Introduction

Egypt’s Jan 25th revolution in 2011 set a new precedent for women’s activism. In Tahrir Square, the central landmark of protests, women camped in tents alongside men, engaged in direct confrontations with security forces and played a crucial role in mobilizing protestors. The public sphere, typically a signpost of women’s marginalization and exclusion, had large numbers of women engaged in revolutionary protests alongside their male counterparts. Particularly in periods where nationalist sentiments were high, state and civil society actors even encouraged women to participate in protests in ways that defied conventional gender norms. Their contributions, however, did not come without a cost; women have and continue to face many obstacles hindering their access to the public sphere and political spaces, with sexual violence emerging at the forefront of this struggle.

Women were subject to various forms of sexual violence ranging from mob attacks to direct sexual assaults perpetrated by security forces during the Jan 25th revolution and subsequent uprisings. The ubiquitous and indiscriminate nature of the violence affected female protestors from all walks of life, cutting across ideology, religion and other probable divisions. In a deeply patriarchal society where sexual violence is a widespread phenomenon, it is difficult to distinguish between sexual violence committed directly by state officials, by mobs operating on behalf of state officials and opposition groups or by autonomous opportunists. Perpetrators often acted with impunity, thereby allowing sexual violence to prevail as a political tool of intimidation that was strategically exploited by actors with varying interests. Sexual violence therefore played a critical role in influencing the process and outcome of women’s activism during the revolution.

The contributions and limitations of women’s participation in revolutions are largely explored in existing literature from different viewpoints. Much attention has also been given to the underlying causes and implications of sexual violence. However, there is an inextricable link between sexual violence and revolutionary outcomes, particularly in the Egyptian context that requires further exploration. This chapter examines how pervasive forms of sexual violence influenced women’s contributions and activism in the Jan 25th revolution. It argues that sexual violence served as both an obstacle and an opportunity that enabled women to reap sociopolitical gains central to resolving deep-rooted gender inequalities, which may have otherwise been lost in the wave of nationalist discourses. The protests were events that unleashed further attacks on women to advance a gender-centric agenda that would empower them in the aftermath of protests. However, the collective experiences of sexual violence inadvertently gave rise to a brand of feminism centered around confronting the phenomena and its root causes.

This chapter is structured around three sections. Section I provides an overview of women’s role in revolutions and delineates some of the circumstances under which revolutions, particularly those with a nationalist undercurrent, can result in long-term emancipation of women. Section II identifies four waves of Egypt’s Jan 25th revolution and maps the nature of women’s contributions and experiences with sexual violence in each wave. Section III demonstrates how sexual violence became a important milestone in women’s activism by serving as an impetus for the revival of a unified feminist movement tackling the root causes of gender inequality.

It must be noted that the Jan 25th Egyptian revolution is an ongoing process that is still being defined and recreated. Far from being a linear process, it is convoluted by discontinuities, fluctuations in representation and participants as well as oscillating—and at times—polarizing narratives competing for historical preeminence. The segmenting of the revolutionary protests into 4 waves is merely an attempt to extract the continuity necessitated for analysis. It does not imply that these waves are fixed or absolute. Given the subject of analysis, the waves were demarcated according to the different regimes in power, and as will be demonstrated, to the nature of sexual violence attributed to each regime. The time span covered in this analysis begins from the official start of the revolution on Jan 25th, 2011, until the official election of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in June 2014. Sexual violence will be defined as any sexual act committed against someone without the subject’s freely given consent. The focus will be primarily on sexual violence committed against women and girls on the basis of their gender, including but is not limited to rape, virginity tests, sexual assaults, mob assaults, domestic violence and physical assaults, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, sexual torture, mutilation, forced abortion or forced pregnancy and sexual humiliation (Butter et al. 2007, p. 672; Leiby 2009, pp. 446, 451).

Gendering a Revolution

A revolution is a radical and often violent attempt to ‘change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leaderships and government activity and policies’ (Huntington 1968, p. 246). During the revolutionary process, people are united under a common cause that seeks to construct or reconstruct the nation. In their most crude form, revolutions are instances where ‘obedience is put in abeyance and disobedience is unleashed in the form of rebellion against established orders and practices’ (Badran 2016). In revolutions espousing a nationalist or militant agenda, disobedience is typically non-gendered. A heightened sense of belonging, obligation and attachment to a country allows people to perceive themselves as a homogenous entity, overlooking divisionary differences including gender (Mazloum 2015). During the nascent stages of an uprising, an egalitarian atmosphere is created where social conventions, cultural medians and gender norms are temporarily adjourned.

Since nations are constructed and reconstructed in processes that are neither fixed nor temporal, they risk periods of rebellion and disruption (Cole and Kandiyoti 2002). The non-gendered nature of rebellion albeit relatively successful in producing and liberating nations from oppressive power struggles can be counterproductive for the emancipation of women. History is rife with examples of women being at the forefront of nationalist revolutions, only to be pushed back to the private sphere once the immediate aims of revolution are secured. Feminist scholars have generally noted that revolutions with a nationalist undercurrent tend to be masculine projects that advance masculine interests (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000; Moghadam 1997; Enloe 1990). At the very least, this is because the notion of the ‘nation’ itself is highly gendered, assuming stereotypes that limit the scope of women’s inclusion in the public sphere. The female body, rendered passive, dependent, maternal, private and domestic, is part in parcel of the discourse utilized to discourge their participation in the political activties of the nation (Sinha 2004).

