Gender Justice and the Politics of Sexual Harassment in Cairo

Hala Nasr
Additional contact information
Hala Nasr: NZ Defence Force

A chapter in Women, Urbanization and Sustainability, 2017, pp 221-245 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Sexual Harassment; Gender Justice; Gendered Rituals; Feminist Practice; Securitization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-1-349-95182-6_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349951826

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95182-6_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Gender, Development and Social Change from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().