On Tuesday, Egypt and the United States signed a trade agreement to establish the creation of Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs) within Egypt.  These zones will allow for Egyptian factories within the QIZs to export their products to the United States, duty-free. The agreement is seen as a reward for Egypt’s recent attempts to reestablish a positive relationship with Israel, and possibly shift the tide of anti-Israel popular opinion in Egypt — but as Orly Halpern reports in The Christian Science Monitor, a similar agreement in Jordan is having unexpected results.

Jordan’s QIZs increased their exports to the United States from two million dollars in 1994, to one billion dollars in 2004; the materials used in the QIZ factories come in part from Israel.  There isn’t any evidence that Jordanians have changed their feelings about their neighboring country, but the factories have functioned as a catalyst for increasing female independence. Jordan’s QIZ employs tens of thousands of workers, who are predominantly female. The jobs provide newfound economic independence for Jordanian women, who were previously solely dependent on males for sustenance, and removes them from the seclusion of their homes by providing dormitory housing for workers.

United States’ support of the Egyptian economy is nothing new, but in a country where school children understand the Holocaust as a positive historical event and draw swatstikas on their notebooks, it will take more than linking economic aid to support of Israel to alter popular opinion. However, by providing economic empowerment to Egyptian women, the trade agreement may have even more insidious results — women with economic power.

llouison