This August, two bloody incidents took place within a few hours on the Oases Road in Giza: three young women were chased at dawn by young men in cars, and it ended with their car crashing into a lorry and the face of one of them being disfigured. Hours earlier, the drivers of a small pickup truck and a microbus pursued a private car carrying a mother and her daughter in order to harass them deliberately, and it ended with the car being rammed. Although the perpetrators were arrested, the two incidents sparked widespread anger and raised questions: to what extent has the public sphere in Egypt become hostile to women? And why do crimes of violence keep recurring despite everything that is said about empowering and protecting women?
The question does not come out of nowhere: data from the Edraak Observatory show that 2024 saw 1,195 crimes of violence against women and girls recorded, the highest toll in five years. Are we facing a structural explosion in women’s reality? Or were the protection and empowerment policies nothing but formal slogans in the face of a social and legislative system that entrenches the danger instead of deterring it?
Crimes of violence against women in Egypt have risen alarmingly over the past four years, according to the Edraak Observatory report: they increased by 95.9% between 2020 and 2021, then continued to rise by about 23.7% in 2022, before recording a slight decrease of 5.6% in 2023, and then rose again to reach their peak in 2024, with an increase of 25.8% over the previous year.
In 2024 alone, the Observatory documented 1,195 crimes of violence against women and girls, compared with 950 crimes in 2023, 1,006 in 2022, 813 in 2021 and only 415 in 2020. This continuous escalation reflects the failure of the existing preventive policies to curb the phenomenon or to contain its structural causes.
As for the details of the latest year, 540 crimes of domestic violence were recorded, and murders topped the list with a total of 363 crimes, followed by 153 crimes of rape, 182 crimes of sexual harassment, 100 attempted murders and 90 cases of violent physical assault that caused fractures or permanent disabilities, in addition to 13 cases of restriction of movement. The report also documented 97 suicides by women and 33 failed attempts, which highlights the deep psychological impact of the continuous violence against them.
A Male Space Hostile to Women
Incidents of violence against women cannot be considered mere individual incidents or exceptions, as is promoted in society; they are part of a structural system rooted in the prevailing culture and the collective consciousness. As these crimes increase, what is known globally as the “manosphere” (the male space hostile to women) is emerging, and it is expanding remarkably in Egypt, especially through social media platforms, where groups on the Telegram app have turned into organised arenas for incitement, defamation and the ridicule of women.
Feminist activist Mayar Makki, founder of the “Barr Aman” group, says that this phenomenon is not only local but global, yet its manifestations in Egypt are linked to a culture that legitimises and justifies violence. She believes that the real danger lies in viewing the killings of women as individual incidents, when they are in fact the expression of a system that entrenches “the man’s right” to discipline a woman, whether he is a husband, a father or a relative.
She adds: “In this culture, women’s bodies are not treated as personal property, but as public property subject to the authority of the family and society, which explains why domestic violence persists and recurs.” She points out that harassment in public space is not a sexual act so much as a display of power and an exercise of domination. “The message the harasser wants to convey is simple: a woman has no right to be here. Her presence threatens traditional male perceptions,” she says, stressing that these behaviours are not confined to a particular social class or age group but extend across all levels.
She explains that a key part of the spread of this phenomenon is due to the aggressors’ sense of impunity, as laws on combating domestic violence are still absent, and although there is legislation criminalising harassment, society often sympathises with the aggressor or helps him escape, while women suffer inhumane treatment inside police stations, which makes many of them hesitate to file reports. She considers that the announced rates of violence reflect only a tiny part of reality, since many violations are neither documented nor disclosed.
Feminist activist Aya Mounir, founder of the “Superwoman” initiative, believes that the pace of violence in society has risen, and that this is strongly reflected on women, as the group with the least protection and the fewest privileges. She explains that most crimes against women are committed out of male motives linked to not accepting rejection, whether from a partner, a husband or a former fiancé, noting that the word “no” may get women killed.
She tells Zawia3: “Harassment has never been driven by a purely sexual motive; it is a form of control and of hatred of women. Stalking and following have become a strong phenomenon that sometimes leads to murder. Women pay heavy economic prices to protect themselves, by resorting to private cars or ride-hailing apps, but they discover that even these means are no longer safe.”
The initiative’s founder adds: “Egyptian streets are unsafe for women, whatever their means of transport, and the solution does not lie in security measures alone; it also needs a media discourse that focuses on awareness and on criminalising violence, along with improving the security infrastructure, such as deploying patrols and providing lighting and surveillance cameras on roads and streets, especially on the highways that lack basic safety features.”
