Abstract
Sexual harassment in Cairo, and in Egypt more widely, is a popular target of government and non-governmental organisation-led prevention efforts. However, I problematise these efforts, arguing that sexual harassment is often reduced to a criminal problem of disorder and disobedience, where solutions focus on individual responsibility without consideration for wider structural forces that influence its prevalence. Through analysing dominant discourses and voices within the anti-sexual harassment movement, the themes of securitisation, moralisation, and privatisation are used to highlight the inadvertent complicity of feminist praxis in sexist authoritarian neoliberal governmentalities under the auspices of ‘gender justice’. Ultimately, I argue that intervention efforts cannot be taken for granted as hallmarks of progress in development or modes of empowerment for women. Rather, they embody a particular set of contradictions and contestations that constitute a ‘gender ritual’ rather than gender justice.
This chapter is based in part on a revised (and condensed) version of my unpublished Master’s thesis, submitted for examination in April 2016.
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Nasr, H. (2017). Gender Justice and the Politics of Sexual Harassment in Cairo. In: Lacey, A. (eds) Women, Urbanization and Sustainability. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95182-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95182-6_10
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