The Relationship between Women’s Employment and their Marriage Outcomes: Contributions to the Cost of Marriage and Marriage Timing in Egypt

The rising cost of marriage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has recently received a considerable amount of attention in both academic and policy circles. Much of this discussion has focused on the challenges young men in MENA face in accumulating sufficient funds to marry, whereas relatively little research has focused on women’s contributions to the costs of marriage and how these may affect their marriage outcomes. In order to address this gap, in this paper I use a rich dataset from Egypt to examine the relationship between women's participation in wage work prior to marriage and two key marriage outcomes: women's and their families' contributions to total marriage costs, and the timing of marriage. The results indicate that women’s employment prior to marriage is associated with the bride's side, and particularly the bride herself, contributing a greater percentage of the total COM without this contribution leading to any return in terms of speeding up the marriage process. The key question raised by this study is therefore whether contributing a greater percentage of the COM is seen to bring women other benefits in marriage, or whether working women are in fact disadvantaged on the marriage market.