The activist considers that the escalation of violence has economic and social causes, alongside a discourse hostile to women’s freedom and to the feminist movement, which coincides with women’s growing awareness of their rights and of their ability to refuse and to demand, and this generates violent reactions against them. She notes that the growing media and rights attention to cases of violence against women has made this phenomenon more visible and more closely monitored.
About eight million women and girls are subjected to violence, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), and Cairo Governorate ranks first in rates of crimes against women, at 32.7%, followed by Giza Governorate at 23.3%. According to a study conducted by UN Women in 2013, 99.3 per cent of women in Egypt have been subjected to sexual harassment during their lives.
Legislative Shortcomings
Mai Saleh, an expert on gender issues, believes that the absence of deterrent penalties and the neglect of the question of rehabilitating potential perpetrators are among the roots of the crisis. Society includes groups more likely to commit violence because of a lack of awareness and distorted concepts related to freedom, guardianship and patriarchy, which fuels hate speech and incitement against women, especially in the digital space. She explains that electronic or cyber violence does not stop at the boundaries of the platforms but turns into physical and sexual practices in the street, as the inciters encourage themselves and others to move from words to action.
She tells Zawia3: “Women are often used as an ‘outlet’ for men’s anger resulting from economic and social pressures, amid a male-dominated culture that justifies the aggressors’ actions and blames women.”
The expert criticises the persistence of legal provisions that allow impunity, such as Articles 17 and 60 of the Penal Code, which give judges the power to reduce a sentence or to justify the act as a “right to discipline” or as motivated by good faith. She stresses that these articles, along with reconciliation or the waiving of complaints in serious cases, contribute to laxity towards women’s rights and tolerance of the shedding of their blood, as was clearly seen in some cases in which public opinion sympathised with the perpetrators rather than the victims.
She adds: “The absence of accurate databases and the low rates of reporting crimes, which do not exceed 10% of the actual incidents, further blur the picture. Even those few reports face difficulties with the police and the prosecution, while a large proportion of them end without reaching court. As for the cases that reach the courts, many of them collapse because of procedural loopholes exploited by the perpetrators’ lawyers, which allows the aggressors to escape punishment.”
She stresses that the persistence of all these factors combined (habituation to violence, digital incitement, male-dominated culture, weak legal deterrence and the absence of effective justice) makes women more vulnerable to violence in both the public and private spheres, and fuels a dangerous phenomenon that threatens their security and their lives.
In the same context, Noura Mohamed, director of the anti-violence programme at the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA), refers to the globally recognised concept of “misogyny”, which is linked to hatred of women or to directing violence at them simply because they are female, while in the Egyptian context it corresponds to terms such as “discrimination”, “marginalisation” and “gender-based violence”. She notes that the manifestations of misogyny in Egyptian society appear in multiple forms of violence against women, including domestic violence such as forced marriage, child marriage, female genital mutilation and deprivation of education, as well as violence in the public sphere such as crimes of harassment, sexual assault and online blackmail. She stresses that these practices aim to humiliate women, belittle them and subject them to male domination, whether within the family or in public space.
Noura points out that violence against women may be individual, such as an assault by a husband or a family member, or may extend on a larger scale through crimes such as so-called “honour crimes”. Public discourse in society contributes to entrenching the phenomenon, as blame is placed on the victim through questions about her clothes, where she was or when she went out, instead of condemning and rejecting the crime, and these social and media justifications help to fuel and justify violence. She stresses that misogyny is not merely individual behaviour but the product of a social culture that entrenches the idea of women’s weakness and legitimises control over them through phrases such as “I am raising her” or “I am afraid for her”, noting that providing a safe educational environment for girls and raising them with skills and self-confidence, along with creating safe streets and effective protection mechanisms, can help curb this phenomenon.
She tells Zawia3: “Economic factors and livelihood crises play an important role in aggravating violence against women, as women bear the burden of providing for the family’s needs, which forces them to go out into the labour market under unsafe conditions, leaving them exposed to exploitation. Crowded streets and the spread of drugs also increase rates of violence.”
