Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Don’t Women Lose Too?

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anti-harcellement-banniere1As discussed before, a survey conducted by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights last year found that 83 percent of Egyptian women had been street harassed and about 98 percent of foreign women reported this experience while in Egypt.

In a French newspaper The Observers, Julie Marquet, a French graduate student in history who has backpacked across dozens of European, Asian, and South American countries wrote about her experiences in Cairo. Here is an excerpt:

“I travelled to Egypt with a girlfriend of mine for two weeks in the summer of 2003. We were both 19. It’s my worst travel memory ever: Egypt is not a place you can travel to individually, especially not for two young girls!

Everywhere we went there was some hand groping us, in the street, in buses or trains… They weren’t even shy about it: they grabbed our butts, sometimes even went under our shirts! This happened even if we were careful to wear long-sleeved shirts and pants, even when it was 40°C out! We were told by Franco-Egyptian friends that women weren’t supposed to be too exuberant in public, not to laugh, not to talk loudly, not be noticeable in any way. We tried to be as discreet and invisible as possible, but that didn’t change anything.  If we lashed out angrily at them it didn’t help at all: they would just laugh and never took us seriously.”

Traveling has so many benefits, including the chance to expand one’s horizon and understanding of the human race and world, and it’s a shame women can’t have the same freedom of mobility to go to new places (or old/familiar places for that matter) as men.

Egypt is addressing the high rate of street harassment of female foreigners with a new ad, which The Observers included in their article. The video clip, “shows a typical scène of a vendor harassing a European visitor in a market. At the end, a man’s voice says: ‘If you harass visitors, you’re not the only one who loses. The whole country has to lose.'”

Hmmm. Don’t the women who are harassed lose too, if not significantly more than the men who do the harassing? Like Julie, they have lost the right to be in public without being harassed or fearing harassment even if they try to be invisible…

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Applauding Activists in Egypt and India

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In recognition of International Women’s Day, here’s a taste of the latest street harassment activism occurring in Egypt and India.

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights has been engaged in a widespread campaign to end the sexual harassment of women in the country, including on the streets (street harassment). Last year they conducted and published a study about the high rate of harassment that made headlines around the world and, combined with two high profile street harassment cases last year, may lead to better laws this year. Currently, they are preparing to launch a HarassMap project later in 2009:

“This project will implement a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. This tool will give women a way to anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment as soon as they happen, using a simple text message from their mobile phone. By mapping these reports online, the entire system will act as an advocacy, prevention, and response tool, highlighting the severity and pervasiveness of the problem.”

When my life settles down some, I’d be very interested in trying out something similar in the U.S.! take-back-the-night-3809

In India, where street harassment is also a huge problem, Blank Noise activists have been engaged in various forms of activism against street harassment for years. Tonight they are holding a Taking Back the Night event:

“We are Taking Back The Night because we want to feel safe in our city. We are taking back the night because for too long our relationship with our city has been fear based. We Take Back the Night with you…Take Back The Night invites individuals, organisations, collectives, groups all to reclaim their city streets at night….Join us to intervene in the neighbourhoods where recent attacks on women took place. Pick a neighbourhood and call the coordinator for location details. Volunteers will hand out testimonials; engage with the public in discussion examining how we can act against violence (bystander ‘polls’ have been made and printed already to trigger discussion); drive people to the street theatre performances by Maraa in the Indiranagar, Ulsoor locations.”

I applaud both organizations for their amazing work to make public places safer for women in their countries.

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New Egyptian Harassment Law?

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Two high profile street harassment cases and the publication of a major report on street harassment issued by the Cairo-based Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in 2008 may bring about positive change this year for ending the harassment of women.

According to Women’s E News, when Egypt’s new parliament meets this month, it’s anticipated that some members will propose a law to strengthen penalties against sexual offenders (including street harassers) by increasing jail time and fines and it will put more pressure on police to stop incidents and take the concerns of targets seriously.

“I am optimistic the new year will be better for women, especially with a new law expected to be passed.” – Nehad Abu Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights.

On the flip side, and not unlike elsewhere in the world, some people in Egypt are determined to disbelieve or downplay the high levels of street harassment.  Notably, in November, women’s rights supporter first lady Suzanne Mubarak said on TV:

“Egyptian men always respect Egyptian women…This gives the impression that the streets in Egypt are not safe. That is not true . . . the media have exaggerated…Maybe one, two or even 10 incidents occurred. Egypt is home to 80 million people. We can’t talk of a phenomenon. Maybe a few scatterbrained youths are behind this crime.”

Right, a few scatterbrained youth are behind the frequent harassment of 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women in a 2,000 person sample…

But the good thing is that there is a dialogue occurring on this topic and people are becoming more aware that it’s a problem to the extent that parliament may introduce and pass an anti-harassment law. We’ll see what happens!

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Men like to harass in Egypt

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The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights has been involved in anti-street harassment activism work for several years, so the recent headline in Reuters “Two-thirds of Egyptian men harass women?” about the high levels of street harassment in Egypt is no surprise to me.

In a survey of more than 2,000 Egyptian men and women and 109 foreign women, “62 percent of Egyptian men reported perpetrating harassment, while 83 percent of Egyptian women reported having been sexually harassed. Nearly half of women said the abuse occurred daily.” I wonder where the people who took this survey live in Egypt – like is it worse in the cities the way it seems to be in the US? Regardless, those are high numbers but not really surprising.

I’d like to say the following facts were surprising but they’re not either. “53 percent of men blamed women for bringing on sexual harassment, saying they enjoyed it or were dressed in a way deemed indecent. Some women agreed.” Hey, they’re just like people in the US and the UK who blame women for getting harassed! Don’t believe it? Just find any story on street harassment that allows for comments and then you’ll very quickly realize how many people have that opinion. Riiight, it’s women’s fault men can’t keep their mouths closed and hands to themselves…

This part of the story is particularly interesting to me: “The vast majority of women did nothing when confronted with sexual harassment,” the survey said, adding that most Egyptian women believed the victim should “remain silent.” Is that because they are afraid of getting hurt or being assertive or what, I wonder? I wonder what people in the US would say about how the victim of street harassment should act. When one feels safe and confident enough to, I advocate saying something to them or reporting them to a person of authority or their company etc. I just don’t think that ignoring them deters them. How do you think they should act?

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