Cairo – Mohammad Anter hands out flyers to evening crowds on a packed Cairo street, trying to catch the attention of any passerby – until one catches his. “Hey, hot chic!” he yells. “You have beautiful eyes!” Mr. Anter is a computer science student and salesman at a small shop here; he is one of Cairo’s many casual harassers. “We’re an Eastern culture, so it’s all right for me to yell out – when I’m attracted to someone, I do it,” he says, surrounded by fluorescent store lights and shoppers in every direction. Anter is not alone: The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights found in a 2008 study that 83 percent of women are sexually harassed and roughly half of Egypt's women experience such treatment on a daily basis. RELATED HarassMap: An effort to put sexual harassment on the map view Twitter and text Many thought that men like Anter had changed during Egypt's uprising five months ago. When hundreds of thousands converged on Tahrir Square in a collective effort to oust President Hosni Mubarak, men and women stood side by side in unified protests with few instances of sexual harassment. But while activists say the revolution was a step in the right direction, the popular demand for greater freedom has not necessarily brought a greater recognition of women's rights or reprieve from harassment. "Just because Mubarak stepped down doesn’t make people anymore educated or aware of how to behave appropriately and respectfully,” says Amy Mowafi, editor of an Egyptian women’s magazine called Enigma. Full Story>>