The director of the anti-violence programme notes that weak services are among the most prominent challenges: although there are hotlines, surveillance cameras and anti-violence units in some police stations, their activation is still limited, with a shortage of policewomen and an absence of adequate psychological and social support for victims. She explains that there have been developments such as tougher penalties for harassment and digital violence and the existence of an electronic prosecution office to receive complaints, and she stresses the need for a unified, comprehensive law to combat violence against women, in order to unify efforts and close the current legislative gaps that scatter cases across multiple laws, provided that this goes hand in hand with integrated efforts by the state, civil society and the national mechanisms, in addition to an active media role focused on exposing the phenomenon and changing public discourse, in order to reduce crimes of violence and provide a safer environment for Egyptian women.
Lawyer Entessar El-Saeed, head of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, stresses that crimes of violence against women in Egypt are not a new phenomenon, but they have become more public and more severe, as they are now committed in the streets, in state institutions and in front of everyone, after having mostly been confined in the past to the family or hidden sphere. She considers the absence of an upbringing based on the values of gender equality in Egyptian families to be one of the fundamental causes of the phenomenon, as it entrenches the view of women as “lesser” than men in rights. She adds that education, television drama and the prevailing religious discourse in turn contribute to entrenching this stereotype, which makes society more accepting of violence against women and girls.
She tells Zawia3: “Pressing economic and social conditions aggravate the phenomenon, as many men vent their anger on women and children as the weaker party,” and she expects rates of violence to increase in the coming period unless urgent measures are taken.
The rights lawyer points to shortcomings in legislation and in the mechanisms for applying it, stressing that laws are activated only in cases that receive wide media attention, while many other crimes go unpunished, and she warns against the inciting discourse against women that is spreading on social media.
She stresses that passing the unified law to combat violence against women and girls is a basic and necessary step, but not sufficient on its own, emphasising the importance of adopting comprehensive prevention and protection policies, including providing hotlines for psychological and legal support, establishing safe houses for women and intensifying awareness programmes, as well as developing penalties to include the reform and rehabilitation of perpetrators instead of being limited to custodial sentences. She notes that confronting the phenomenon requires integrated work at the legislative, social and awareness levels, warning that the continuation of the current shortcomings means more violations against women in both the public and private spheres.
The Widening Gap Between the Sexes
As rates of violence against women in Egypt have risen, Egypt fell to 139th place out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, thereby entering the list of the ten worst countries in the world in terms of equality between men and women. This decline comes only one year after it fell to 135th place out of 146 countries in the 2024 report.
The report reveals the weak representation of women in leadership and political positions and their continuing low rates of participation in the labour market, in addition to gaps in access to education and economic opportunities. The gap-closure rate, already low, fell to 62.5% in the latest edition of the report, while the global average for closing the gender gap reached 68.8%, the best improvement recorded since 2020, with an increase of 0.3 percentage points compared with 2024.
On the other hand, Egypt achieved a slight improvement in the health and survival index, the only index that recorded relative progress, but its impact remained limited given the general decline in the other indicators.
Data from the Global Gender Gap Report 2025 show a stark gap in the economic participation rates of women in Egypt, as the proportion of working women does not exceed 15.9%, compared with 74.2% of men. In terms of average income, women’s income was less than a quarter of men’s, while women held only 7.2% of senior management positions. The indicator of women’s estimated income is the worst-performing of all, with Egypt ranking 145th out of 148 countries.
Meanwhile, Egypt shows relatively better performance in the educational attainment index, where it ranked 111th out of 148 countries, with a gap-closure rate of 97.3%.
Egypt ranked 101st out of 148 countries, with a gap-closure rate not exceeding 15.9%, which is lower than the global average of 22.9%. The proportion of women in parliament was the best indicator within this pillar, reaching 27.7% of all members, but this figure was not enough to raise the overall ranking noticeably.
In the health and survival pillar, Egypt’s performance was relatively the best among the four indicators, as it ranked 78th out of 148 countries. This is partly attributed to women’s higher life expectancy (73.9 years) compared with men’s (70.8 years).
In this context, Lobna Darwish, director of the women’s rights programme at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), tells Zawia3 that the deterioration of women’s conditions in Egypt did not come suddenly, but is the direct result of formal propaganda policies that avoid real reform and exclude women from the priorities of public planning.
Darwish explains that international and regional reports now show “shameful” results that completely contradict the official narrative, which celebrates what it calls “achievements” in the women’s file. She continues: “Instead of working to improve women’s reality, the state prefers to issue statements about successes that do not exist, in order to win international recognition, while the serious policies that make a real difference in women’s lives are marginalised.”
