[/caption]Trying to find a woman in Egypt who has not been sexually harassed is like attempting to track down a British person who has never heard of The Beatles.
A spurious comparison, perhaps, but an instructive one. The two are equally difficult – the only difference is the gravity of the first task.
Whether it the daily nuisance of unwanted heckling from a group of young men, or an outright assault or sexual attack, most woman in Egypt have their own tale to tell.
Sherine Thabet is one of them. Last year the 21-year-old had her nose broken on the Cairo metro by a man who had entered the carriage reserved for women. “I was asking him to go to the mixed carriage and he punched me,” said Sherine, an English Literature student.
A much-citied NGO report from 2008 revealed that 83 per cent of Egyptian women and 98 per cent of foreign females had experience some form of harassment in Egypt at one time or another.
And contrary to popular belief, women dressed in headscarves or veils were often just as likely to experience the problem as those who did not cover their hair.
Last week the issue was brought into sharp relief again when a female demonstration against sexual harassment in Tahrir Square itself came under attack from a gang of men.
Some activists accused the former regime of instigating the assault to foment unrest – a claim which is not universally accepted by protesters – but whatever the truth, it again focussed attention on one of Egypt’s ugliest problems.
Like every social ill, the causes are difficult to pinpoint. But visitors to Syria, Jordan or other parts of the Middle East will tell you that there is nothing like the level of hostility to women in these countries that there is in Egypt.
Engy Ghozlan, co-founder of a website which aims to track incidents of abuse in Egypt, noted that pre-pubescent youths were often responsible for hounding women, suggesting that it is not simply an issue of sexual frustration.
“I would not blame it on any one thing,” she said. “It’s a societal issue that you cannot dilute down to a single point.
“You can blame the economy. You can blame education. You can blame religious fanatics.
“To me the problem is less sexual and more about power structures and power dynamics.”
Numerous women are trying to fight back. Sherine Thabet is launching an awareness campaign using street video broadcasts to educate Egyptians. Another woman, Nadia Adel Hakeem, told Egypt Unwrapped that she had started criminal proceedings against the Cairo metro for allowing men to ride in the women’s carriage.
But given how endemic the problem of sexual harassment has become, they have a mountain to climb.