In a similiar vein, the nation is often portrayed as a feminine entity whose survival is dependent upon the procreation of loyal citizens. Its ‘honor’, is therefore in constant need of safeguarding by its male counterparts. Such analogies can be seen during the 1919 revolution in Egypt, where several Egyptian women were subject to rape by British soldiers. The interpretation of the incident was such that the rape of ‘our women’ metaphorically became the rape of ‘our nation’, which disgraced the national family honor. The instilled notion of ‘honor’ was used to mobilize male supporters who believed they had a duty to support, defend and protect their nation against the dishonorable British Occupation (Ramdani 2013b). The conceptualization of the nation is gendered and directly contingent upon the construction of masculinity and femininity. In emphasizing the maternal roles of women, one emphasizes their domestic duties in the private sphere and takes away from their claim to equal rights and opportunities in the public sphere.

The common denominator among successful revolutions is the dismantling of an existing system and the formation of a new one through a redistribution of power in favor of previously disadvantaged groups (Moghadam 1997, p. 138). The ultimate challenge for revolutionaries is creating new norms before obedience is restored (Badran 2016). Despite being at the forefront of many revolutions, women of all groups rarely benefit from this reallocation of power due to several structural barriers. Firstly, in the male-dominated process of articulating the national project and its demands, women are often alienated (Walby 1996). Secondly, the illusion of unification prevalent in nationalist movements discourages women from participating as interest groups; instead they participate as individuals operating within a male-dominated framework (Wael 2014). Their participation is endorsed if it seeks to advance existing nationalist goals and shunned when advancing alternative feminist agendas that confront patriarchal power relations. Thirdly, it is commonly assumed within nationalist doctrine that the liberation of women is directly tied to the liberation of a nation from ideological constructs that disadvantage large groups of people such as colonialism and capitalism. However, the aftermath of nationalist fuelled revolutions has disproved this predicted nexus. Gender inequalities, deeply rooted in social and political relations, are likely to remain untouched even after the ideological reconfiguration of the state (Suneri 2000, p. 145). Unless the breakdown of power is addressed, cultural and political variables will jointly reinforce the marginalization of women from the public sphere. Since the deliberative processes through which nationalist projects are articulated typically unfolds in the public sphere, the less access women have to the public sphere, the greater their exclusion from political processes in the aftermath of revolutions (Yuval-Davis 1997, p. 2).

While revolutions present strategic opportunities for women to challenge such gendered norms, such gains are often short-lived. Revolutions can paradoxically produce a state of instability and chaos that induces actors to make inauspicious political settlements that result in greater long-term marginalization and oppression. As will be demonstrated in the case of Egypt, the state of political upheaval following the aftermath of the Jan 25th revolution generated a greater demand for stability that inversely prompted widespread support for repressive state and security apparatuses (Luckham 2017). It shifted public opinion in favor of highly exclusive and violent political settlements. As noted by Tadros (2017), the perceived threat of disintegration into civil war emanating from the events occurring in neighboring countries such as Syria and Libya, drove citizens to support a political settlement that endorsed violence as a means of restoring stability in aftermath of the popular uprising on June 30, 2013. The marginalization of women’s interests during the revolutionary process in turn allows men to reap the benefits of revolution, while undermining or overtly denying women’s contributions. Once primary goals are achieved (often in the form of regime change), women’s efforts are measured in relation to the success ensued by men (Wael 2014). Despite an active presence in national struggles and public resistance, women are largely absent from the historical discourse of revolutionary events. Their presence in popular narratives is cast as either bearers of the fort for men when they are not in the limelight or as mothers, wives and extended relatives of great leaders (Tillinghast and McFadden 1991).

Nonetheless, women have consciously exploited gender roles to justify their presence in revolutions, in ways that were empowering. For instance, an examination of women’s participation in Egypt’s 1919 revolution reveals how such representations of women as ‘mothers of the nation’ were strategically advanced to legitimize their presence in the nationalist movement. Women from all walks of life, particularly writers and activists, stressed that in their unique capacity as ‘mothers of the world and child raisers’, they could play a critical role in the nationalist movement by ‘imbuing their children with love for the nation, and teaching national songs and stories’. By proving that women possess political influence, they utilized their gendered role as ‘mothers of the nation’ to venture out of the private sphere and secure their place alongside their male counterparts. Such approaches, however, become inefficacious when taken up by male leadership in the aftermath of a revolution, whereby women are elevated and awarded not based on their individual contributions, but in relation to the Martyrdoms of their sons (Abdo 1991). It thus comes as no surprise that following Egypt’s nominal independence in 1922, Egyptian male nationalists effectively abandoned women campaigners despite their efforts, leading women to confront the unavoidable reality; to prosper they needed to create their own independent political movement (Ramdani 2013b).

