MESA Banner
Gendering the Run-Up to Revolution: Anti-Harassment Activism in Egypt In the Last Years of Mubarak
Abstract
Scholars of Egypt commonly acknowledge that new forms of political and economic activism in the decade before 2011 laid the groundwork for the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. New modes of political cooperation between Muslim Brothers and non-Islamist politicians in the anti-Mubarak Kifaya movement (Albrecht, 2013) and record levels of labor protest (Beinin, 2012) have won significant analytical attention. Other scholars have examined how social media and informal networks encouraged youth involvement in the 2011 protests (Sika, 2017). This paper examines a third form of activism that emerged in this period -– organizing against sexual harassment and assault of women in streets, on public transit, and in protests - including the 2008 publication of the first national study of sexual harassment by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) and the 2010 founding of HarassMap, the first youth anti-harassment initiative. Examining anti-harassment activism offers an important corrective to existing scholarship on this period, which with some exceptions (Duboc, 2013) largely focuses on male activism, even in labor struggles where women’s role was central (Hafez, 2019). While Kifaya’s ability to mount large anti-Mubarak protests is well-documented, the best-attended Kifaya “protest” was a vigil condemning police sexual assault of women protesters (Mahdi, 2010), which led to the creation of “The Street is Ours,” an anti-harassment group of secular and Islamist women activists. Youth blogging has been credited with attracting followers to Kifaya and making torture a key political issue, but prominent pre-revolution blogger Alaa Abdelfattah notes that as many as 70% of Egypt’s first generation of bloggers were women (Otterman, 2007), and discussions of how to fight sexual harassment helped bloggers create feminist networks (Pahwa, 2016). Documenting this pre-2011 activism also helps to explain the dramatic expansion of post-Mubarak anti-harassment work and successes, including 2014 penal code changes toughening penalties for harassment and notable changes in media discussions of harassment (Langohr, 2015). The paper employs interviews with activists including Nihad Abul Qumsan, then-head of the ECWR; an editor of Kelmitna, a youth magazine which initiated university anti-harassment campaigns; the founders of HarassMap; and a member of “The Street is Ours.” It also examines TV coverage of harassment, including the first-known discussion of the common phenomenon of harassment in crowded shopping areas during ‘Eids (2006) and interviews with the first woman to win a jail sentence for her harasser (2008), as well as analysis of how women bloggers worked to end harassment.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies