic Center, she is also a member of Economic committee of Academy of Scientific Research and Technology .

Dr. El Said holds a PhD in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science from the University of Cairo. She is also the daughter of Eng. Helmy El Said, Minister of Electricity and the High Dam in 1970.

7-  Ghada Wali: Minister of Social Affairs

An advocate for Arab Women’s Rights in the region, Wali has over 23 years of experience in integrated development management. She was a key member of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where she occupied the position of Assistant Resident Representative and headed up the poverty reduction & job creation portfolio starting in 2011.

Wali received her her BA from the College of Languages and Literature, Colorado State University, Colorado, USA, 1987 and her M.A. in Humanities, from Colorado State University, USA, 1990.

Wali was also a representative at the National Council for Women (NCW), an organisation advocating the rights of women in Egypt, which was founded by presidential decree in the year 2000.

8- Dr. Hala Zayed: Minister of Health

The newly appointed female minister Hala Zayed is the second female minister in the history of the Health Ministry since its establishment in 1937. The first was Maha El
-Rabat who held the position from 2013 until 2014.

Before her appointment in the cabinet, Zayed, 51, worked as the president of the 57357 Academy of Health Sciences, the chairwoman of the Supreme Committee for Combating Corruption at the Ministry of Health and an advisor to the minister of health and population.

She also held other positions like the Director General of the General Department of Hospitals in the Medical Therapy Sector of the Ministry, the Head of the Central Administration for Monitoring and Follow-up of the new health care system and the Head of the Department of Grants and Loans at the Ministry.

She has a PhD and Master’s in Business Administration from the Arab Academy of Science and Technology. She also obtained a diploma in Hospitals Administration from the AUC. She has a Master’s degree in Obstetrics and Gynecology. She received her medical degree MBBS from The University of Zagazig.

She worked as an Obstetrics and Gynecology specialist in several government and private hospitals from 1992 -2006

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