99% of Egyptian girls and women have experienced harassment, most frequently in the street or public transport (U.N. Women 2013). The Egyptian government has taken action against public sexual harassment (PSH) since 2014, when it defined harassment and specified enhanced criminal penalties in a penal code amendment. Women now more frequently win jail sentences against attackers, while TV personalities in government-controlled media regularly praise these women as role models. I use interviews conducted in Cairo between 2012-2019, a newspaper database of PSH arrests reported in the year after the 2014 legal change, and analysis of TV talk shows in 2017-21 to demonstrate the drivers of Egyptian government activism. New youth anti-harassment movements began in 2012-13. They intervened in public, including separating groups of men following women in shopping areas during ‘eids. Their tallies of the number of women harassed during ‘eids appeared on major talk shows, prompting the creation of all-women police forces for these holidays. Activists’ public demonstrations and private workshops debunked PSH stereotypes, including that the sexual frustration of men unable to afford marriage causes harassment. Anti-PSH groups’ work was covered widely on TV; these appearances served as a “force multiplier” for groups’ messages, including refuting the belief that only “improperly” dressed women are harassed. This work created the climate for post-2014 government action against PSH. This finding contravenes existing research on when governments act against violence against women (VAW) generally and sexual harassment specifically. Htun and Weldon (2018) argue that where feminist movements are strong and occur within a country which has withdrawn its reservations on CEDAW and whose neighboring countries are also legislating against VAW, governments are likely to act. Tripp (2019) contends that the only MENA countries to comprehensively legislate against VAW, including sexual harassment, have been Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia because those governments used women’s rights to undermine Islamist challengers and their countries’ feminist movements coordinated across borders. Egyptian government anti-PSH action has occurred despite maintenance of its CEDAW reservations, and its anti-PSH legislation predates that of other MENA countries. Feminist movements supported Egypt’s anti-PSH activism but did not direct it, and the government acted on PSH after it had eliminated Islamist opponents in the August 2013 Rabi’a massacre and by criminalizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Instead, space opened up by Egypt’s 2011 revolution allowed previously apolitical youth to put PSH on the government agenda.