Egypt president Sisi blames TV dramas for high divorce rates

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has blamed 'luxurious and exaggerated' lifestyles shown in television dramas for the country's high divorce rates.

The president was speaking to new recruits at the Egyptian Police Academy on Monday when he made the comments. He said the country's TV dramas "don’t show women struggling alongside their husbands."

"They show people living in villas and extremely pricey apartments, places maybe thirty per cent of Egyptians can afford," he continued. "You watch television, and when you look at your own life, you want your home to look like theirs, but your home isn’t like theirs, so you’re not satisfied, not with your father, and not with your husband."

El-Sisi went on to encourage TV dramas to present a more realistic picture of Egyptian life, highlighting resilience and hard work.

As of 2022, roughly one in four Egyptian marriages end in divorce, according to Minister of Social Solidarity Nevine El-Qabbaj. That represents an 83 per cent increase since 1996. However, Justice Minister Amr Marwan disputed these statistics, claiming the divorce rate is just 3 per cent.

Aside from women's changing expectations for marriage, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies cite reduced stigma around divorce and increased financial stability for women as reasons for Egypt's high divorce rates.

The government have long hoped to reduce Egypt's divorce rates. In 2019, they launched a campaign to prepare young people for marriage before tying the knot. The programme saw professors and religious leaders teach conflict resolution and communication skills to university students. The government also established over 200 “marriage dispute settlement offices” across the country.

In 2018, the government also approved flibanserin, a drug dubbed 'female viagra'. This came after a study found that the "breakdown of intimate relations" is one of the leading causes of divorce. 

The measures may be working, as Egypt's divorce rate fell slightly between 2022 and 2023, from 269,834 to 265,606, according to statistics from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.