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FEMALE TOURISTS FACE SEXUAL HARASSMENT
BY SHAIMAA FAYED
When a local NGO issued the findings of a study this summer declaring that “98 percent of foreign women have been sexually harassed in Egypt,” the local and international press had a field day. According to an article published in The Washington Post on August 17, “female travelers consider Egypt one of the worst countries in the world for harassment on the streets, second only to Afghanistan.” Shortly afterwards, local papers voiced concern over the UK government’s issuance of advisories warning its citizens that they may be exposed to sexual assault when visiting Egypt; some 500,000 warning leaflets were distributed last year to British nationals arriving in Sharm Al Sheikh and Hurghada airports.
In a country where tourism constitutes one of the most important foreign exchange earners, recording over $10.8 billion in revenues for FY 2007-08, and employing 14 percent of the workforce, the recent media headlines have unnerved more than a handful of concerned groups. The questions on everyone’s mind: Has sexual harassment in Egypt snowballed into a debilitating social trend? What impact does the phenomenon have on Egypt’s tourism sector?
Nihad Abul Komsan, the outspoken founder of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), which commissioned the sexual harassment study earlier this year, asserts that the unwelcome overtures with which women are greeted daily on Egypt’s streets can no longer be impassively dismissed by Egyptian society as a non-issue. The study conducted by the center polled 1,010 Egyptian women, an equal number of Egyptian men and 109 foreign women with regard to their perceptions of sexual harassment in Egypt. “Although we were aware of the frequent catcalling on the streets, we weren’t quite ready for the findings of our survey. Eighty-three percent of the Egyptian women and an even more startling 98 percent of the foreign women surveyed said they had been sexually harassed in Egypt,” she states.
The findings of the ECWR’s study have driven many to probe the issue of sexual harassment beyond the discourse of human rights, taking it a stride further and addressing it within an economic framework. Last month, an ECWR seminar on “Sexual harassment and its impacts on the Egyptian economy” saw a panel of MPs, economics professors and journalists discuss the adverse long-term effects of the rising trend, notably on the tourism industry.
“Coral reefs and beaches alone do not constitute tourism,” Abul Komsan asserts. “One’s interaction with the people and the culture of a new country is pivotal to any travel experience. Egypt’s tourism sector faces competition from neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Jordan. If safety is not a definitive factor here, then people will head elsewhere. Something as simple as a fight with a cab driver who harasses you can leave you feeling violated, and ruin your entire vacation.”
Disenchanted voices
Mariam Tutakheel, a 33-year-old Afghan-German tourist, is one of many women who view sexual harassment as a perennial problem in Egypt. “It seems to happen everywhere here,” she says. “It doesn’t matter whether you are in Zamalek or downtown or outside of Cairo. I went to Hurghada with my family and I was walking with my father. He has white hair and looks very oriental, but some men didn’t pay attention to him walking with me and still made passes. It even gets physical in crowded places such as Khan Al Khalili and around some of the mosques we visited, which is absurd. It doesn’t dissuade me from visiting Egypt again, but I wouldn’t recommend that any of my girlfriends come to Egypt alone; only in a group.”
Another female tourist, 25-year-old Briton Diana Trembly, explains that what could have otherwise been an idyllic vacation in Egypt was marred in part by an incident of sexual harassment. “My tour leader kept touching me inappropriately and I had to tell him, in front of everyone, that he needed to keep his hands to himself,” she says.
Feedback from the press office at the British embassy in Cairo seems to support Tutakheel and Trembly’s stories. Rebecca Stephenson, media officer at the embassy, told Business Monthly that the number of sexual harassment cases reported to the embassy has tripled over the past three years. “There was a recent surge with 14 sexual assaults reported to us in a 17-day period at the end of July and beginning of August 2008,” she says, adding that “many [of the victims] were under the age of 18.” The reported incidents have varied from ogling and suggestive remarks to groping, and even three cases of rape reported last year.
When asked how the embassy has addressed the recurrent complaints, Stephenson replies, “Other than highlighting the problem in our travel advice we have brought the situation to the attention of the minister of tourism, who is very supportive of our efforts to reduce the incidence of sexual assaults on British nationals. We have also run discussions with governors, mayors, police chiefs, etc. in tourist areas to raise awareness. Additionally, we have provided sexual assault training for senior Egyptian officials by the UK Metropolitan Police and are looking at ways of taking this further.”
According to the 2007 tourism statistics issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization & Statistics (CAPMAS), over 958,000 British tourists visited Egypt last year, making Britain the third most important generating market for Egypt’s tourism sector after Russia and Germany. Assessing the impact that negative publicity has had on these tourist figures is difficult given the absence of statistics on repeat tourism. The total number of tourists visiting Egypt reached 11.1 million in 2007, up 22.1 percent from 2006. However, if the findings of the ECWR’s study and recent international media headlines are indicators to be taken into account, Egypt’s tourism sector may come to resemble the proverbial leaky bucket – new tourists pouring in, but many also leaking out.
Wading through cultural change
In 2006, the Ministry of Tourism launched a new five-year campaign to promote Egypt as a tourist destination. Around $36 million was spent in 2007 alone to promote the Egypt brand abroad, with another LE 10 million spent on domestic radio, TV and outdoor advertising, and PR campaigns to raise national awareness on the importance of tourism. Addressing issues such as the overcharging of tourists and sexual harassment, amongst other social occurrences, the campaigns aim to improve the image of Egypt and instill a tourist-friendly culture in the country.
