Gender Justice and the Politics of Sexual Harassment

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand whether the Egyptian state’s preoccupation with sexual harassment promotes gender justice. It poses the following questions: how women and men’s bodies are constructed and contested in the framing of sexual harassment; what ideological foundations, power relations, and national development goals inform this imagination; and how gender justice is imagined within the anti-sexual harassment agenda. It applies postcolonial feminist thought, alongside the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, to confront the dominant narrative of sexual harassment and expose gaps in the anti-sexual harassment agenda. It is not the intention of this thesis to present a black and white account of feminist praxis or direct criticism towards the movement in a way that promotes or opposes engagement with the state. Instead, it highlights what each of the various positions can bring to the table. This thesis does, however, do two things: first, it allows sexual harassment to be understood in the context of interconnected systems of structural oppression – capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism. Second, it encourages a reinvigoration of Gender and Development through a return to its radical postcolonial feminist roots. Ending sexual harassment, or achieving gender justice in Egypt, is unlikely without a strong comprehensive vision and strategy that recognises and mobilises around these intersections of oppressions. If one thing is certain, the current hetero-patriarchal capitalist structures governing the exploitation and abuse of women will continue until their foundations are dismantled.