Seminar Report

“Legal Awareness for Girls and their Families Regarding Sexual Harassment Issue”

The Project

                    Supporting Girls in front of Sexual Harassment Issue

** Seminar Title: “Legal Awareness for Girls and their Families Regarding Sexual Harassment Issue”.

** The seminar venue: the office of the Association of Woman Friends and Development in Al Matarya.

** The donor: Mama Cash (Dutch Association).

** The Partner association: Association of Woman Friends and Development

** The implementing association: The Association of Egyptian Female lawyers

** The seminar’s objective: raising the girls’ families awareness and their mothers regarding how to face the sexual harassment issue and introducing the legal and executive mechanisms that they may resort to defend themselves and their daughters from sexual harassment that they suffer from, especially they are from poor regions and slums.

** The Seminar Events:

In the context of completing the seminars series held by the Association of Egyptian Female Lawyers entitled “Raising the Awareness of Girls and their Families Regarding the Sexual Harassment Issue”, the association coordinated with the Association of Woman Friends and Development in Al Matarya to hold a seminar with the girls’ families and mothers whose age ranges from 30 to 50 years old, among whom there are non-workers (housewives) and other who are workers in different jobs (supervisor in disabled centers – teachers – employees in real estate registration – handicrafts). This came in the context of raising the awareness of girls’ families and mothers regarding how to face this issue and urge them to support their girls who were exposed to violence and use the available legal mechanisms, in addition to how to uncover this crime. The results and importance of this seminar represented in the mothers’ narration of their personal experiences all over their lives and how they faced harassment incidents. The most important is that their narration of what they taught their daughter to face sexual harassment they suffer from so that we know how much these mothers are aware of the legal and executive mechanisms to face harassment and the association attempt to know their needs and suggestions for safe street for them and their daughters.

The seminar was moderated by Mrs. Rabha Fathy, lawyer and the chairperson of the Association of the Egyptian Female lawyers, who began with violence against women in general then shifted to sexual harassment in particular in an open discussion.

Mrs. Rabha Fathy shed light on the importance of uncovering harassment to which women are exposed to whether in work places, transportation means or even in homes, as this increases danger of the situation and help the criminal to escape punishment and dare to practice harassment in next times more than before as he is sure that he will not be punished. This is because some girls do not speak about what happened for them in schools or work places fearing of the consequences of that which may represented in dismissing from work or failing in school…etc.

The seminar tackled many points among which are:

• The concept of sexual harassment.
• The forms of sexual harassment.
• The reasons of non-facing sexual harassment in society.
• The psychological and practical impacts on harassed girl.
• How to deal with the harasser and prove the sexual harassment incident.
• Raising awareness regarding the legal procedures to be taken in front of these harassments.
• In case of catching the harasser.
• In case of harasser escape.
• Sample of girls who took legal procedures to face sexual harassment.

At the end of the discussion, the participants presented their suggestions whether for the association or the state to decrease the sexual harassment.

The participants’ suggestions:

• Raising girls’ awareness who suffered from harassment by male teenagers in front of schools.
• The importance of women police officers in police stations to receive harassment cases because of what girls face in police stations especially as their case do not bear more annoyances.
• Raising girls and mothers’ awareness of the importance of activating the penal code texts that punish harassment.
• Legal assistance offices for harassment to provide legal assistance and center for rehabilitating those victims psychologically to re-trust society.
• Shedding light on samples combating harassment and narrating their success in combating harassment using legal means to encourage girls and their mothers to report regardless of society’s view or the difficulty of proving the incident, on the other hand to support these samples and create other combating samples.