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Launching Revolutions and Challenging the State: Egyptian Women’s Anti-Sexual Harassment Campaigns
Abstract by Dr. Theresa Hunt On Session 133  (Left Behind Democracy)

On Monday, November 24 at 8:30 am

2014 Annual Meeting

Abstract
In June 2011, Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah told a reporter from America’s National Public Radio, “a lot of [the revolution] is misunderstood and misrepresented…internationally and even locally, from the framing of this as an Internet-led revolution to a framing that it’s a youth revolution. All of that is based on…aspects of reality, but it excludes the majority of the people who participated in the revolution”. Statements like these raise questions about the predominance of some “revolution” stories. Why do Facebook and Twitter feature so heavily within revolution narratives? Why have so many been quick to classify the Egyptian revolution as the story of a “youth movement”? Who, indeed, comprises the “majority of the people” participating in the revolution? Revolutionary, anti-state protests have been staged by Egyptian women for decades. Some media coverage of the revolution has endeavored to feature stories of women pushing for rights in a post-revolution government with an uncertain future. But few acknowledge the kinds of protests women activists staged prior to the revolution; even fewer suggest the national resistance and critique their campaigns generated fueled a growing mistrust in the leadership of the country. This paper explores the trajectory of the anti-street harassment campaigns in Egypt as one such example of women’s “pre-revolution” protests. I argue that the extensive work of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights and more recently, the innovative HarassMap, run by young women based in Cairo, critiqued the state’s failure to address an alarming level of sexual harassment on Cairo’s streets. By strategically gaining national and even international attention, the anti-harassment campaign pressured the state to officially and legally define “sexual harassment” and to develop policy that would promote justice. Interestingly, the younger activists who left the ECWR to launch HarassMap, a real-time, digital map displaying reports of harassment made by victims via SMS, became frustrated with both the lack of existing law and the targeting of law-creation in campaigns led by older generations. Members of the HarassMap team I spoke to during a 2011 interview were open about their desire to “do something on the ground” in response to harassment; said co-founder Rebecca Chiao, “I was tired of waiting for government change that [we knew] would not happen”.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
None