A romantic perspective on Siwan culture sets the oasis in folktales, with its women donning traditional, vividly colored garb in the fashion of the Berbers of the Saharan plains in Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. Much has changed. Whereas Siwan women characteristically adorned their necks, heads, and limbs with heavy silver jewelry and braided their hair in elaborate styles, today only the older, married oasis women wear traditional dress: the troket (black embroidered veil, sold everywhere and worn on special occasions), the tarfudit (blue veil always worn outside the home), and the agbir (loose dress, often bright yellow or red, worn every day and for festivities). Unmarried Siwan girls now wear Egyptian fashions. About 90% of the heavy silver jewelry has been sold to tourists and replaced by gold Egyptian jewelry, and hair styles are only a simplified version of the dozens of intricate braids women used to sport.

Assessing women’s role in modern Siwan society is more complex than it appears. While visitors are tempted to assume that Siwan customs isolate, exclude, and repress women, an investigation behind the scenes suggests otherwise. Contrary to hearsay, women do leave their homes-to visit friends and relatives, to attend funerals, birth ceremonies, and feasts, and to join other women in craft-making. Siwan women’s efforts are in fact responsible for the booming cottage craft industry, a fact not often realized by most tourists. In practice this means that women are the producers of the family income; children and men are generally responsible for selling the handiwork. Siwan girls were traditionally married by the age of 14, but in the last few decades that age has risen to 16, closer to the national average. Girls also have more say regarding whom they will wed.