When asked whether these efforts are threatened by figures published by the ECWR, Amr El Ezaby, head of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, responds “No one denies that sexual harassment exists in the country; we are in fact one of the institutions that work to raise awareness of this problem in Egypt. However, from a sociological point of view, there are shortcomings to the ECWR study that exploded this issue in the media to begin with. The study was conducted on a very small extrapolated sample that does not represent a true cross-section of Egypt. In order for the findings of any study to warrant validity, we must know the methodology by which it was conducted, where and when the sample was drawn, the nationalities of the foreign women surveyed, as well as the constants and the variables. The rationale behind the study was small, but the hype around it was huge.”
El Ezaby explains that sexual harassment is not the problem in and of itself, but rather that it is part and parcel of a larger social issue, namely the deterioration of the cultural perception of women. “This is the real root of the problem,” he asserts, “and it’s bigger than any one institution.”
The economics of harassment
Beyond the traditional explanations given for the rising incidence of sexual harassment – high unemployment, the dissolution of morals, sexual repression, and gender stereotypes in a patriarchal society – Abul Komsan cites economic dispossession as a pivotal factor, and one which has downplayed the importance of tourism in the minds of Egyptians. She explains that although the last five years have seen the news of Egypt’s economic reform and increasing revenue from tourism splashed all over the media, the rosy benefits of economic development have not been felt by Egypt’s lower socioeconomic classes.
“We cite a GDP growth of over 7 percent, yet poverty is on the rise and stories of corruption amongst Egypt’s business elite are commonplace,” she states. “This has extremely dangerous repercussions on our society. The average Egyptian cannot fathom that the revenue from tourism is of any benefit to his livelihood because he does not see the tangible cause and effect [that tourism brings economic prosperity]. He sees that only businesspeople who own hotels, resorts and travel agencies benefit from tourism, but not him.”
Hamdy Abdel Azim, an economics professor and president of the Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, concurs, adding that in other Arab cities, such as Dubai and Beirut, sexual harassment is less rampant, not only because the laws stringently penalize the assailant, but also because the citizens of these countries understand that their nations thrive on tourism, and that it is inextricably linked to their economic welfare. “Egypt has always been an agriculture-based economy,” he says. “Industrial development and the growth of the tourism sector are relatively new to the country. In order to have a nation with a tourist-friendly mentality, we must add tourism awareness education into our school and university curricula.”
Hassan Badrawy, head of the legislative committee of the National Council for Women (NCW), which is currently calling for a revision of the criminal codes outlawing sexual harassment in Egypt, disagrees that Egypt’s economic environment is the main trigger behind the rising phenomenon. “It seems to be the new trend in our country to blame everything on economic circumstances,” he says. “I do not deny that there is an economic factor at hand, but to me, the real problem is that our culture has become more repressed. When I was a student back in the late 60s and early 70s, miniskirts were in fashion. Women could walk with short dresses in the streets and no one harassed them. Only when the petrodollar saw masses of Egyptians emigrate to the Gulf did they begin adopting a new Bedouin ideology, indoctrinated with cultural ideals that were alien to the Egypt we knew. Any sociological study will show you that this period of emigration has had a considerable impact on changing popular ideology in Egypt,” Badrawy explains.
A legal framework
Women’s rights organizations have voiced mounting concern over the quandary of sexual harassment in Egypt. The NCW, under whose mandate falls the proposal of public policy matters on the development and empowerment of women, is advocating for a revision of the laws pertaining to sexual harassment in Egypt. The proposal presented by the council’s legislative committee calls for the Egyptian penal code to include detailed definitions of acts that fall under the umbrella of sexual harassment, with the penalty for assailants being a fine of up to LE 1,000 or a jail sentence of up to a year, depending on the severity of the crime.
Badrawy explains that the proposal covers all forms of unwelcome sexual overtures, namely catcalls, inappropriate messages over the phone or via the Internet, deliberate touching, stalking, or an invasion of the physical privacy of another by any means. “In my opinion, the amendment of the law is pivotal irrespective of whether or not sexual harassment constitutes a phenomenon,” he explains. “If we have no laws to thwart the problem, then it will grow into a phenomenon. And the law we are proposing is not confined to men harassing women. It protects anyone who is exposed to any means of harassment, be it a woman harassing a man, a man harassing a man, or a woman harassing a woman.”
Abul Komsan is an avid supporter of the proposal suggested by the NCW, contending that it is the only viable means of addressing the issue. “We need a detailed law pertaining to sexual harassment just as we have a detailed law pertaining to traffic,” she contends. “A woman subjected to sexual harassment, whether a local or a tourist, should be able to file a complaint to a police officer on the street. We have created checkpoints all over the city for people to obtain their licenses without having to go to the traffic authority. We should have similar establishments for people to file complaints of harassment.”
The debate sparked by the ECWR has seen the media, women’s rights groups, economists and legislators thresh out proposals and solutions for what has otherwise been a neglected and often taboo social dilemma. “It’s time we stop undermining this issue,” asserts Abul Komsan. “When a huge percentage of women complain that they have been sexually harassed in Egypt, then we have a problem that needs to be addressed. And where tourism is concerned, it’s important to remember that it’s the little nuances and gestures that create the difference in any travel experience and make a guest feel welcome in a new country... The devil’s in the details.
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