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Babylon & Beyond

EGYPT: Women no longer silent about sexual harassment

By Jeffrey FleishmanStaff Writer 
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She was leaving the bus in Cairo when the driver touched her in a way a stranger shouldn’t.

‘I screamed at him, ‘You’re an animal!’ ‘said Shaimaa Abdel Rahman Aref, a 28-year-old graduate business student. ‘I felt as if he was striking at my pride. I wish he had beaten me instead. It would have been much less humiliating, especially that I was veiled and not wearing anything that would arouse a man.’

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Aref took down the bus number and went to the police. But she found herself confronting a patriarchal society in which authorities are often indifferent to crimes against women and many families pressure their daughters and sisters to forgo justice rather than invite scandal. She said several police officers ridiculed her and her parents scolded her for breaching the line between humility and honor.

To read more about women like Aref taking action against sexual harassment in Egypt, click here

-- Jeffrey Fleishman and Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Babylon & Beyond
Jeffrey Fleishman

Jeffrey Fleishman is a senior writer at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was the foreign and national editor. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He also was a writer on film, art and culture. Fleishman has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of five novels, including “Good Night, Forever” and “Last Dance.”

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