She adds that government strategies are often random and ill-considered, lacking accurate data and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and are often replaced by new ones without review or accountability. “What matters is that a launch ceremony is held for the strategy, regardless of its effectiveness or impact,” Darwish says.
Darwish criticises the official handling of women’s issues as a secondary file rather than as part of the core of economic and social planning, noting that the state invests in sectors that push women out and provides unsuitable job opportunities, and then wonders why women’s participation rates in the labour market are declining.
As for the state’s turn towards supporting entrepreneurship as a magic solution for empowering women economically, Darwish describes this path as an ideological conviction unsupported by any serious evaluation, and stresses that there are no indicators of the effectiveness of this model, while the structural causes of women’s weak participation, such as discrimination in the public and private sectors and unfair working conditions, are ignored.
Darwish stresses that some forms of discrimination come from the state itself, such as imposing restrictions on women’s travel, especially women from the poorest groups, or discrimination in job opportunities based on appearance, weight or reproductive status. “Meanwhile, the same measures are not imposed on men, which makes the current policies a means of serving the image, not the reality,” she says.
Darwish concludes by warning of the gravity of the current situation: “I am not concerned with beautifying the image; what matters to me is the reality of women and girls in Egypt. What we face is a double danger: conditions are getting worse day after day, and there is no serious response. And women and girls are the ones who pay the price, continuously and every day.”
For her part, Mona Ezzat, a researcher on economic and social rights and chair of the board of trustees of the Al-Noon Foundation for Family Care, considers that Egypt’s decline in the 2025 gender gap report is not merely a numerical drop, but a deep reflection of chronic structural problems in dealing with women’s issues.
She adds, speaking to Zawia3: “When we say that Egypt has fallen four places in the global ranking, we must remember that it was already in a lagging position, 135th place, and so falling to 139th place means that the problems have not been addressed but are getting worse.”
Mona Ezzat believes that the decline in the economic and political empowerment indicators is the most serious in this year’s report, as it touches the core of women’s participation in the public sphere, from the labour market to trade unions, parliament and political parties. She points out that strategies and legislative amendments have not been reflected on the ground, as the actual impact of these policies remains limited, if not entirely absent.
In this context, Ezzat says: “We do indeed have good legislative texts, but implementation is weak or non-existent, which leaves the policies without any actual impact and entrenches the gap instead of narrowing it.”
Ezzat gives as an example Labour Law No. 12 of 2003, which prohibits wage discrimination between the sexes, yet reports by CAPMAS (which are official government reports) reveal an actual wage gap of up to 17.7% in favour of men in the private sector, reflecting shortcomings in implementation and oversight.
On political representation, Ezzat points out that the increase in the number of women in parliament and in ministries does not necessarily mean real empowerment, as the “quota”-based system has not achieved political, social or geographical diversity, nor have women been given equal opportunities to run for office and reach leadership within parties or unions. “Empowerment is not achieved through numbers alone, but through a political environment that allows free and fair participation,” Ezzat adds.
The researcher in economic and social affairs criticises the absence of local councils for years, considering that this excludes women from one of the most important tools of grassroots political empowerment. She also believes that the state promotes entrepreneurship as a gateway to solving the problem of women’s economic empowerment, without any real evaluation of the effectiveness of this path and without addressing the causes of discrimination and the shortcomings in the labour market.
Ezzat concludes that “the real flaw lies in the gap between policies on paper and actual implementation.” She stresses that this approach is what leads to the repeated negative results in global equality reports.
Meanwhile, Nevine Ebeid, chair of the board of trustees of the New Woman Foundation, believes that Egypt’s decline in the 2025 gender gap report reflects a long structural path of decline and chronic neglect of women’s issues, noting that this repeated decline is the direct result of a lack of seriousness in addressing the real roots of the gap.
Speaking to Zawia3, Ebeid says that the report’s four indicators (economic empowerment, educational attainment, political participation and health) represent a real entry point for improving women’s conditions, if they were dealt with using a clear methodology, instead of settling for official discourse.
She points out that women in Egypt are the most affected by rising poverty rates, especially since poverty is no longer measured by income alone, but also by lack of access to basic services such as education, health and safe housing. Ebeid adds: “The largest proportion of women work in the informal sector, such as agricultural workers or market vendors, without any legal protection or contractual guarantees, which places them entirely outside the social umbrella.”