Despite the given odds, the transformative power of a revolution can advance women’s rights under specific conditions (Molyneux 1986; Moghadam 1995). For political activism to translate in emancipating policies, gender equality must be engrained into the initial demands of a revolution or be accompanied by a broader ‘feminist/gender revolution’ (Badran 2016). Gender revolutions are continuous long-term projects that should exist before and after political revolutions. Unlike political revolutions that easily be quelled through coercion, unmarked gender revolutions cannot (Badran 2016). To this end, women’s participation in a revolution must serve a dual purpose: to participate as revolutionaries as well as gender activists advancing a broader long-term agenda. Their participation should be structured as an organized unified front exploiting their revolutionary presence as leverage in advancing their predefined gender goals (Moghadam 1995, p. 329). For this to happen, a vibrant and consolidated women’s movement must be prevalent prior to the outbreak of a revolution such that the revolution becomes an imminent opportunity that can be strategically manipulated to advance a gender-centric agenda. The subsequent section explores the extent to which women’s participation in the Jan 25th revolution was rooted in a feminist consciousness backed by a gender-centric agenda.

Four Waves of Egypt’s Revolution

Wave 1

The first wave commencing Egypt’s Jan 25th popular revolution lasted for 18 days and led to the ousting of Mubarak on February 11, 2011. Constituting one of the biggest non-violent revolutions in modern-day history, millions of Egyptians from a range of socioeconomic classes protested in almost every major town and city. The motivation behind the protests was clearly articulated in two chants: “The people want the fall of the regime” and “Bread, freedom and justice”. These 18 days can be characterized by what Tadros referred to as ‘the time and space bound moral economy of Tahrir square’. This moral economy embraced a constellation of actors involving the youth, the masses, the military and women (Tadros 2012, p. 3). Writings pertaining to this period describe a heightened sense of unity, patriotism and egalitarianism. The participation of previously marginalized groups resulted in a ‘transcendence of relations of power’ that curtailed the prospect of domination and conflict (Yuval-Davis 2011, p. 14). Women, constituting nearly half of protestors, played a crucial role in directly confronting police brutality, mobilizing protestors and securing the premises of Tahrir Square where they camped alongside men for days, despite societal taboos (Hafez 2012). The romanticism of unity and the valorization of women’s status in Tahrir Square during this period, however, posed a double-fold dilemma for academics. On the one hand, the euphoria surrounding the revolution induced many to turn a blind eye toward the internal divisions that later surfaced once the preliminary goal of ousting Mubarak was achieved. Indeed, the heightened degree of patriotism allowed people to stay away from the ‘politically reprehensible’ (Eagleton 2000, p. 309). On the other hand, it also overlooked the divisions and disparities looming outside of Tahrir Square. As Engy Ghozlan, a prominent women’s rights activist, notes about her experience in the Tahrir Square:

I think people exaggerate. There is this fascination and Tahrir fetish that I am not a fan of. Yeah it was good. It was a good eighteen days. I mean I smoked in Tahrir and it was fine and I remember thinking “this is crazy; I’m smoking in Tahrir and no one is looking or saying anything to me”. And I was never sexually harassed there either. But the moment you left Tahrir, you would get harassed again. So just because Tahrir was good didn’t mean Egypt on the whole was in a good place during those days. (Kadry, A., Personal interview with Engy Ghozlan, December 15, 2013)

Although reported sexual violence remained scarce during this period, a few attacks were waged to deter influential female protestors. This is demonstrated in the use of sexual violence by police officers to terrorize female activists such as Mona Prince—a prominent writer and university professor—who was sexually assaulted by the police on the first day of the Jan 25th revolution (Marroushi 2015, p. 13). Another renowned example is that of Lara Logan, a South African journalist who was publicly beaten and sexually assaulted by mob groups in Tahrir Square during the celebrations that followed Mubarak’s ousting. It was assumed that the perpetrators were state officials and the media accused her of being an Israeli spy to justify the acts of violence to which she was subjected (Marroushi 2015, pp. 3–4). These patterns of sexual violence committed by regime affiliated mobs and the police resembled those of the ‘Black Wednesday incidents’ in 2005, where sexual violence was used as a political weapon to intimidate female protestors.Footnote 1

These situations demonstrate the complexity that arises when attempting to identify notions of accountability. In many cases, it is obvious that the state security apparatus was involved in human rights violations against women—long before the Jan 25th uprising until the ousting of Mubarak. The accounts of Mona Prince and Lara Logan reveal that sexual violence—mostly in the form of mob assaults and harassment against women—was utilized by the state (principal) via their agents (e.g., police officers, state-led media) to deter opposition (Marks 2013; Leiby 2009). The occurrence of these politically motivated forms of violence awaiting women as soon as they leave Tahrir Square during the first 18 days of the revolution, was therefore anticipated.

