CAIRO — Secretary-General of the Wafd Party Hani Sarie El-Din announced April 16 that the party has prepared a list of cadres to take part in the upcoming local council elections scheduled for early 2019. He pointed out that the party was keen to give the bigger share of the list to women and the youth.

But finding strong and well-known female cadres in the Wafd Party is not an easy task. Women do not currently fill any positions within the Wafd Party. Five candidates competed March 30 for the leadership of the party. While these candidates represented many segments of society, none of them were women or Copts. Bahaa Abu Shoqa, the former secretary-general of the Wafd Party, won the elections.

Of note, the Wafd Party adopts an objective approach in its relations with the current regime. While its members of parliament supported Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in many decisions, many of its members refused the Maritime Demarcation Agreement signed between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which led Egypt to give up its sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia.

Yusri al-Azabawi, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor, “The party’s elections included many trends, ages, orientations and demographics. While the absence of women and Copts cannot be deemed as an indication of marginalization given that each party has its own age, political and demographic composition, the absence of women from a lot of Egyptian party leaderships remains a phenomenon that deserves to be explored.”