Ms Ostadh fought back and then went public about her ordeal

An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years with hard labour for sexual harassment of a woman in the street.

Sharif Gommaa was also ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds ($895) damages to Noha Rushdi Saleh for the attack in Cairo’s Heliopolis district.

Women’s rights activists welcomed the ruling saying it was the first known case of prison for such an offence.

The defendant was accused of repeatedly groping Noha Rushdi Saleh as he drove slowly alongside her in his car.

Although many Egyptian women and visiting foreigners complain of unwanted sexual advances in Egyptian streets, the subject is rarely addressed by the authorities or mainstream media.

After an hour-long tussle she dragged her attacker to a police station   Noha’s case highlighted in media

However, this attack in June became the focus of media coverage after the 27-year-old filmmaker, also known as Noha Ostadh, went public about her ordeal.

She told the BBC how shocked she had been at her attacker’s behaviour, and also at the attitude of passers-by who told her not to go to the police - while others blamed her for provoking the attack.

After an hour-long tussle in which she dragged Gomaa to a police station, she says the police officers initially refused to open an investigation.

Women regularly face harassment on the streets of Egyptian cities

The case was taken up by the Badeel opposition daily, which blamed Egypt’s oppressive government, and “the majority of citizens who identified with the oppressor”, and “decades of incitement against women” in some mosques.

‘Example’

Egyptian women’s rights campaigners have praised the judge for handing down what is being seen as a harsh, exemplary sentence.

Engy Ghozlan, of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, told AFP news agency: “This is the first case we know of where someone was jailed for groping.

“The judge was obviously setting an example.”

The organisation released a survey this year that showed 98% of foreign women and 83% of Egyptian women had experienced sexual harassment. Nearly two-thirds of men admitted harassing women in public.

But very few reported cases because of a “total lack of confidence in the police and judicial systems”, Engy Ghozlan said.

In an unusual development earlier in October, eight men were arrested in Cairo for allegedly taking part in a mob-style sexual attack on women pedestrians.

The attack, during the Eid holiday, was reminiscent of an incident in 2006 during the same holiday which marks the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

On both occasions, witnesses reported that police officers were present but did nothing to protect women who were violently groped and had some of their clothing torn off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7682951.stm

In a quiet corner in Afghanistan, women are taking jobs and leadership positions. Despite the unique characteristics of the area that have allowed for such a step forward, the developments in Bamian may be a preview of the broader possibilities for women if peace is ever secured in the strictly Muslim country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/world/asia/06bamian.html?hp

From Freya:

Rep. John Labruzzo (R-Louisiana) thinks it’s a great idea to offer poor women 1000 if they get sterilized, to “deal with a problem of generational welfare.” 

Yep, you heard me.

(By the way, Louisiana is a state with over 16% of its people living below the poverty line. We’re talking about 300 000 women here. Also, about 42% of people below the poverty line in Louisiana are black, only 13% white… see here http://www.statehealthfacts.org/profileind.jsp?ind=14&cat=1&rgn=20)

Another question: why is it always the women who are supposed to be sterilized? There is such a ridiculous assumption that first of all, poverty is somehow genetic (!?!), and secondly, that only women carry this gene. HUH?!

Watch him try to pretend like he never took this idea seriously…(apparently he took it seriously enough to mention it…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsRgp6qSKL4

This information is part one of GROW’s educational “bathroom campaign”: a series of educational flyers posted in bathrooms to spread information about domestic and international women’s issues.  If you have a topic that you would like to include in the series, email grow@amherst.edu or come to our meetings, Mondays at 9 in the Women’s Center (Keefe Campus Center basement). 

The euphemism “comfort women” (ianfu) was coined by imperial Japan to refer to young females who were forced to offer sexual services to Japanese troops before and during World War II (1932-1945).  Poverty and tradition were factors in their submission.  Estimates of the number of comfort women range between 50 and 200 thousand, 80 percent of which were Korean.  Each was violated 20-40 times daily.

In December 1992, the Korean Council conducted a nationwide fundraising drive to help the survivors.  In March of 1993, South Korean President Kim Young Sam announced that Seoul would not seek material compensation from Japan for former comfort women, but urged Tokyo to investigate the issue thoroughly and make the truth public.

Though former comfort women from around he world testify that they were abducted or tricked by promises of work in factories, former Japananese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that there was “no evidence to prove there was coercion.”

Former Korean Comfort Women rally in front of the Japanese embassy every day.

Sarah Palin thinks women should pay for their own rape kits and forensic exams.  News flash to McCain and the Republican party:  Just because she’s a woman doesn’t means she’s a feminist.   

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/opinion/26fri4.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

In other news, apparently it’s your own business if you want to rape your comatose wife.  I mean, she obviously consented to all sex, all the time if she married you, right…?  WRONG.

http://www.feministing.com/archives/010994.html

http://v10.vday.org/news-alerts/eve-bukavu

Next week is Banned Books Week, and this year’s events are focused on feminist lit that has been banned at some point in our history.  Check out Amnesty International’s table in Keefe and listen to students read from these resilient books Monday the 29 through Thursday the 2.

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Thought provoking reading suggestions from GROWster Freya Riedlin ‘09:

Here’s an interesting article about new laws being passed requiring offenders in domestic abuse cases to wear GPS devices:

http://www.msmagazine.com/Summer2008/GPStracking.asp 

here is a summary of women’s rights issues on the ballot in various states in November…:

http://www.msmagazine.com/Summer2008/whatsonyourballot.asp

and to top it off - Fox’ news coverage of the transgender candidate in this season’s America’s next top model - real hard to top in stupidity and discrimination….

http://www.bitchmagazine.org/post/a-shining-example-of-why-fox-news-and-us-weekly-suck

Greetings from GROW!  We are excited about this new means of communicating with the general student body about international women’s rights issues.  Feel free to comment on our blogs or leave any questions or suggestions you might have.

We recently hosted a 3-on-3 basketball tournament to raise money for American Assistance for Cambodia, and the Asian Students Association donated all of their profits from Night Market to the same cause. AAC, along with Japan Relief for Cambodia, has started a program called “Girls Be Ambitious” that subsidizes families who put their daughters in school instead of forcing them into labor, which often results in them being trafficked into sex work.  The program monitors the girls attendance and stops funding families whose daughters miss too much school.  GROW was impressed by this program because it targets the root of the problem with a realistic strategy. 

Thousands of girls in Asia and around the world are sex workers:  Some are sold to “dealers” by their families in exchange for loans that supposedly can be paid off after the girls work for a certain amount of time, but the girls pay their pimps rent and are at the mercy of arbitrary decisions to let girls go when they are no longer profitable.  Other girls join “voluntarily.”  They are not sold, but sex work provides a more lucrative way to support themselves and their families than other work that is available to them.  Many sex workers around the world become sex workers in hopes of meeting a sex tourist from the developed world who will love them, provide for them, and give them a visa.  These dreams rarely become reality, and many sex workers end up living with HIV/AIDS in terrible economic situations with little or no healthcare. 

The most tragic element of this situation, however, is that the girls’ other options can be equally horrifying. Women have always been treated as disposable objects in much of the world, and the sex industry has only provided a highly lucrative outlet for this crime.  Programs like Girls Be Ambitious, though not the whole answer, are a way to give girls more options, or at least provide them with information about the dangers they face.

For more information about the program, visit here. To learn more about the reality of sex workers around the world, read Global Woman (Ehrenreich and Hochschild).