Overall, the use of sexual violence against women inside Tahrir Square during these 18 days was rare and failed to have any major implications on the ways in which female protestors organized themselves. The communal nature of the protests and the need to protect the egalitarian image of the square limited the scope of sexual violence. The square was engrossed with a high degree of nationalist sentiments thereby detering any sort of violence perpetrated by the state and/or bystanders, or in some cases, turning a blind eye towards the few acts of sexual violence that did occur.

Wave 2

The second wave of the uprising from February 2011 until June 2012 was the transitional period headed by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF)—a 20-member body comprised of all four branches of the Egyptian military (Roll 2014, pp. 25–27). Sexual violence during this period was overtly endorsed by security forces to dissipate the presence of female protestors.

Largely due to its decision not to attack protestors and side with the masses, the military was able to emerge as ‘guardians of the revolution’ (Karon 2011). This reputation, however, was threatened by the political and economic instability that ensued. The swift shift from a depoliticized to a hyper-politicized public sphere inevitably produced an era of instability. Age-old ideological rivalries between Islamists, Leftists and the military surfaced and communal strife began to unfold. In holding itself hostage to the supervision of the transitional political processes such as the drafting of a constitution and parliamentary and presidential elections, the SCAF became the target of the opposition protests it desperately attempted to quell (Elgindy 2012).

The mishandling of sensitive situations during this period, the alleged attempts to control the constitutional drafting process while securing the military’s privileges, along with the military’s overt alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, induced the second uprising to emerge—as a continuation of Jan 25th—against the military rule. In response, the SCAF conceded to some of the demands including sacking the government, appointing a new prime minister and conceding power to an elected president by July 2012 (Elgindy 2012). Nonetheless, the absence of the same diversity, scope and sense of patriotic unification prevalent in Jan 25th led to political polarization and protracted social conflicts since the SCAF is a relatively respected state institution. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood—a highly influential figure at the time both quantitatively and ideologically—did not endorse the protests.

In the period immediately following Mubarak’s resignation, it became increasingly clear that sexual violence was politically coordinated. Gang rapes in and around Tahrir Square increased, creating a climate of fear and intimidation for female protestors. As tensions between revolutionaries and the army intensified, the armed forces and riot police explicitly waged a series of sexual assaults targeting female protestors.

One of the most notable instances of sexual violence during this period occurred in March 2011 when the military detained 17 women at a protest and subjected them to forced virginity tests. Former head of military intelligence and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi defended these actions on the ground that the army was protecting itself from false accusations of rape. Such logic rooted in patriarchal conceptions of ‘purity’ assumes the faulty premise that only virgins are capable of being raped. Another prominent example of sexual violence is popularly known as the ‘blue bra’ incident that was captured in a video and circulated on social media. The video depicted a veiled female protestor who was violently beaten, stripped naked and dragged across the street by military forces. The images of the women quickly became a powerful symbol of the military’s abuse of power and rallied cries from thousands of Egyptian women who joined the protests demanding the end to military rule (Trew 2013; Elmohandes 2014). This form of systematic and institutionalized sexual violence used against women human rights defenders was similarly demonstrated in several other incidents during the events of November 19 and December 16, 2011. Reports of sexual, physical and verbal assaults by police forces and individuals in civilian attires were documented. The violations included rape threats during arrest, as well as degrading and inhumane treatment in detention (Nazra 2011b).

Wave 3

The third wave of protests occurred during the short-lived period of the first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi’s rule from June 2012 until June 2013 (The New York Times 2014). Political conflict in this context was mainly between different factions of society, including opposing state actors, but intensified after Morsi’s decision to pass a controversial presidential decree. Sexual violence was initiated mainly by mob attacks yet strategically overlooked by the regime.

Two crucial factors espoused a sense of alienation that invoked the emergence of widespread protest movements once more. Firstly, the Muslim Brotherhood’s stronghold on the legislative and executive branch led to what many refer to as ‘the brotherhood of society’ and speculations that the group was not interested in the greater good of society, but in advancing its own interests. Secondly, a controversial presidential decree in which Morsi granted himself and the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly extensive new powers beyond judicial accountability, was interpreted as a regression into another era of tyranny (Kirkpatrick and El Sheikh 2012).

The nature of protests during this period was highly sporadic. On one side of the spectrum, many took to the streets to protest against Morsi’s presidential decrees. On the other side, Muslim Brotherhood supporters protested in favor of Morsi, leading to a violent confrontation between the two groups. Equally important was the fragmentation of society beyond street politics. Islamist groups—albiet being perceived as monolithic entity—were highly divided. After suffering a political defeat in elections, secular parties were equally, if not more divided. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood and the military were also in conflict behind closed doors. The public space became an avenue through which a plethora of conflicting interests and political projects was contested (Kirkpatrick and El Sheikh 2012).

