Tag Archive
New Egypt film sparks debate about sexual harassment
Released last month and inspired by true stories, the film is titled “678,” for the number of the bus that one of the main characters rides to work each morning, where she becomes the helpless object of lewd behavior. Writer-director Mohamed Diab said the numerals also signified a problem that was increasing steadily as... »
Mapping sexual harassment in the streets of Cairo
Egyptian women who have experienced leering, whistles, groping or other sexual harassment on Cairo’s thoroughfares and backalleys will soon be able to instantly speak out on the internet when it happens. A planned website, Harrasmap, will allow women to quickly report instances of harassment via text message or Twitter, to be loaded onto a digital... »
Egyptian faience was also homemade, researcher says
Image by peterjr1961 via Flickr Not content with managing the household it appears women in Ancient Egypt were also keeping the budget in the black with some home-based manufacturing. That is the conclusion an Australian team has drawn by using synchrotrons to analyze the synthetic turquoise that was popular during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten around... »
Slowly changing Egypt’s old stereotypes
After February’s vote by the State Council for Administrative Judges against female judges, the council’s vice president was quoted by Egyptian media as saying he didn’t think women could handle the workload of cases. Another top official added that having female judges could violate Islamic proscriptions against meetings between unrelated men and women. The... »
Egypt cleric: ‘Niqab merely a tradition’
Image via Wikipedia Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, said full-face veiling (niqab) is merely a tradition that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith. Although most Muslim women in Egypt wear the Islamic headscarf, increasing numbers are adopting the niqab as well. The niqab question reportedly arose when Sheikh Tantawi was visiting a girls’... »
Egyptian film – Scheherazade: Tell me a Story
“Scheherazade: Tell Me a Story,” screened at the Venice film festival outside the main competition, tells the story of Hebba, a successful talk-show host whose husband urges her to steer clear of politics in order to forward his own career. As the deputy editor of a state-run newspaper in Cairo, Karim has been told by... »
Gender representation in Ancient Egyptian tomb art
In the typical New Kingdom tomb painting, relief, or statue, males are dressed in a shendyt (kilt) with perhaps a shirt, while women wear tight-fitting sheath dresses. However, archaeological examples of ancient Egyptian clothing demonstrate that the most common garment was a bag tunic… a linen bag with sleeves that fit very loosely. Both... »
Quota law for women in Egypt's Parliament
Egypt’s parliament has passed a law allocating a quota of 64 seats in the lower house to women, in what a minister said on Monday was aimed at promoting their role in society. The new law adopted on Sunday will give women more than 12 percent of the seats in an expanded parliament after the... »
Egypt’s Spinsters Fight Against Society Stereotypes
It is a challenge to be unmarried in Egypt and even more so if the woman is “growing old” according to Egyptian customs. This means any unmarried woman past her mid-twenties is seen negatively through society’s lens, leaving many questions to be answered. However, a group of Egyptian female activists are speaking out against... »
Egyptian women, some men, fight sexual harassment
Self-defense classes have popped up in the last year across Egypt as this conservative Muslim country for the first time turns major attention to the issue of sexual harassment. Women — and even some men — have launched campaigns against sexual harassment around Cairo, using Facebook to raise awareness among the country’s Internet-savvy youth.... »
