Women can sit as judges in Egypt’s administrative courts, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled yesterday.
The country’s top administrative court, the State Council (Maglis al-Dawla), originally voted by a huge margin against allowing women as judges, but, after women’s groups picketed, the council’s supervisory body overturned the decision. That ruling was backed by Egypt’s Constitutional Court, which declared that all citizens are equal.
Until 2007, there was but one woman judge in Egypt; currently women hold 42 of the 12,000 judicial seats in the country.
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