--- title: Egyptian Woman Who Had to Live as a Man to Work Honored for Motherhood description: Sisa Abu Daooh dressed as a man for 42 years canonical: https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-26T19:22:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:53.446Z og:title: Egyptian Woman Who Had to Live as a Man to Work Honored for Motherhood og:description: Sisa Abu Daooh dressed as a man for 42 years og:url: https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb343df62faa46078/698785862dce0107269de3b7/egyptian-best-mother.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Sisa Abu Daooh, a woman who passed for a man for decades while working as a shoeshine, in Luxor, Egypt, on March 25, 2015. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Egyptian Woman Who Had to Live as a Man to Work Honored for Motherhood twitter:description: Sisa Abu Daooh dressed as a man for 42 years twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb343df62faa46078/698785862dce0107269de3b7/egyptian-best-mother.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Egyptian Woman Who Lived as a Man to Find Work Honored with Motherhood Award  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Mar 26, 2015 7:22 PM UTC  Sisa Abu Daooh, a woman who passed for a man for decades while working as a shoeshine, in Luxor, Egypt, on March 25, 2015. Sisa Abu Daooh, a woman who passed for a man for decades while working as a shoeshine, in Luxor, Egypt, on March 25, 2015.Bryan Denton–The New York Times/Redux  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Mar 26, 2015 7:22 PM UTC An Egyptian woman who was forced to live as a man in order to support her daughter was recently [awarded](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/egyptian-woman-reveals-42-year-secret-of-survival-pretending-to-be-a-man.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&%5Fr=0) the country’s highest award for motherhood. Sisa Abu Daooh has been dressing as a man for 42 years in order to find work after her husband died. “I worked in Aswan wearing pants and a galabeya,” she told the New York [_Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/egyptian-woman-reveals-42-year-secret-of-survival-pretending-to-be-a-man.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&%5Fr=0)_. “_If I hadn’t, no one would have let me work.” Daooh was forced to dress as a man not as an expression of gender identity, but because otherwise she would have been unable to find work. In the early 1970s, when her husband’s death left Daooh and her daughter destitute, it was extremely difficult for women to find paid work. For seven years, she worked as a manual laborer making less than a dollar a day before finding less physically demanding work. She now works as a shoe-shiner. When Daooh’s husband died, it was almost unheard of for Egyptian women to work, but even today, very few Egyptian women participate in the labor force—only 26%, compared to 79% of men, according to the [World Economic Forum](http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/economies/#economy=EGY). If women and men participated equally, Egypt’s GDP would increase by 34%, according to an [analysis](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/report.pdf) conducted by the Clinton Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Between the lack of economic opportunity, the [prevalence](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/eng%5Ffgmc.pdf) of female genital mutilation, and the [near-universal ](http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/04/28/99-3-of-egyptian-women-experienced-sexual-harassment-report/)experience sexual harassment (over 99% of women say they’ve been harassed,) Thompson-Reuters voted Egypt the [worst place](http://www.trust.org/item/20131108170910-qacvu/?source=spotlight-writaw) in the Arab world to be a woman. \[h/t [_New York Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/middleeast/egyptian-woman-reveals-42-year-secret-of-survival-pretending-to-be-a-man.html)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/"},"headline":"Egyptian Woman Who Lived as a Man to Find Work Honored with Motherhood Award","datePublished":"2015-03-26T19:22:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:53.446Z","description":"Sisa Abu Daooh dressed as a man for 42 years","url":"https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/","keywords":["Living","Work","motherhood","Egypt"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb343df62faa46078/698785862dce0107269de3b7/egyptian-best-mother.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb343df62faa46078/698785862dce0107269de3b7/egyptian-best-mother.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Sisa Abu Daooh, a woman who passed for a man for decades while working as a shoeshine, in Luxor, Egypt, on March 25, 2015.","caption":"Sisa Abu Daooh, a woman who passed for a man for decades while working as a shoeshine, in Luxor, Egypt, on March 25, 2015.","creditText":"Bryan Denton–The New York Times/Redux","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3759819/egypt-sisa-abu-daooh/","name":"Egyptian Woman Who Lived as a Man to Find Work Honored with Motherhood Award"}}]}] ```