Challenge #3: Violence and Harrassment

Violence against women is something that is unfortunatel common worldwide. We’ve heard about in the media a lot lately, with the controversy Daisy Coleman in Maryville, Missouri, where a freshman in high school was raped by an upperclassman football start.  In America, there are laws to protect women in court (or, at least in theory as the Coleman case disproves). However, this isn’t the case in other countries. We hear in the news regularly about places with child marriage, common domestic abuse and the continual raping of women in conflict areas. Perhaps the best-remembered instance occurred in 2011, when Lara Logan, a CBS Foreign Affairs correspondent, was in Cairo reporting on the uprisings against then-President Mubarak and was brutally gang-raped then left for dead.

Since then, coverage of Egypt’s rampant sexual assaults has been minimal – until this July, when another journalist was gang raped, this time from the Netherlands. She, like Logan, had to be flown out of the country for days of medical treatment because her wounds and internal damage were so severe. The mob violence that allowed her attack is a constant presence in Egypt’s major cities, and the ‘revolutionaries’ aren’t just attacking foreigners; Egyptian women are also prime targets. The trend of attacking journalists is viewed as just a way to get the message of ‘women don’t belong in politics and don’t have a right to a voice’ easily publicized worldwide. For the women who live in Egypt, that message is given through assault daily.  According to CNN, there were 63 reports of assault within a single two day period in Cairo this July, and that’s probably a low estimate.

Why is this happening and what can be done about it? Egyptian women have been lower-class for decades due to the Islamic law employed by both Mubarak and successor Mohamed Morsi and are often subjected to cruel treatment, like genital mutilation, lack of access to education, and restrictions on movement. Women who are subject to sexual violence are branded as prostitutes if they seek medical attention, and sexual harassment is nearly constant and has only never brought up in government, except to declare it a non-issue that can’t be prevented. This all culminates in the obvious results of a Pew research study: more men disprove of gender equality in Egypt than support it, and these statistics and stories are only exacerbated during the riots and revolutions.

As for what can be done about it, that remains to be seen. How many horror stories about the physical brutality of rape can we hear, before we become desensitized? Education, both of the outside world about Egypt’s dire situation and of Egyptian women, is essential. To prevent the attacks, which often can be extremely violent and involve all sorts of weaponry, would be to let those who support excluding women from the government win.  Human Right Watch, an organization that put together an informative video about the topic, describes the culture as an epidemic, and encouraged the government to take action, but without a stable system their calls will fall on deaf ears.

I am lucky enough to have never lived in the constant fear that Egyptian women do, and lucky to live in a society where women are mostly supported. However, there are still too many instances of abuse like Coleman’s that go unprosecuted because of discrimination and fear. We as a country should work against these cases and refuse to let these perpetrators walk free. 

Cia♀,

Charlie

For more information about women in Egypt, please watch this video: