'The War on Women' - Egypt: 99% of Women Are Sexually Harassed.

'The War on Women' - Egypt: 99% of Women Are Sexually Harassed. (DS).

According to the survey released in April 2013 by The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on sexual harassment, 99.3 percent of Egyptian women are sexually harassed in one way or the other, 96.5 percent of whom said that harassment was physical, and 95.5 experienced sexual harassment through verbally abusive language.

The distinction between physical and verbal abuse within the context of sexual harassment led to a wider and debatable definition of the term; is verbal slur considered a form of sexual harassment? If so, how about when a man sexually gazes at women, is that a form of harassment or a much milder type of provocation that is devoid from any sexual meaning?

According to Monica Ibrahim, Harassmap’s Communication Manager, an initiative intended to create an environment rejecting all kinds of sexual harassment, harassment is “any word or action which has any kind of sexual connotation and is provoking the space of the person being harassed without his/her consent”.

Ibrahim brought much emphasis on the term “consent” being the most important part of the definition, since it has to be expressed in any way known and without it, the action or word is considered as harassment.

Sexual harassment is no longer confined within the physical context of the act, especially among those who are young of age as reported in a study conducted by Harassmap.

Respondents aged 25-29 of both genders seemed to have a broader perception of what sexual harassment is than respondents aged 40-45. Among the younger group, 37.1 percent consider catcalls as one form of sexual harassment unlike the latter group with only 18.9 percent of them thinking the same.

Despite having a more concrete definition among those who are young of age, there’s no wide consensus on the reasons causing this phenomenon due to “the lack of studies before 25th Jan revolution,” as Ibrahim pointed out.

With societal acceptance of sexual harassment reaching critical levels, and public spaces being rendered as unsafe spaces for women of all ages, harassment is sometimes used as a tool to serve other goals.

This was obviously seen in mob assaults on female activists and protesters back in 2011 in order to prevent and scare them from participating in 25th Jan revolution. Read the full story here.