Sexual Harassment
For a long time now Egypt has been facing
various problems. One of the most important of those problems is “Sexual
Harassment”. Sexual harassment by definition “is the harassment (typically of a
woman) in a work place, or other professional or social situation, involving
the making of unwanted sexual advances or obscene remarks.” From 40% to 60% of
women are facing sexual harassment, and this percent is high in Egypt as well
as in America. There are some obvious reasons that cause this problem: Women
are usually the victims because they are more often lack of power. They are
more vulnerable and insecure in their work positions. They always suffer from
lack of self-confidence because of what happens to them from the harassers.
This leads to some effects: sexual harassment at work can have a very serious
problem for women and men, they can lose their job because the stress that they
face from the harasser at work and it will affect men too but psychologically.
Women can lose a chance of promotion in her position because of what happens to
them. They experience some debilitating stress reaction, including anxiety,
depression, headaches, sleep disorders and finally weight loss or gain. This
problem’s stakeholders include women who are the victims , harassers the ones
who make this action towards women and people which are classified into women
and men (citizens) are affected visually and mentally when they see or listen to
what the harasser do for women. In
collaboration with Harassmap and NGO they made a successful solution together
to solve this problem.
Harassmap was first established in 2005 and AFL-CIO was established in
1955. AFL-CIO was dedicated to the principles of craft unionism. Craft unionism
by definition means that an organizing labor union in a manner seeks to unify
workers in some industries along the lines of the particular craft. Harassmap,
NGO and AFL-CIO encourage women to say what happened to them from the harassers,
to try to help them to find the harasser especially the harassmap this is their
main job. They share different opinions with people to try to help women who
were harassed with a suitable solution {Harassmap}. Every campaign needs money in
order to achieve their goals and to afford the campaign’s needs. Furthermore,
there was also headquarters where women could come and say what happened to
them so they can try to help them. They need technology (service) to connect
with people through it to send or receive messages, phone calls or feedback
through their webpage. Although sexual harassment has more than one solution,
the harassmap organization would be perfect due to many considerations;
functional feasibilities, operational feasibilities and geographical
consideration.
One of the most important that needs to be taken into consideration is
functional feasibility. It’s the project’s ability to address the causes of the
problem and to reduce its effects. The harassmap has many functions; it’s a
tool to share and report women’s experience. They map the reports and each
report appears on the map as a red spot. The map helps them to find the
harasser easily. They also use evidence in their work and use the map to avoid
stereotypes. The causes of this problem is the persistence problem of sexual
harassment on the street, to which the society has become increasingly tolerant
of this action and women are usually the victims of this problem on the
streets. The dimensions of this problem is that sexual harassment at work can
have a very serious problem for women and men they will not give much effort in
their work because of what they feel towards each other. Women can lose their
jobs or chance of promotion in their positions. They will face stress reaction,
including anxiety and weight loss. Over the last years, sexual harassment has
evolved from being a taboo topic to one that’s being widely discussed and
tackled by a new crop of independent initiatives, by using the harassmap they
can easily find the harassers.
There are vast selections of criteria that can affect and help this
campaign succeed; one of them is operational feasibility. Operational
feasibility means that how we could find the availability of a trained staff,
budget, technology and services. The organization needs a well trained staff to
help women to solve their problem and listen to them. Ahmed Shaban is a part-time technical support
for both hardware and software and has also been volunteering with HarassMap
for many years. Mohamed El-Khateeb is our
Program and Administrative Assistant. Mohamed has long experience in
volunteering on HarassMap’s Core Team and he has been one of our most active
members for a long time. They started with the heads money and then started to
make donations and fundraisers to keep the organization on the right track.
They need annually a certain amount of money to suffice their needs. They use
computers and mobile phones to communicate with people; they offer mobile and
online technology together with a huge offline community mobilization effort in
neighborhoods throughout Egypt to end the social acceptability of sexual
harassment. You can easily reach the organization. The organizers successfully
made the organization popular and easily reached.
The last
criteria that’s also important for the assessment of the solution is
geographical consideration. Geographical condition includes the distance and
places that have the problem. It proves to us as audiences that the campaign
cares about the problem. More than 1000 men and women works all over Egypt
(including: MarsaMatrouh, Alexandria, Beheira,Kafr
Elsheikh,Gharbeya,Qalioubeya,Cairo,Giza,Fayoum,BeniSuef,Minya,Sohag,Portsaid,Dakhleya,Assiut,SouthSinai,
and Elbahr Elahmar), they go out once a month on to the streets of their
neighborhood and do an amazing job in convincing people to speak up
against sexual harassment. They
successfully spread the word all over Egypt.
Overall the
organization successfully helped women to say what happened to them and they
tried to find the harassers by using the harassmap. On the long track we will
eradicate this problem. Evidence has shown our solution promotes cognitive
development, so funding can give us the chance to improve the harassmap and can
give us the chance to find the harassers. They can make self-confidence classes
,give them the chance to protect themselves and never hide from those harassers
or ignore them when they try to harass them(verbally-sexually) .I recommend
this campaign and they must spread the word all over the world.
