Cairo: The sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places of the Arab World has been driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes.
The harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, appears to be designed to drive women out of public spaces and seems to happen regardless of what they are wearing.
Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told The Associated Press that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighbourhood.
"He hissed at me and kept asking me if I wanted to go with him to a quieter area, and to give him my phone number," said Madbouli, a mother of two. "This is a national security issue. I am a mother, and I want to be reassured when my daughters go out on the streets."
Statistics on harassment in the region have until recently been nonexistent, but a series of studies presented at the conference hinted at the widespread nature of the problem.
As many as 90 per cent of Yemeni women say they have been harassed, while in Egypt, out of a sample of 1,000, 83 per cent reported being verbally or physically abused.
A study in Lebanon reported that more than 30 per cent of women said they had been harassed there.
"We are facing a phenomena that is limiting women's right to move ... and is threatening women's participation in all walks of life," said Nehad Abul Komsan, an Egyptian activist who organised the event with funding from the UN and the Swedish development agency.
First emerged
Open discussion of the harassment issue first emerged in Egypt three years ago, after blogs gave broad publicity to amateur videos showing men assaulting women in downtown Cairo during a major Muslim holiday.
The public outcry sparked an unprecedented public acknowledgment of the problem and drove the Egyptian government to consider two draft bills addressing sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment, including verbal and physical assault, has been specifically criminalised in only half a dozen Arab countries. Most of the 22 Arab states only outlaw overtly violent acts such as rape, according to a study by Abul Komsan.
Many believe men are threatened by an increasingly active female labour force, with conservatives laying the blame for harassment on women's dress and behaviour.
In Syria, men from traditional homes go shopping in the market place instead of female family members to spare them harassment, said Sherifa Zuhur, a Lebanese-American academic at the conference.
Abul Komsan described how one of the victims of harassment she interviewed told her she had taken on the full-face veil to stave off the hassle.
"She told me ‘I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone'," she said, quoting the woman. Some even said they were reconsidering going to work or school because of the constant harassment in the streets and on public transpiration.
But even in Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 per cent of women in a published study she conducted reported harassment, specifically pinching.
State of fear
"The religious leaders are always blaming the women, making them live in a constant state of fear because out there, someone is following them," she said.
If a harassment case is reported in Yemen, Basha added, traditional leaders interfere to cover it up, remove the evidence or terrorise the victim.
In Saudi Arabia, another country where women cover themselves completely and are nearly totally segregated from men in public life, women report harassment as well, according to Saudi activist Majid Al Eisa.
His organisation, the National Family Safety Programme, has been helping draft a law criminalising violence against women in the conservative kingdom, where flirting can often cross the line into outright assault.
Alarming
- 90%of Yemeni women say they have been harrased
- 30% in Lebanon say they had been harassed
- 83% in Egypt say they had been abused
Study: Lack of punishment encourages behaviour
Survey reveals that most participants associate this form of violence with a poor perception of women
Cairo More than two years ago, scores of girls, celebrating a major Muslim festival, were harassed en masse in central Cairo, an incident that alarmed the public and authorities alike in this conservative Muslim country.
Since then, authorities have been deploying more policemen in main squares and streets on major occasions to head off mass harassment. But the trend is growing, according to pro-women groups.
A recent survey showed that 83 per cent of Egyptian women are sexually harassed once or twice a day. "When asked why they harass women, men rarely cite revealing female clothes.
"Rather they are encouraged by the absence of deterrent punishment in the law," Nehad Abul Qumsan, whose non-governmental centre conducted the survey and organised a regional conference on harassment this week, said. The conference, which drew participation from 17 Arab countries, sought to push for drastic changes in Arab legislation to counter harassment of women.
Participants agreed that harassment is a form of violence against women in the Arab region, nurtured by the passive perception of them.
New forms
"Sexual harassment has taken new forms in view of advanced technology such as mobile phones and short messages, used by harassers in a way reflecting an inferior view of women," Furkhanda Hassan, the secretary-general of Egypt's governmental National Council for Women, said.
"Despite all this, there is no clear stipulation in the penal code criminalising these acts," she told the conference, which was organised by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights in collaboration with the UN Fund for Population.
Hassan urged the Arab government to revise laws to ensure that sexual harassment at workplaces was punishable too.
More than a year ago, a Cairo court sentenced a driver to three years in prison after molesting a girl on the street and jeopardising her life when she tried to take him to police.
He was convicted not on charges of harassment, but on attempted rape.
Experts believe that many Arab women, who are subjected to harassment, are unwilling to report them, because of fear of social disgrace. "Society often blames women for being harassed or even when raped," Hanan Fouad, an activist, said.
"The Arab societies need to change their view of women," she told Gulf News.
- Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent, Gulf News