The regime’s failure to assert control over all states apparatuses coupled with its eagerness to maintain a democratic image, made it reluctant to overtly deploy violence against protestors. Instead, the mob assaults—prominent during Mubarak’s reign—became more frequent and gruesome (Ramdani 2013a; Amnesty International 2013). The rise in mob assaults prompted the rise of grassroots volunteer groups such as Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment (OpAntish), Tahrir Bodyguards and Anti-Sexual Harassment movement. These groups were comprised of organized diverse clusters of people from and attempted to secure protest spaces by physically intervening to extricate women from what was referred to as ‘circles of hell’. Their presence served to combat attempts that aimed to discourage women from protesting (Kingsley 2013).

Many human rights groups such as Magda Adly, a medical professional with non-governmental organization (NGO) El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, believe that these types of assaults were part of an ‘organized attack on women’ seeking to generate fear in the square and break their ‘political spirit’. Volunteers, from intervention groups, testified that most of the incidents were organized and systematic: hundreds of men would surround a woman, strip her naked and proceed to assault or rape her using their hands and/or sharp objects. This recurrent pattern described as the ‘circle of hell’ by activists targeted women and young teenage girls indiscriminately (Marroushi 2015, p. 4; Kingsley 2013).

Yasmine El-Baramawy, a thirty-year-old musician who was raped in November 2012 decided to make her case public. El-Baramawy and many other survivors who joined the movements to fight sexual violence became a source of inspiration to women in Egypt and to the movement. Their commitment to ensuring that women will not be excluded from the ongoing struggle made them symbols of strength and resistance. Yasmine’s testimony along with many others highlighted the organized nature, speed and efficiency of violence, indicating they were strategically coordinated attempts to discourage women from political participation (Trew 2013).

The Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Shura Council members (Egypt’s upper house of parliament) during this period argued that by choosing to be involved in the protests and being caught on-site, they had inflicted danger upon themselves (Ramdani 2013a). The notion of accountability for mob assaults remains very complex despite the overt presence of organized and systemic attempts to disseminate fear and terror. In addition, the victim blaming response of the Shura Council and Muslim Brotherhood members suggests that they either had prior knowledge about the incidents and/or condoned the occurrence of such crimes in pursuit of political interest. Their stance inflamed one of the biggest transnational protests in the history of the Egyptian feminist movement (Zohney 2014).

Wave 4

The final stage of protests to be examined is the 2013 mass uprising that inaugurated the popularly supported coup from June 2013 until present (The New York Times 2014). During this period, a rampant form of top-down nationalism resurfaced that allied the state with large segments of society. The perception of a common enemy and ‘othering’ of the Muslim Brotherhood became an amalgamating force between the state and society against a third party. The largest degree of participation in protests and the highest level of sexual violence are both eminent in this stage. Activism was endorsed and encouraged for a select group of women who shared the regime’s militant vision of dismantling the Muslim Brotherhood while sexual violence reached its peak, particularly against women and girls who endorsed alternative views.

Mass frustration and discontent with Morsi’s rule led to the emergence of a grassroots movement entitled Tamarod. The movement collected 22 million signatures from Egyptians in favor of an end to Morsi’s rule and called for mass protests on June 30 that was met by millions of protestors (Abdel Gawad 2013). Although exact figures from this period are highly contested, the scene of protests was unprecedented in size and scope, surpassing those during the 18-day revolution that toppled Mubarak. Former Field Marshall Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s decision to stage a coup against Morsi in response to the protests allowed him to emerge from the situation as a heroic nationalist icon. Immediately after the coup, Sisi called on his supporters to grant him a mandate to fight ‘terrorism’—a term he attributed to the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood. This mandate was interpreted as a green light to violently dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood. Sisi’s readiness to wage war against the Muslim Brotherhood and restore political stability is arguably one of the biggest pillars that enabled his rise to power as president. His military background and stance against the Muslim Brotherhood were backed by a nationalist resurgence that evoked the days of Nasser. This brand of nationalism was contingent upon a cult of personality and resembled strains of militarism, populism and anti-foreign backlashes (Dunne 2015).

Whereas Jan 25th was a conflict between the people and the state, June 30 appeared to be a coalition between the people and the state in confrontation with a common enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood. This coalition was sustained through a rampant wave of violence and state-led propaganda that greatly contrasted the peaceful modes of dissent prevalent during Jan 25th. The nationalist sentiment of Jan 25th was derived from the bottom-up but the nationalism expressed on June 30 was top-down and highly dependent on Sisi’s cult of personality.

The fight against terrorism quickly became a scapegoat to silence any form of dissent. Actors who opposed state-led media propaganda were immediately portrayed as terrorists, Muslim Brotherhood allies and/or traitors, with all three labels being used interchangeably. As noted by Mostafa (2015):

Media outlets such as newspapers, journals and TV channels are overwhelmingly in support of the Sisi regime and increasingly showing the 2011 revolution’s supporters as traitors and agents of foreign countries, to the extent of portraying the revolution as a big conspiracy against Egypt. In this sense, the media channels are mobilising their means and resources not only to erase the revolution from Egypt’s history but in fact to distort it, to make it look as a diversion, a disruption and a conspiracy.

