No one can deny the fact that Egyptian women face many injustices, on daily basis and throughout their whole lives. From being denied job opportunities, to sexual harassment, genital mutilation and finally the lack of female representation in the government. An Egyptian woman has been overlooked, shamed and objectified for decades and until now only very little has changed. During the last 5-10 years, it has become more usual to see girls as young as four or five years old wearing the veil. The first time I saw it I kept wondering why anyone would look at their child and think it is necessary to cover their hair. I dared to ask a few times and I always got the same answer "it is to get her used to being covered, so when she is older it will come to her naturally." There are so many reasons why this is incredibly wrong. First and foremost, by doing this you are sexualizing a child. A woman should never feel like a sex object but this is even worse, you are embedding this idea in a child's mind. Secondly, you are not teaching her about modesty, you are imposing it on her, thus, shaming her solely for the fact that she is a female. Thirdly, it is things like that which brainwash some women into believing that sexual harassment is the victim's fault; that a woman should learn to cover up since her childhood in order for her to avoid sexual harassment. Then as she grows older there are other threats, the biggest of which would be female genital mutilation (FGM). The UNICEF Global Database in 2012 shows that 91% of Egyptian women between the ages of 15-49 had to undergo female genital mutilation. Although it is not as common nowadays as it has been before and younger women are less likely to have gone through it, it is still a shockingly large percentage. FGM dates back to Ancient Egypt, but it is of no surprise that nowadays, FGM supporters use unreliable religious texts to justify it and those who know that those texts are not reliable have more than once claimed that at least it is not forbidden in Islam. Their justification for this is that it is done to protect a woman's chastity. Somehow, Egyptian society is deluded enough to think that if a woman is capable of enjoying sexual acts, she will most likely be unable to curb her needs. Although from the consistently rising numbers of sexual harassment cases performed by men, the opposite seems to be the case. And the worst part of this is that the girl has no say in this. Her parents' endless need to make sure their daughter will not bring shame to the family is much stronger, much louder, than her cries for help as she is being violated. And only she will face the aftermath of trauma, inability to enjoy sex, health risks and possibly even death. As a matter of fact, during the first week of June a 13 year old girl died during a failed circumcision performed by a doctor, even though the practice of female circumcision is illegal. So not only was the doctor performing an unethical act but also an illegal one, and he still went through with it, costing the young girl her life. It really puts into perspective how far people will go to support something that has been proven to only damage women both physically and mentally, thinking it is for their own good. In response, Al-Azhar made a statement that female circumcision is forbidden in Islam. This is what decades of discrimination have done to women. To many Egyptians a woman is not a person worthy of recognition or respect. She is merely an object that must be tamed in order to avoid her bringing shame to her family, a family that will not be relieved unless she is married off to a man and then her only purpose will be to please and obey him. A woman is a burden, a threat to a man's honor and even when it is very apparent that she is the victim, the blame can always be shifted towards her. She is a woman, after all. Thus, everything is her fault. Recently, the situation was worsened when a few clerics demanded that girls as young as 9 years old or even younger be "allowed" to get married, claiming the Egyptian government is currently denying them the right to get married. It is infuriating that we have to actually sit them down and convince them that pedophilia is wrong and that a child cannot give consent. And I cannot help but wonder how someone could have the nerve to actually claim that it is okay to "marry" a child. It has already been established that even considering it is sick but the audacity of speaking up about it is extremely unsettling. I was lucky to have been born in a family where women are treated with respect, where my brother and I were loved equally and where I was told that I could grow up to do anything I wanted. For me, the sky was the limit, but every day there are Egyptian girls who are born to families that instantly think of them as a burden. They are raised to loathe themselves, they are assured by the words and actions of their families that they are not as worthy as the male family members, they are taught that their bodies need to be covered up and painfully modified in order for them to be chaste for their future husbands. And once married, all they are good for is to please and serve them. If they are harassed, it is their fault, if they are abused by their husbands then they must have done something wrong to trigger their anger and if they fought back, spoke up or tried to change the status quo, they are attacked and reprimanded by a society which does not intend to ever consider them equal to men. Egyptians are in a desperate need for awareness on so many topics but this is one of the most urgent topics to be addressed. It will not be easy and it will be a long time before we see women respected by the Egyptian society. However, there are many fine examples of strong, independent women who have already begun to fight back and maybe, in a better environment – a more stable, open one – they will be able to do something for the next generation so that no little girl will be brainwashed into thinking that everything is her fault. BN
