Cairo, Egypt (CNN)Gehad al-Rawy beamed with joy as she emerged from an Egyptian courtroom last September. She had just won a sexual harassment case, with the judge sentencing her harasser to two years in prison.
It was a rare victory in a country where, according to a 2017 survey by UN Women and Promundo, nearly 60% of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed. In a 2017 Thomson Reuters poll that surveyed experts in women’s issues, Cairo was named the most dangerous city in the world for women.
But in 2018, Egyptian women came out with a flurry of accusations against their abusers. Activists call it Egypt’s #MeToo moment, catalyzed by the global outcry against sexual abuse in 2018 and leading to major shifts in the conversation around harassment.
