Sexual harassment leads Egyptian women to martial arts – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.
For her part, Asra Saleh, who works in marketing, told Al-Monitor that she will join the campaign because she gets harassed daily. Saleh has filed several harassment claims but was forced to retract many of them because of societal pressure. And the police often do not treat her claims seriously. Despite that, she thinks that filing a harassment claim is very important, in addition to martial arts training for women, because they allow the girls’ voices to be heard.
Azza Kamel, president of the Centre for Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development (ACT) and a feminist activist, said in an interview with Al-Monitor that she welcomed the spread of those campaigns because women should be able to defend themselves at any time. “These campaigns are not new. The Shoft Tahrosh campaign had previously trained girls and conducted awareness campaigns that attracted volunteers to warn that harassment is a crime and is rejected by society,” Kamel said.
It should be said that self-defense is the best way to deal with sexual harassment, which has become a real threat to the moral fabric of Egyptian society. Harassment in Egypt is getting worse, and it is especially acute during demonstrations. Sexual harassment should not be tolerated, especially in light of the slow government action against it and the state’s preoccupation with fighting terrorism in Egypt and ignoring social problems, of which sexual harassment is one of the worst.
