It turns out a lot of women are just fine parroting the patriarchal norms about sexual harassment in Egypt. Samah El Saghier was 16 the first time she experienced sexual harassment. The perpetrator was in his 70s. While El Saghier was walking with her sister and cousin to her uncle’s house in Port Said, a northern Egyptian town close to the Suez Canal, an elderly man cycled up next to them and said “the most disgusting words you can ever imagine,” she says. Shortly afterward, the man chased the girls into their relatives’ apartment building, stripping off his clothes as he did so. “We were there frantically knocking, and by this time he’s completely naked,” El Saghier says. Her aunt opened the door just in time. Eleven years later, while en route to a Cairo restaurant with a friend, a male passerby fondled her rear end. This time she exploded, repeatedly hitting her attacker in the face with a thermos she was carrying. “I was hysterical, you know: ‘Why do you touch me? Why do you touch me?’” she recalls asking. A few days later, she told her female boss what had happened. It was then that the questions so familiar to Egyptian victims of sexual harassment began. “What were you wearing?” her boss asked. “Maybe you tempted him.” While El Saghier might have expected another woman to understand, the statistics don’t back that up. In fact, 84 percent of Egyptian women agreed with the statement, "Women who dress provocatively deserve to be harassed," compared to just 70 percent of men. |