Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Ramadan 8, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Algerian woman restaurateur makes living in a man’s world

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Haggling with the fishermen in the seaside village of Bouharoun for the produce she serves in her restaurant, Algerian Karima Daikhi is a woman determined to make her way in a man’s world.


When her husband was killed by extremists in 1995, Daikhi had no choice but to enter the growing pool of female wage-earners in a country where, outside the largest cities, women were once expected to stay at home.


“I had to struggle and impose myself. I had no choice. Six children to feed, educate, and take care of,” Karima Daikhi told Reuters as she sold fish soup and “bourek”, a local speciality of fish wrapped in crispy pastry, at her stall on the quayside.


Daikhi is not alone, in a country where 200,000 people were killed in a civil war in the 1990s, leaving countless war widows.


The proportion of women in work was 13.6 percent in 2015, up from 10.2 percent a decade earlier, with around 2 million in work compared with 9 million men.


“The men here are also my suppliers, so you definitely must be present in the harbour, where there are no women,” the 52-year old said.


Daikhi closes her restaurant during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and sells her wares from the stall she started with in Bouharoun, a village 50 km (30 miles) west of the capital Algiers that is a tourist spot in summer, with small restaurants selling grilled sardines, squid, shrimps and bourek.


She makes a living, even if tourism remains underdeveloped in a country still reliant on oil and gas for more than 95 percent of its foreign earnings. — Reuters


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