nly about 9 percent. Studies that specifically track youth unemployment, however—in a nation where the median age is twenty—estimate that 25 percent of men and 59 percent of women are without work. As in the U.S., these studies include only people who are actively seeking a job, and part-time workers are considered employed.
Unemployment, though, is only one way to understand the plight of the young people in this large Arab country. Another set of critical issues is the distribution of power—which in Egypt largely coincides with the distribution of wealth—and the perception that the distribution is unjust. The class difference is rarely discussed as such, but it is certainly noticed, and it plays a major role in gaining access to such basic social services as technical training. Social gaps everywhere—between rich and poor, young and old, educated and illiterate, urbanite and farmer—reinforce the corrosive perception that the society does not reward its citizens on merit alone. The resounding cries by youth of “it’s unfair” often turn on income disparity.
Among those whose voices are raised are the Islamic militants, many of whom are men from relatively privileged backgrounds, familiar with Western ways. What often incites their anger is seeing their parents operate on principles other than those of idealistic fairness. And when these young men meet other, less privileged people who have substantial talents and abilities that are passed over by the likes of their parents, their outrage may grow to conspiratorial proportions.
Last fall I traveled to Cairo, a city where I’ve lived and worked on and off since 1994. Because I have many friends and contacts there and am reasonably fluent in the language, I was in a good position to take the pulse of the so-called Arab street. My aim was to sketch how ordinary lives are lived in a culture that Americans have largely ignored—ignored, that is, until they "learned" recently to regard virtually all Arab culture with fear and suspicion. The immediate questions that dog my fellow Americans—Why do they hate us? What do they think of our policies?—were not my first priority, though. My focus was to understand Egyptian concerns; to learn how Egyptians were facing up to universal questions about access to high-quality education, women’s evolving social roles, and career development; and to find out how their deeply held religious beliefs affect their interaction with the world at large.
At the root of Egypt’s dismal unemployment statistics are the nation’s weakness in the production and dissemination of knowledge and the government’s inadequate commitment to science and technology. Yet there is tremendous energy and enthusiasm for learning among Egyptian students. Every young person I spoke with acknowledged the need for job-related computer skills and for better access to information in a country where libraries are only now becoming more widely accessible.
The Ministry of Education likewise recognizes the need for computer skills, and so it has provided every public school in Egypt with at least one computer, and occasionally more than one. But school enrollments usually number in the hundreds, and the presence of one or two computers normally restricts usage to demonstrations by teachers at the front of the class.