This surge of protests is one where images of women utilizing the public sphere for political expressions are most pervasive. In the state and society’s alliance against the Muslim Brotherhood, women constitute Sisi’s biggest support base. The term ‘Sisi’s Women’ was derived through the circulation of videos, whereby women were publicly voicing their support for the president and dancing in celebration of his candidacy at the voting polls (Zaki 2015). In hopes that Sisi would adopt a more progressive stance on gender than his predecessor, women responded to his call to protests in large scale and even organized autonomous women’s marches. For example, former MP Margaret Azer’s mobilized over 800 women, many of whom proudly carried banners of Sisi (Rabie 2014). Such expressions of support captured by domestic media outlets sought to reaffirm a ‘gendered’ component in the June 30th events by reinforcing the notion that women played a crucial role in toppling the Muslim Brotherhood.

This sense of state-endorsed feminist mobilization does not come without its setbacks. Firstly, while women are cast as nationalist actors with significant leverage power, those who utilize the public space to express opposition to the regime risk violent forms of crackdown. This is evident, for example, in the Rab’a massacre where state security allegedly killed 800–1000 protestors, many of whom were women and children, and in the infamous image of political activist Shaimaa Al-Sabbagh shot dead in a rally commemorating the Jan 25th revolution. Secondly, the crackdown on civil society and the protest ban imposed by Sisi following his election is likely to have detrimental effects on women, limiting the scope of individual and collective activism. Lastly, although the regime has capitalized on images of women expressing support for the regime via the public sphere, the state remains unable to secure their protection within these spaces. This is demonstrated in the numerous incidents of sexual violence that took place during June 30 waged or aggravated by individual bystanders. According to ‘Egypt: Keeping Women Out – Sexual violence in the Public Sphere’, a report which presented over 250 cases, from November 2012 to July 2013, societal impunity results in the acceptance and continuity of sexual violence against female protestors (FIDH 2014).

In the period from 28 of June to 7 of July, 2013—when President Morsi was forced to leave office—a total of 186 cases of sexual violence were reported (out of 500 cases from February 2011 to January 2014) varying from sexual assaults to rape while people were celebrating Morsi’s departure in Tahrir Square. This number merely represents the reported cases by EIPR, Nazra for Feminist Studies, OpAntish and other concerned groups; there may be other cases that were not reported due to difficulties in spotting all the incidents (Kirollos 2013; Marroushi 2015, p. 4; Trew 2013).

Ahmed Ezz, an intervention team leader, he testified that: “The attackers are always armed, carrying knives, sticks, everything except live firearms. Sometimes there are hundreds of people surrounding the girls so we are trying to expand the numbers in the intervention teams” (HRW 2013).

This also applies to women protestors/supporters from the Muslim Brotherhood—following the forced departure of Morsi—who were groped and sexually assaulted by Special Forces in August 2013. Similarly, females protesting the protest law were also assaulted in front of the Shura Council in November 2013 upon their arrest (Elmohandes 2014).

During the departure of Morsi until present, numerous cases of sexual violence against women occurred. This mostly varied from mob assaults/rape to physical sexual harassment by Special Forces. It is obvious that the same repeated pattern was deployed against women protestors as a tool of political and psychological intimidation serving to deter their participation in political affairs. In many incidents, indiscriminate bystanders would join the attacks, which reinforces the notion that such incidents are not only political but also a societal matter.

Sexual Violence as Obstacle and Opportunity

Revolutionary forces did not view gender equality as a critical demand underlying the success of the revolution. The fact that gender equality was not at the core of the revolution’s demands became evident when just weeks after the Jan 25th revolution, women were atttacked whilst marching in a protest in light of international women’s day. The sharp contrast between these attacks and the egalitarian nature of Tahrir square just weeks before, demonstrates that people are willing to support ‘women as revolutionaries but not as activists asking for women’s rights’ (Sholkamy 2014, p. 169). The result is what Moghadam (1995) considers a patriarchal revolution, decreasing the likelihood of positive gender outcomes. This occurrence is not new to the history of women’s activism in Egypt. The historical development of the state often compelled women activists to continuously align themselves with established nationalist movements, first the anti-colonial and later anti-Zionist struggles that limited their ability to prioritize gender issues without facing accusations of imitating or siding with the West (Hatem 1993). In addition, a strategic brand of ‘state feminism’ was levied by former President Gamal Abdel Nasser in post-colonial Egypt where the state effectively appropriated discussions on women’s issues. It was not until the late 1980s where former President Mubarak’s loosened restrictions on civil society, that a semi-independent feminist movement began to exert influence. The main components of this feminist movement were issues related to women’s bodies such as FGM, reproductive rights and honor killings (Al-Ali 2000; Kamal 2016). Despite the relative success in tackling these issues, efforts were scattered and subject to state manipulation, thereby restricting the rise of a fully independent feminist movement that can effectively exploit the political openings generated by the Jan 25th revolution to advance a gender-centric agenda.

