Alaa Al-Aswany's The Yacoubian Building (2002) emerges as a multi-faceted exploration of precarious work conditions for women, weaving together intricate narratives that illuminate the diverse experiences of its vulnerable female characters. The novel provides an interesting lens through which to probe into the vulnerability and precarity of a wide array of female characters who navigate societal expectations and constraints, challenge traditional gender roles, and seek agency within them: from Buthayna's forced prostitution to Sulayman's wife's silent suffering to Zakiyya's defiance and pursuit of education. This paper examines these portrayals through adopting Judith Butler’s work on precarity and women working conditions which offers a powerful critique of the social and economic structures that disproportionately affect women, especially those marginalized by class like many of The Yacoubian Building’s female characters. Furthermore, a postfeminist perspective, revealing the complexities of gender dynamics and individual agency within a patriarchal cultural context, is used to explore the ways the female bodies are negotiated in relation to employment and to expose the patriarchal power structures that govern Egyptian society by critiquing these power imbalances and advocate for dismantling them. The paper contributes to the ongoing conversation about the interplay of gender, class, and economic vulnerability. It is important to note that The Yacoubian Building critiques the limitations imposed on women especially those involved in informal and low-wage sectors, who are trapped in precarious work, and the systematic exposure to economic insecurity, violence, and social exclusion. KEYWORDS The Yacoubian Building, precariousness of work condition, postfeminism, commodification of female bodies

Saud Alsanoussi’s novel The Bamboo Stalk provides a grim picture of transnational migrant women’s working conditions in the Middle East. Comparing it with the South Asian novel by Thritee Umrigar, The Space Between Us, shows how household workers are seduced by and impregnated by the “Masters,” of the household. As the half Fililino, half Arab young child Jose grows up, he learns how his mother was deceived into believing that there would be love and care for him, but there is only derision from his aristocratic Arab ancestors, just as there is derision in the South Indian novel. Thritee Umrigar’s novel shows how the Parsi family hold onto their Iranian roots and religious caste system in their practice of an ancient Iranian religion, while living in India. Both novels show the Middle Eastern sense of superiority which I call “exceptionalism.” This paper will rely on Judith Butler’s theories of Precarity and Barbara Ehrenrich and Arlie Russell Hochchild’s Global Woman.

Egyptian Women have been laboring in various capacities for a very long time. Mohamed Khan’s Factory Girl is a 2013 Egyptian movie about 21-year-old Hiyam, an impoverished worker in a Cairo textile factory. When Salah, the factory's new supervisor, becomes attracted to her and pregnancy comes into play, Hiyam gets into a severe struggle between giving up her job, which is her only source of income, and facing society with an illegitimate pregnancy. This paper deploys the movie to illustrate the double pressures on underprivileged working women in Egypt. I explore the enforced working conditions and ostracization that young women face from both the rigid traditions imposed by the micro and macro aggressions these women are subjugated to by a society that is blinded by stereotypes propagated by the exploitation of the female in capitalist enterprises. By analyzing "Factory Girl”, I provide a snapshot into an unknown work world rarely discussed in the Western academy. Various theoretical concepts, both Western and non-Western, are deployed in this paper to study how discrimination and oppression are positioned on Middle Eastern female laborers. I deploy a Marxist framework to explore gender harassment of poor women laborers.

Raja Alem’s the Dove’s Necklace (2014) raises awareness of empathy towards others, specifically working women. The aim of my paper is to explore the agony of lower-working-class women in this Saudi novel. The main objective is to examine the suffering of women in general and non-Saudi working-class women in particular in a society controlled by men as depicted in Alem’s novel. Of these women is Umm al-Sa’d, whose brothers have imprisoned her to deprive her of her inheritance, and when she has escaped, she has suffered from poverty until she starts buying and selling national stocks on the behalf of her neighbours. Another character is the female Sri Lankan servant who works as a slave, since she is not allowed to have an annual vacation to travel and see her family for ten years. She discovers that her husband has remarried and has had children on her earnings. Furthermore, the Turkish seamstress lives in the basement of a very poor building, where the sewage leak. To achieve my goal, I apply qualitative research relying on Judith Butler's concept of precarity (2004), which states that “certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (p. 26). This concept is used as a theoretical framework to give a broader understanding of how discrimination and oppression are deployed on Muslim women. The contribution of my paper focuses on how the society in the novel is depicted as being highly religious; however, it abuses and exploits not only foreign female labourers but also poor native women.