Women Wear Many Hats, Says Dina Abdel Fattah

By: Mariam Rabah
@mariamrabah10

Dina Abdel Fattah, the Interim Chair of the Economics Department, is not going to sugarcoat how difficult it is to be a multi-tasking career woman, mom and academic leader.

“Whoever tells you that we can have a balance is lying; there is no balance. At different points, your priorities would have to change. For example, when my first daughter was born, I paused the Ph.D. for a year and my priority was mainly my daughter and my job as an adjunct faculty in AUC,” she said.

And when it comes to being a mother of two and a career woman in academia, these responsibilities tend to shift upward and downward on the list of daily priorities. Like a roller-coaster.

As an AUC alumna who graduated from the Economics department, Abdel Fattah received her Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in England.

Abdel Fattah’s passion for economics and teaching was formed during her high school years, at the International School of Choueifat in Cairo, when she discovered that the subject didn’t require memorization and was all about math, graphs and making sense of things.

“I was selected to provide tutorship in math and economics and I discovered that I do have the ability to explain information to people and organize their thoughts in a way that would make them absorb the information. So, in grade 11, I decided to go for economics, do a Master’s and a Ph.D., and go back to AUC as a professor,” Abdel Fattah told The Caravan.

She became advanced to the point that she was among the first students to enter AUC having declared economics at the gate.
A lecture in a development economics course during her Master’s was enough to attract her to the field, and her interests soon shifted to women and migrants in relation to the labor market.

“I am looking at the labor market from an inclusivity perspective; so, migrants are one sector, and the other one is women because each of them is a variable that is beyond what we say in theory, and there is a cultural aspect that is limiting their participation in the labor market,” Abdel Fattah told The Caravan.

“I got very interested in how labor market and development theories can actually explain a phenomenon like migration. I was very interested in the type of discussions that were always going on about whether we needed to stop migration. For someone with a passion for labor markets, it is very intriguing,” Abdel Fattah said.

She is now working on both women and migration equally in her research activities, whether research papers or consultancy with international organizations or government offices.

“The project I’m currently working on is an example of programs working on upskilling students. I’m working on exposing them in multiple different ways to career life, assessing their skills and matching them to the needed skills in the market,” she said.

As a high achiever since her high school days, Abdel Fattah has developed two life skills she shares with her students.

The first is to excel at time management, which she quickly admits is the easiest to advise but the most difficult to implement.

The second is to have a support system, particularly for young women to maintain in their lives to excel and be successful.

“You need to have this because life gives you different hats to wear, and your support system would allow you to wear the different hats comfortably knowing that your back is covered,” she stated.

“My number one support system is my husband; so the understanding and the support I’m getting is allowing me to go out into the world and do whatever I want and know that he’s always going to support me,” she told The Caravan.

Still, as a working woman and mother, Abdel Fattah, feels the pangs of guilt toward her daughters.

“I see that the guilt on my kid’s side is overwhelming that I need to pause and make sure I’m doing more activities with them or at least have a discussion with my husband that each one of us will be covering up for something so the kids wouldn’t feel that both of us are detached,” she said.

Having so many hats, however, also means learning to master how to interact with different people in different situations and depending on different contexts.

“For example, today, I had a meeting where I was putting on the department chair hat, another I was just a member of a task force, I was talking to a colleague where we were setting out something in the syllabus, so I’m completely a faculty member,” Abdel Fattah added.

“I [also] had to follow up on my kids putting on the mother hat, and I have people coming over for Iftar, so I have to put on the hat of the housewife.”

Abdel Fattah has achieved a lot in her career, and she has a lot to be proud of. However, without hesitation, the moment she chose to be most proud of herself was an intersection between her career and family life.

“The achievement I’m most proud of is finishing my Ph.D. while having my two girls with me; I had my first daughter when I was working on my Ph.D. I went to my thesis defense when I was pregnant with my second daughter, and I went to my graduation with both of them together. It was the moment when I felt that I really have achieved something,” Abdel Fattah says.

It’s easy to see why Abdel Fattah is a role model for her students.

“Whenever I think about my future or about my career, I always feel like I want to be something close to Dr. Dina. She’s a mother, a wife, the head of the department, a professor and a researcher. So, I find it very inspiring that throughout all balancing her life she still finds ways and time to support students,” said Dina Omar, the President of the Economics Association (ES) and Abdel Fattah’s former student.

“We’re lucky that we have her as the head of the department. She actually wants to push the association with us forward, helping us revive it. She always pursued the projects that we asked her if she could look into, she was always supportive,” Omar added.