Open assault on dignity ( Egypt )

Weekend Review ^ | May 21, 2010 | Raghda El Halawany

[george76]

Women suffer harassment by men on Cairo's streets while the authorities and society choose to look the other way.

Sexual harassment is becoming an everyday battle for women. I have to face this increasing problem every time I leave for my downtown work," said 34-year-old Mona Hassan, part of Egypt's large working middle-class. Like most Egyptian women, Mona is used to being harassed and grabbed by men in the crowded streets of Cairo.

For women in Egypt, sexual harassment is an annoying but all too common part of life. In 2008, the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) released shocking statistics that stated that 83 per cent of Egyptian women and 98 per cent of foreign women in Egypt reported exposure to sexual harassment.

Out of 1,010 Egyptian women surveyed by the Cairo-based NGO, nearly half reported being subjected to harassment on a daily basis, ranging from lewd comments to molestation. Sixty-two per cent of Egyptian men admitted to harassing women.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

London, Paris, Rome, Cadiz, Monte Carlo, Athens no different.
New York City — different!

[FourPeas]

It’s the culture of Islam. Peace has nothing to do with it.

[gibsosa]

Backward, hypocritical animals.. and that’s putting it mildly.

[redheadtoo]

It’s common, on crowded Tokyo subways, for men to use the crammed trains as cover to feel up a woman. When I was there we were told that the way to handle the situation was to turn and start screaming at the man. It didn’t matter if we used English, everyone on the train would know what happened. The groper would be shamed and lose face in front of his fellow riders.

I was never touched but two of my friends were. They were very different people. One was loud and brassy, the other very quiet and shy. But both of them acted like deer in the headlights, silently suffering through their incidents.