Read this article from the Financial Times. Here is a snippet:
Over the recent Eid al-Fitr holidays, about two dozen volunteers gathered for the first time at subway stations to try to give a bit of relief to women shopping and travelling during days off. Without nearly enough resources to stop the sometimes wanton public tormenting of women, they concentrate on the most egregious violation: men storming the subway cars meant to shelter women from the groping hands, ogling eyes and foul-mouthed catcalls of males.
“The problem is that 50 per cent of the population is scared of the other 50 per cent, so that women can’t go out or work,” said Nihal Saad Zaghloul, an activist with the group Basma, a civil society group that emerged from the revolution, which initiated the harassment patrols. “The men feel they can do it. They know they will not be punished, so they do it.”
...the vast majority of victims were dressed like Wafa Abdel Fattah, a 23-year-old employee of a call centre, wearing a loose-fitting gown and a beige headscarf over her hair, an outfit covering all but her face and hands.
“I have been harassed so many times it’s like a routine,” she says, after getting off the subway. “The young men come into the women’s compartment and they give us dirty looks or say nasty things. Once, a man slapped a woman in the face.”
