Reconsidérer la dépolitisation : l’approche du témoin de HarassMap et la création d’une masse critique pour lutter contre le harcèlement sexuel en Égypte

Abstract

This paper argues that the community-based work of anti-sexual harassment initiatives represents a political process toward ending sexual harassment in Egypt. Since the Egyptian Revolution, community-based initiatives have employed strategies to transform social perceptions and behaviors regarding public sexual harassment. The strategies of these new initiatives, like HarassMap, include conducting street outreach campaigns and employing technological platforms to reframe the nature of social responsibility and to disrupt gendered stereotypes. Yet, a number of scholars have challenged this community-based anti-harassment work, particularly the early work of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), for avoiding political engagement and failing to address structural gender inequalities. Drawing on Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1998) argument regarding norm emergence, this paper maintains that anti-sexual harassment initiatives, like HarassMap, employ an approach to social change that aims to build a critical mass around new social norms. By undermining patriarchal norms that blame victims and encouraging people to intervene against public sexual harassment, HarassMap is creating a new vision of social responsibility. When a tipping point is reached, HarassMap activists believe that public outcry will then force political and legal reform from the state to protect women in public space. Such community-based approaches are political but the reform entities like HarassMap seek results only when there is enough public will for change.