The chair of the board of trustees of the New Woman Foundation notes that the absence of legislation protecting marginalised groups such as domestic workers reflects the state’s failure to include all women in protection, insurance and decent work policies. She also criticises the chronic delay in issuing a number of basic laws, such as a unified law to combat violence against women, the domestic workers law and the personal status law, in addition to the absence of necessary amendments to existing laws that do not take gender dimensions into account, such as the Criminal Procedure Law, the medical liability law or the rent laws. “Even social protection programmes do not take into account women’s vulnerability and the fact that they are the most exposed to poverty and hunger,” Ebeid says.
Ebeid also points out that the weakness of independent trade unions and the restrictions imposed on them have contributed to the decline of the grassroots feminist voice, especially in the informal sectors that include a large number of women.
She stresses that the absence of real representation of women within union organisations contributes to keeping their issues off the priorities of the social and political agenda. She also explains that although Egypt is not a direct party to the regional armed conflicts, Ebeid believes that it is living in a state of “negative peace”, that is, a fragility that could slide into unrest, which doubles the vulnerability of women and girls, who pay the price of regional and international policies without being party to them.
Ebeid ends with a clear call for independent critical visions to be produced by civil society, feminist groups, women researchers and all those concerned with women’s conditions in general, in order to hold economic and social policies to account, press for the missing legislation, and offer alternative and transparent evaluations of what is put forward as formal government solutions.
For her part, Dr Magda Adly, co-founder of El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, reveals that since 2009, draft laws on violence against women within the family have been submitted to Parliament, and Parliament was afraid to pass them because they are thorny issues. However, in late 2010, a draft law was submitted by El Nadeem Center, signed by more than a hundred Egyptian NGOs in addition to other Arab organisations, but after the revolution all these draft laws were put away in drawers as if they had never existed, and they were then submitted again after the revolution, accompanied by other drafts on sexual harassment.
She tells Zawia3: “There has been relative progress regarding sexual harassment in the public sphere, as laws were enacted that define harassment precisely and impose penalties for it. Although the law did not match the original draft, as some of its articles went through lengthy discussions with authorities such as the Ministry of Justice, Al-Azhar, the prosecution and the police, and the adoption of some articles stalled, especially the definition of rape, it was a step. As for the draft domestic violence law, even the government we considered the government of the revolution, which included figures we trusted, admitted that it would not be able to pass such a law. The pretext was Al-Azhar, the concept of male guardianship, and those texts that everyone can interpret as they wish.”
The centre’s director adds: “Statistics indicate that Egypt is the second country in the world in rates of sexual harassment, at more than 90%, so what are we talking about? When women are kidnapped even in cars belonging to global companies, or six-year-old girls are kidnapped and sexually assaulted, what do we call this? When a young man kills his university classmate for refusing to marry him, and the incident is repeated, what does that mean? What level of violence have we reached in our streets? Can I tell girls to move around safely? Can I tell them to call the police if they are harassed?”
Adly does not separate the behaviour of individuals from what she described as the ‘brainwashing’ practised by public discourse, whether it comes from politicians, media figures or religious discourse, which establishes two ranks of human beings, a higher rank for males and a lower rank for females, and defines social roles, confining leadership, political and business management work to males while assigning women advertisements for cooking, cleaning and childcare products, and entrenches higher and lower roles, the former for males and the latter for females. She points out that drama and television series, which are soft power, seep invisibly into people’s minds to entrench the idea of beating women or normalising harassment.
She explains that the traumas resulting from violence leave deep cracks in the psyche, post-traumatic stress disorder and a loss of self-confidence, while rebuilding the self after this shattering takes years, and is almost impossible if the victim still lives in the same abusive environment and has no safe place to turn to; there are some government shelters, but they are very limited and their conditions are difficult.
She concludes her conversation with us, saying: “We need a system of just laws that views women as human beings with full legal capacity, with positive discrimination that compensates for the historical gap. We need real rights training for all law enforcement bodies. We need a comprehensive review of our media, religious and educational discourse, to cleanse society of these evils that reproduce violence.”
A Deep-Rooted Male-Dominated Culture
Dr Said Sadek, professor of political sociology, explains how violence against women in Egypt is deep-rooted and takes multiple forms, from domestic violence and marital rape to harassment in the streets and public places, as the prevailing male-dominated culture conditions society to accept this violence, whether through the silence of those around or their complicity. He points out that the phenomenon is not new, but what is new is the scale of social and institutional complicity, especially given the absence of effective intervention by shop owners and security in confronting incidents of harassment.
