Women Are Human Beings, Too - 1514 Words

Women Are Human Beings, Too In early 2015, Mona Eltahawy stepped into one of the women’s carriages of a Cairo metro. Then she felt a hand grab her hard between the legs. It was a hand of a man who had no legs and swung through the women’s carriage to beg from the passengers. He and some of other women laughed and others just turned their faces; however, Mona was frozen by the ugliness of the situation (Aspden). Mona’s story is a common story of the majority of Egyptian women, who are exposed to sexual harassment on a daily basis in public places, such as streets, markets, and public transportations or private places, such as colleges, sports clubs, and workplaces. According to a U.N.Women report in 2013, 99.3 percent of Egyptian women have†¦show more content†¦They are taught that they have the right to control women in their lives, such as their sisters, daughters, wives, and even mothers. As a lot of Egyptian men accustom to violate the rights for the women in their lives, they v iolate the rights of any woman they can take advantage of by harassing her in any way verbally or physically. Results of a study by The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in 2013, show that 62.4 percent of the male surveyed admitted committing one or more act of women sexual harassment, such as molesting women, using obscene language, shouting sexually explicit comments, and touching women’s bodies (11). Secondly, a lot of Egyptian males look at a woman as a body, an object, or a tool for pleasure not as a human being who has emotions, intelligence, and privilege. Results also show that 41.8 percent of the male surveyed believe that the harassing acts accrue to satisfy their sexual desire and to feel more confident (Hassan, Shoukry, and Abul Komsan 11). These results emphasize how harassers look to women as just bodies controlled or owned by another man either father, brother, or husband, and they are not as equal as men in human rights. Finally, Egyptian youth try to imitate harassment acts to prove that they become adults. The same scenario happens almost every holiday or huge gathering, groups of youth break through crowded streets and public areas seeking to harass