This post was written by guest contributor Yasmeen Nizamy. “Sexual harassment is a crime that’s inexcusable!” This is the title of the campaign that HarassMap started recently, coinciding with the launch of their annual report on the latest statistics and analyses on sexual harassment in Egypt (the report is not yet available online, but I […]

It is no secret that sexual harassment is a very dangerous phenomenon in Egypt streets. What is striking is that it is getting worse, not better. I have been suffering from street sexual harassment for years, and wrote 2 years ago that I no longer had any tolerance for it. I described how I would […]

As right-wing pundits are gaining momentum in North America, minority groups are unsurprisingly being targeted.  Among the questions being raised is: when does “national security” trump the need to address an instance of sexual assault against women? Muslim women, especially those who wear the hijab or niqab, experience a unique sense of vulnerability in the […]

Egypt, like the rest of the Middle East, has been suffering for a long time from street harassment. Naturally, different Egyptian intellects have been trying to emphasize the problem and highlight what can be the start of solving it. Mohamed Diab, a young Egyptian writer, wrote and directed the movie “678,” which focuses on this […]

When Doha had to jump out of her cab three times after being assaulted by the drivers in broad daylight, she knew she had to do something about it. So she has joined a growing number of women in Lebanon who speak out against sexual harassment. A local non-government organization, IndyACT, supported a national campaign […]

There’s a new government-sponsored comedy channel in Egypt, Nile Comedy TV, which has created a humorous series of “non-commercial breaks.” One memorable example that made me laugh went like this: Buy the Chinese sheep! It weighs 12 kg when alive, and 55 kg after being slaughtered. It’s fed on a diet of chips, so you […]

Fatemeh already pointed out the obviousness of the title in last week’s Friday Links, but Hamida Ghafour’s article “Lewd stares distressing for women,” published in the U.A.E.’s The National newspaper, is worth a closer look.  Although it seems to promote resistance to sexism and sexual harassment, it does so in a way that perpetuates – […]

Dr. Sherene Razack has a theory called Interlocking Systems of Domination, which says that people can be oppressed in different ways and in interlocking and interconnected ways. The various ways in which people are oppressed cannot be detangled from each other and therefore, the oppression that we face must be examined as a whole, as […]

A recent Reuters article vaguely described sexual harassment in Libya by blaming it on “antiquated male attitudes that decades of gender equality reforms have failed to dislodge.” While it is true that Libyan law sets the foundation for female equality, it was never properly enacted. To say that there have been “decades of gender equality […]

Egyptian women have something to celebrate: yesterday the first man in Egyptian history was sentenced to jail for sexual harassment. And not just any sentence: three years in jail with hard labor in addition to an LE 5,001 fine (approximately $1,000). An unexpected, but very welcome sentence. 27-year-old filmmaker Noha Rushdie Saleh was groped last […]