CAIRO: Mona Eltahawy, well-known journalist and commentator, said that the signs of change on issues relating to gender and violence in Egypt over the past year made her feel optimistic about the future.
Her speech was held at the Oriental Hall in the main building at AUC on Tuesday evening, with the support of the Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement.
Since her last visit to the country she grew up in 12 months ago, the commentator, who has written for a number of newspapers and news agencies, including the International Herald Tribune, noted that once taboo topics of violence and sexual harassment were now being tackled head-on in mainstream media. Eltahawy cited the Ramadan serial in which Youssra played a victim of rape as being groundbreaking.
A staple in any home, the post-iftar gathering around the television to watch the latest episode of a television soap was daring to screen something that had for so long been brushed under the carpet. Primetime television was exposing the masses to the effects of rape and informing them of what to do should such a thing ever happen to them.
An Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey carried out with help from USAID and published in 2000 found that 65 percent of Egyptian women are illiterate. Given this figure, television has an important role to play in spreading awareness of rape and sexual violence among the general populous.
According to Media House, an organization that monitors media output, even literate women (100 percent in fact) rely on television as their main source of political information. Some 24 percent of illiterate women were found to base their knowledge of politics on their television viewing.
The last time Eltahawy was in Egypt coincided with the incidents of sexual harassment committed against women in Downtown Cairo. She observed how there was a complete silence in government-run publications on the case while there was a huge amount of noise generated in the blogsphere.
Back in June 2005, there were only 280 blogs in existence blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah claimed. The figure – covering a wide range of topics, not just political – now stands at 6,000, representing a more than 20-fold increase in just over 24 months.
Since the majority of people living in the Arab world are under the age of 25, Mona considers the popularity of blogging a “really positive development as a channel for youth to express themselves. Young people have found a channel where they can exercise their right to freedom of expression, especially on issues of sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and violence.
Suddenly there was awareness of the plight of ordinary Egyptian women. A recent report by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found that 75 percent of women in the country had experienced sexual harassment.
Eltahawy recounted her own personal experience, when at the age of five while she was chatting to a friend on the balcony opposite, a man decided to expose himself. He also beckoned to her and her friend to come down to him. Being so young Eltahawy didn’t think much of it but went in to tell her parents anyway. By the time she had done that, he had gone.
She recounted another experience, more shocking still on the Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, with her family at the age of 15. At one point, she felt a hand on her backside. Unsure of how to react and unable to tell her family what had happened, she began to cry.
The problem of sexual harassment is not limited to a particular social class – it crosses the demographic divide, she noted.
Television series Hajj Metwally in 2001 showed a man who was polygamous, a practice not widely accepted in Egypt, taking on four wives. They all loved and respected him despite the fact that he was violent towards them, giving the message that it was fine to accept this type of behaviour from a man.
In an attempt to contain the public outcry this serial evoked, the same local channel subsequently ran a drama where women were portrayed as strong characters, with minds of their own.
Eltahawy was careful, though, not to advocate the stereotyping of women or men on television or film. She preferred for women to be shown as human, with all the complexity that that entails.
Popular culture in the form of television, NGOs working at the grassroots level with street plays and folk art, and the media have a duty to increase awareness of sexual harassment and violence.
Civic journalism, a relatively new phenomenon over the past 10-15 years in the west, is being introduced to Egypt in training given by Eltahawy among others. It is based on the principle of providing the viewer or listener with content and information but leaving it up to them to decide on the role they have to play.
But ultimately it comes down to changing the prevailing attitude of a sizeable proportion of Egyptian women who still believe that a man is responsible for them. One woman in the question and answer session at the end was resolute that this was the case.
Not until women see themselves on an equal footing as men, Eltahawy explained, and these males realize that the person they are harassing is someone’s mother/sister/daughter will there be a breakthrough in the prevalence of sexual harassment in Egypt.
