Combating Sexual Violence in Egypt’s Streets: On-the-ground Strategies of Action

• In Event: 535 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Paper Session. Strategy and Social Movements

Abstract

In 2012 in Egypt, as incidents of group sexual assault were increasingly reported, new forms of collective action emerged to combat sexual violence against women in public places. “Anti-harassment” groups responded to the perceived inaction of the state by creating patrol-type intervention teams that operate on the ground to rescue women from sexual assault. This paper examines five of these groups and asks how people devise strategies of collective action to protect certain spaces from sexual assault, when the state is seen as incapable of, and unwilling to, provide adequate protection. I analyze in-depth interviews with founders and members of the anti-harassment groups to examine how their strategies evolved. Theoretically, I build on the concept of legal cynicism - defined as people’s distrust in the law and law enforcement agencies - which has been used by criminologists to predict levels of inter-personal violence, and ask how groups, as opposed to individuals, devise strategies of collective action as a result of legal cynicism. Using insights from social movement theory, I argue that, to understand how legal cynicism shapes collective action, we must look at activists’ perceptions of the police’s ability to protect as well as to coerce. The findings reveal that on the ground, strategies of action differed depending on the presence or absence of the police in the space in which the groups operated, and on activists’ perceptions of the police’s protective and coercive potential.

Author

• Magda Boutros, Northwestern University