Within the realm of their participation as revolutionaries during the Jan 25th events and onward, women encountered obstacles that led them focus on what Molyneux (1986) coined ‘practical gender interests’, namely physical security. Practical gender interests are a response to immediately perceived necessities and threats identified within a specific context that coincide with socially accepted gender roles in society. They do not seek to challenge—although they are a reflection of—the gendered divisions of labor and women’s subordinate position in society. In this sense, they may not explicitly endorse a strategic and long-term agenda for gender equality. Although the suffering of women is a direct product of skewed power relations in patriarchal hierarchies, the issues are rarely framed as such and activism instead seeks to address immediate needs.

From the very start of the revolution, it became apparent that sexual violence would be the biggest threat to undermining women’s activism in political protests. Among the most leading faces of the revolution was Asmaa Mahfouz, a young woman with ties to the workers’ unions. Mahfouz issued a clarion call on Facebook that quickly went viral, urging everyone in the nation to rise and join the protests. In the call, she wittingly argued that:

Whoever says women shouldn’t go to the protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25th … If you have honor and dignity as a man, come and protect me, and other girls in the protest. (as cited in El Zahed and Wall 2011, p. 1339)

The notion of chivalry was a perennial theme throughout the different waves of the revolution that was both exploited and resisted by women. On the one hand, Asmaa Mahfouz’s comments demonstrate the ways in which women drew on traditional gender norms and interests, to justify their presence, mobilize protestors and urge men to join the battle against sexual violence.

On the other hand, women at the forefront of anti-harassment initiatives that would later surface opposed chivalric means of responding to sexual violence. This was particularly evident in women’s opposition to men forming circles around them to shield away perpetrators of violence. In initiatives, such as OpAntiSH, there was an obstinate insistence to include women in intervention groups rescuing women from sexual violence after long discussions with their male counterparts (Pratt 2020; Nazra 2011a; Antoun 2011). Despite the disparate approaches to addressing the issue, a consensus was reached that sexual violence was an issue of priority for women, society and revolutionaries alike.

When it became clear that their physical presence in the protests was under continual threat due to various forms of sexual violence, women rallied their efforts to affirm their status as equal activists alongside men. Sexual violence was condemned—if not least—for jeopardizing their activism. The ensuing revolutionary chants deeming women’s bodies a ‘red line’ sent a clear message that the issue is of national concern (Kirollos 2016, p. 63). Inadvertently and perhaps serendipitously, a ‘feminist surge’ was resuscitated by the efforts of young women to combat sexual violence. Badran (2016) described the feminist rival as:

A feminism rebooted in the volcano of violence. It rises from deep within the patriarchal culture and the vortex of political struggle. It is a feminism that insists that gender, human beings as men and as women, must be included along with class, race or ethnicity, and religion in the effort to move from patriarchal authoritarianism toward the realization of an egalitarian culture in the state, society, and family.

The focus on ‘practical needs’ namely physical security paradoxically gave rise to an invigorated and unified feminist movement capable of operating in the open-ended arc of a broader, long-term feminist revolution. In resisting the most covert surface-level manifestations of sexual violence, the movement was forced to enter broader discussions regarding the oppressive patriarchal structures that enable sexual violence to prevail. The occurrence of dreadful acts of sexual violence in Tahrir Square—the primary symbol of the revolution—invoked an immediate reaction from a plethora of social actors (Kirollos 2016, p. 63). Women human rights defenders developed and shared a feminist analysis of aggression situated in the culture and sociology of their context. This common understanding, if properly channeled and sustained, could serve as the gateway through which the root causes of gender inequality are created and sustained.

The exertion of women and human rights groups in highlighting and condemning sexual violence subsequently played a pivotal role in shifting Egypt’s legal culture in favor of women’s issues (Kirollos 2016, p. 62). In partnership with the Ministry of Interior establishment, a unit was established to monitor crimes of violence against women in May 2013. The adoption of a national strategy to combat violence against women led by the National Council for Women in May 2015 also signifies a step in a positive direction. The movement against sexual harassment has gained increasing momentum over the past few years, to the extent that Cairo University has established an anti-sexual harassment unit to combat sexual harassment and violence against women on campus in 2015. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment was the amendment of article 306 in the Egyptian penal code in 2014. The amendment directly criminalized sexual harassment for the first time in Egyptian legal history (AhramOnline 2014; El-Rifae 2014; Kirollos 2016, p. 59). Although the new law fell short of acknowledging other types of sexual violence such as anal rape, marital rape and domestic violence, it is nonetheless a significant milestone in altering the legal culture in favor of women (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights 2015 and Kirollos 2016, p. 56). In a context where a reported 99.3% of women have experienced sexual harassment at one point in their lives, such measures to curb sexual violence are likely to radically affect women’s access to the public space and beyond (UN Women Survey as cited in Kingsley 2013).