He tells Zawia3: “The Egyptian street treats women as ‘spoils’ or ‘prey’, which explains the behaviours of harassment and catcalling and of imposing unwanted talk or attention on women. The worsening of the phenomenon is due to general chaos and impunity, and unfortunately the police have stopped the security campaigns that were organised in the 1950s and 1960s to confront harassment, which has made women feel unsafe in public space.”
He adds that “the weak handling of the issue by the state and society has contributed to aggravating it, as matters are left to leniency towards the perpetrators or to pressure on the victims to drop their complaints. In the long term, the solution requires reforming education, the media and the religious discourse that incites or keeps silent about violations, while in the short term there must be a return of undercover security campaigns in suspected places, and tougher penalties that are deterrent and swiftly enforced, such as confiscating cars used in harassment and handing down prison sentences and heavy fines.”
The sociology professor believes that relying on penalties alone is not enough, as the social culture itself is sick and reflects a deep contempt for women, manifested in blaming the victim, justifying crimes of violence and settling crimes through “reconciliation”, which he described as contrary to the foundations of the modern state. He considers that linking harassment to economic conditions or poverty is nothing but a justification, as the issue concerns an entrenched culture and is not merely the product of economic crises.
Sadek criticises the contradiction in society’s handling of issues related to women, as they are punished for simple behaviours such as dancing or using “TikTok”, while society and universities ignore the serious violations committed by men, and he holds the media partly responsible through a discourse that justifies the perpetrators or blames the victims.
He considers that the roots of the crisis are linked to the entrenchment of a male-dominated culture that confines women to domestic roles, excludes them from the labour market and always holds them responsible for the violence practised against them, explaining that hatred of women (Misogyny) appears in multiple forms, from preferring to have boys, to rejecting women’s work, to the escalation of killings of wives when they ask for a divorce. He stresses that confronting the phenomenon requires genuine political and social will, by enforcing effective security, toughening penalties and ending social complicity, in parallel with long-term reform of education, culture and the media; otherwise, violence against women will worsen further in the coming years.
For her part, Dr Sara El-Naggar, a mental health and family medicine specialist and a writer concerned with women’s and children’s affairs, considers that the phenomenon of increasing violence against women in the public sphere is not necessarily linked to hatred of women so much as to belittling them, stressing that technological and social factors have contributed to its aggravation.
The mental health specialist attributes the main motive behind most incidents of violence not to hatred of women as such, but to belittling them as the weaker party. She explains that the perpetrators usually have no prior knowledge of the victims, but act on a firm conviction that the woman will fear confrontation and will hesitate to report out of fear of being doubted or of a social attack that blames her instead of the aggressor.
El-Naggar does not see the aim of harassing women in the streets as pushing them back into their homes, pointing out that aggressors in fact seek women’s presence in the public sphere in order to exercise their domination over them and vent their psychological crises. She explains that these acts give the perpetrator a false sense of power and manhood, and that women become the easiest target because they are seen as weaker beings who can be subjugated without major consequences.
She tells Zawia3: “A person who attacks women in the street may show the same aggressive behaviour towards children or animals,” stressing that the matter is linked to deeper behavioural disorders and not necessarily to an ingrained hatred of women.
Sara considers violence against women an old phenomenon, as women have long suffered harassment in the streets and being chased by cars while driving, but what is new is that the spread of social media has been a multiplying factor in bringing these incidents to light. She explains that many crimes would not have become known had they not been filmed and circulated, stressing that confronting this phenomenon requires social awareness and effective family supervision, along with strict application of the law to protect women and ensure that aggressors do not escape punishment.
The escalation of violence against women in Egypt reveals a deep flaw in the cultural and legal structure, which reproduces the danger instead of containing it. In the absence of effective deterrence and with weak protection mechanisms, women continue to pay heavy prices simply for being present in public space.
Rights advocates believe that the window for any real progress on gender justice is narrowing, unless the state passes a unified law to combat violence and discrimination and seriously reviews its existing policies. The problem is no longer the absence of solutions, but the absence of the political will to protect women.
Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the crimes of violence against women monitored by the Edraak Observatory rose by 96.3% between 2020 and 2021, then fell by 5.7% in 2022, and rose by about 23.7% in 2023 and by 25.6% in 2024. The correct figures, according to the numbers in the Observatory’s own report (415 crimes in 2020, 813 in 2021, 1,006 in 2022, 950 in 2023 and 1,195 in 2024), are that they rose by 95.9% in 2021 and by about 23.7% in 2022, then fell by 5.6% in 2023, before rising by 25.8% in 2024.
