Many rural women, if you ask them about the problems of their participation, the first answer they will say without hesitation is the low standard of living, which may lead to increased school dropout and difficulty bearing the burden of education, which also leads to a high rate of illiteracy and increased reluctance to participate in public life or decision-making within their local communities. And how do they take a decision when they do not know what the decision is, what is the local popular council, and what is the participation. The problems of participation of women have their roots deep in the Egyptian society, and the causes are known and common in all rural societies, but differ in terms of their impact on one society from the other. In the class center in Helwan, we touched on this problem a lot, as most of the participants in the seminar expressed the importance of having educational literacy classes and then political literacy classes through civil society organizations and political parties that work efficiently and produce a tangible impact on women's literacy.
In this context, Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights held the fourth seminar with the project to empower women to rule in the Egyptian village “Wusoul”, which is implemented by the Foundation in cooperation with the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and seeks to enhance women's participation in local governance in the Egyptian village, through Building women's capacity to run in local elections, raising awareness of the importance of women's participation in local government mechanisms, and building effective community-based mechanisms in support of fair representation of women in elected local popular councils.
The fourth seminar was held on Monday, December 20, 2010 at the Al-Saff Youth Center headquarters, in coordination with the Yalla Nisharek Association for Community Development, with the participation of 56 women and girls from the villages of the Al-Saff Center.

The panel discussion revealed that the illiteracy rate in the classroom center is very high and the lack of awareness of participation and development. Most of the women there are below the poverty line and suffer from social marginalization and the unwillingness to participate and sit at home in order not to mix with men in any way, and that if women try to practice public work and find a job They must obtain a literacy certificate, and thus have to buy a literacy certificate, and this is easier than learning to read and write, so they do not care about learning, and from here the chances of eradicating their illiteracy decrease, and literacy classes are usually in some homes and not in a fixed place.
Most of the women expressed their fear of the phenomenon of children dropping out and their hatred of schools, which would become another obstacle to participation in the future.

The discussion session resulted in a number of recommendations, the most important of which was the allocation of more than one training course on an ongoing basis to women and youth on the importance of political participation, how to participate and the work of local popular councils, as well as courses for local members to respond to the problems of the local citizen, and to educate mothers about the importance of raising their children to participate in decision-making at the family level and participation. Political parties by exercising their right to elections, practicing charitable and civil work, and serving their local community as a step to participate, and they demanded to facilitate the extraction of election cards for them and correct the electoral tables because many of them did not find their names in the election lists, which made it impossible for some of them to vote in the last parliamentary elections.