Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The uprising of anti-sexual violence movements is emerging across Egypt post, despite the presence of social silence, the lack of attention regarding women’s rights problems, and a cultural mindset of blaming the victims of sexual assaults. These movements are trying to make changes at many different levels and to create a new platform for social debates about the issue (Skalli, 2014). One of the dominant trends in the development of the Egyptian women’s movements in the past ten years is the increase in the number of women’s NGOs, initiatives and groups dealing with aspects of women’s lives such as education, health, legal education. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, the new movement of activists had increased using different and creative methodologies to try to refute the idea that addressing women’s rights is a separate problem or that it has a lower priority compared to other rights towards change, justice, and dignity. All types of sexual violence have been increasing in the last five years. A UN statistic, 99% of Egyptian women had been verbally or physically sexually assaulted in different governorates, such as Alexandria and Cairo (Langohr, 2015). Blaming the victim of sexual violence has been the most common reaction to those statistics and the easiest way to ignore the main reasons. This study traces the development of the new anti-sexual violence movement after the revolution by analyzing different research papers, articles, and organizational reports with particular attention to what called the ‘NGO-isation’ of the social movement.