Egyptian women speak out against sexual harassment

Cairo: She was leaving the bus when the driver touched her in a way a stranger shouldn't.

"I screamed at him, 'You're an animal!'" said Shaimaa Abdul Rahman Aref, a 28-year-old graduate business student.

"I felt as if he was striking at my pride. I wish he had beaten me instead. It would have been much less humiliating, especially as I was veiled and not wearing anything that would arouse a man."

Aref took down the bus number and went to the police. But she found herself confronting a patriarchal society in which authorities are often indifferent to crimes against women and many families pressure their daughters and sisters to forgo justice rather than invite scandal.

Landmark case

She said several police officers ridiculed her and that her parents scolded her for breaching the line between humility and honour. "They always put the blame on the girl," she said.

Women such as Aref are beginning to challenge their abusers and force their nation to be more vigilant against sexual harassment.

In a landmark case in October, a man was sentenced to three years of hard labour for reaching out his truck window and groping Noha Rushdi Saleh, a documentary filmmaker.

On one day last month, police arrested more than 300 teenagers on suspicion of harassing and flirting with women across Cairo; more than 50 youths were arrested in a sweep in the capital this month.

A recent study by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights found that 83 per cent of Egyptian women and 98 per cent of foreign women in this country dependent on Western tourists experience public sexual harassment, including explicit comments, groping, men exposing themselves and assault.

Nearly 97 per cent of Egyptian women and 87 per cent of foreigners do not alert police.

But human rights activists believe that the extensive news coverage of Saleh's case may help.

"Two weeks after (Saleh's) verdict was handed down, four complaints were filed," said Nihad Abouel Qomsan, head of the women's rights centre.

"In the past, we used to have no complaints over the course of a full year."

Changing times

Decades ago, public sexual harassment was less prevalent.

It was considered not only an affront to a woman, but to her neighbourhood. Offenders caught in the act were often beaten by bystanders; some had their heads shaved by police as a mark of shame.

But that tightknit era has largely disappeared in a capital with poverty in the alleys and a police force regarded by many Egyptians as more concerned with protecting President Hosni Mubarak's regime than with guarding citizens.

Mistrust of the government and a sense of powerlessness at home has caused widespread disenchantment, especially for a generation of young men who are looking to lash out.

"It's the result of slums, poverty, unemployment, a permissive media and a state that has lost all its credibility," said Judge Ahmad Mekki, vice- president of Egypt's highest appeals court.

"Sexual harassment can be seen as an act of rebellion against society. The state is corrupt. The family is corrupt. We Egyptians have lost our identity. We don't know where we are heading, and this is affecting our value systems."

The rise in sexual harassment comes as Egypt has grown more pious.

In the 1970s and '80s, miniskirts and revealing blouses were common in Cairo, but those styles began vanishing in the 1990s, when Islam took deeper hold and hijabs and modesty became the fashion.

Egyptian women navigate an atmosphere mixed with sexual repression and religious devotion, where holy sayings such as "Inshallah" (God willing) drift alongside suggestive taunts and leering eyes.

Saleh refused to accept such treatment after her assailant groped her in June. The driver tried to escape, but Saleh jumped on the truck. She later took legal action.

But others still feel insecure. "I feel that anyone can harass me at any point. They turned us into paranoid beings. Girls have lost all sense of safety and security," Aref said.