The emphasis on ‘practical gender interests’, however, came at the expense of women’s incorporation into other channels of influence (Alexander and Apell 2016). In the first parliamentary elections following the ouster of Mubarak, women constituted merely 2% of the 508 seats. Furthermore, in the committees that drafted the 2012 (suspended) and 2014 constitutions, women failed to occupy more than a handful of seats ranging from 5 to 10%. It is important to note, however, that exclusion from formal political challenges in the aftermath of the Jan 25th revolution was not unique to women. The serendipitous nature of the revolution did not allow enough time for various groups to organize themselves. As a result, post-revolutionary elections failed to empower leftists, youth nor women all of whom were at the forefront of the revolution (Alexander and Apell 2016).

Nonetheless, there is a common understanding that sexual violence is directly contingent on women’s inclusion in the public sphere and hence any type of political representation afterward. If the momentum in the movement against sexual violence is sustained, it is likely to pave the way for gender mainstreaming in formal political channels. Whereas sexual violence was conventionally considered a taboo issue, the experiences they faced during the Jan 25th revolution and the subsequent uprisings destigmatized the fear of speaking out against the topic. The scope and coordination of efforts directed against sexual violence are so conspicuous that it has been categorized as the ‘4th wave of feminism’ in Egypt (Kamal 2016). With the exception of established Islamist groups, few civil society actors were able to effectively exploit the political openings posited by the revolution to advance their interests. The accumulated efforts of the anti-sexual violence movement before and during the revolution made this one of the few gains of the revolution. The conspicuous, grotesque and indiscriminate nature of sexual violence that surfaced during the revolution was effectively highlighted, framed and analyzed to induce sustainable change.

Such successes however, remain highly subject to the question of political intent, implementation and accountability. These challenges surface when examining the way the state has dealt with several cases of violence that has been filed under the sexual harassment law. For instance, the state’s response to cases of public mob assaults during the last 5 years—one perpetrated against a female student in Cairo University and another against a woman walking from a wedding in the governorate of Zagazig—reveal that the discourse of victim blaming and shaming is still being adopted by state officials (Kirollos 2016, p. 59; Nazra 2017). Skepticism toward the law’s implementation should remain pervasive especially since those meant to be implementing it are the same ones abusing it. Nonetheless, if the anti-violence against women movement operates with a sustained momentum, there remains a likelihood that such laws translate into more tangible gains in the quest for gender equality in Egypt.

Conclusion

The chapter has demonstrated that sexual violence was paradoxically one of the biggest obstacles and opportunities for women’s emancipation in the Jan 25th revolution. Women protestors from all walks of life were subject to indiscriminate and brutal forms of violence by state and societal actors alike. The nature of political conflict played a crucial role in determining the scope of violence. More overt forms of sexual violence conducted directly on behalf of state forces to deter women’s activism are prevalent in periods where the state is in direct conflict with protestors. This is demonstrated in the cases of virginity tests, ‘the best of all girls’ incident, mob assaults and the selective endorsement of violence against oppositional female protestors or those who do not endorse a ‘state feminism’ viewpoint. Furthermore, the state’s indirect endorsement of sexual violence in the form of societal impunity has enabled the practice to become a societal epidemic as much as it is a political one. The practices of autonomous opportunists and apolitical bystanders who joined the mob assaults as opposed to deterring them reflect the extent to which sexual violence is a widespread societal phenomena.

The case of Egypt reinforces the notion that while political revolutions tend to draw women into the public sphere in large, they often fail to emancipate them despite their significant contributions. The failure of Egyptian women to join the protests as gender activists advancing a broader gender revolution undermined their long-term gendered interests and security. During periods characterized by an upsurge in nationalist sentiment as prevalent during the Jan 25th revolution, women were encouraged to defy gender norms and utilize the public sphere for political activism. The endorsement of their presence in revolutionary movements, however, does not guarantee their protection. Indeed, the lowest period of reported cases of sexual violence was when a bottom-up strand of nationalism reached its peak during first wave of the Jan 25th revolution. However, sexual violence reached its peak in a period where nationalist sentiment was relatively high (albeit a more top-down strand of nationalism). Even as the state encouraged women to enter the public sphere and join the rank of protestors, it failed to guarantee their security.

Nonetheless, such collective experiences of sexual violence faced by women in revolutionary protests movements inversely have a positive effect on the activities of Egyptian feminists and women’s rights activists. In the years prior to the Jan 25th revolution, women and human rights groups have endured several struggles to bring the issue of sexual violence to mainstream public discourse. With little success in the past, the Jan 25th revolution and all subsequent uprisings presented a golden opportunity for the fruits of such efforts to finally be reaped. In rallying their efforts to fight sexual violence, women have made tremendous gains in reclaiming their rights as equal citizens within the public sphere. The coordinated efforts in the plight against sexual violence have resulted in unprecedented sociopolitical and legal gains. Whereas impunity for sexual violence within both the private and public sphere has been the norm, the legal climate is gradually shifting in favor of accountability. The political support accumulated in favor of ending sexual violence could potentially serve as the gateway through which other rights can be pursued later via increased participation in public affairs. Although the revolution failed to address many of the grievances expressed by revolutionary actors such as police brutality, political freedoms and social justice, the fight against sexual violence emerged as one of the few wins from it.