'That's Wrong': Harassment Isn't 'Flirting' — Two Years or a 100,000-Pound Fine for Words, Five for Coercion

At half past seven in the morning, a fourteen-year-old girl heads out with a school bag too heavy for her shoulder, and stops at the corner to work out a calculation that has nothing to do with her lessons: does she take the short pavement that gets her to school in seven minutes, or loop around the longer back street? On the short pavement there is a fixture standing outside a shop every day, and voices that follow her with words. So she takes the long way. At home, her mother knows the story and calls the longer route the 'safer' one — and she is not wrong. This is a composite scene, not a single incident, but it repeats in dozens of neighborhoods every morning; and its arithmetic carries a glaring injustice: the cost of one man's behavior is paid in the girl's time and her mother's worry, while he walks on, untroubled by any of it.

The behavior we are talking about today has a plain name: harassment. Not 'catcalling' (mu'aksa, the colloquial euphemism often used in Egypt for street harassment, literally "flirting"), not 'just a word or two in passing,' and not a 'compliment' a woman is supposed to be grateful for. It is the remark thrown at a female passerby's body in the street, the whistle behind her back, the footsteps that trail her from the station to the door of her building, the message that arrives from a number she does not know. Its most dangerous feature is its soft linguistic disguise: call it 'catcalling' and it looks small enough to laugh off; call it by its real name and it shows itself for what it is — an assault on someone who never asked for it and has no way to opt out of it.

The difference between a compliment and harassment is not a matter of taste but of choice. A compliment is offered to someone who can turn it down or ignore it at no cost. On the street, the other party has no such choice: she did not choose to hear it, she does not know who is speaking, she cannot tell whether he will stop at words or follow her, and she cannot safely respond, because a response might escalate the situation. Judging the matter by the speaker's intent — 'I didn't mean anything by it' — is therefore a false measure; the real measure is the effect: a route changed, an appointment missed, a girl thinking about the pavement instead of her exam.

This effect is not a passing feeling; it is movement curtailed and opportunities crossed off a list. A girl whose movement is restricted has her options restricted with her: a club she does not join, an evening job she takes off her list. The 2015 survey on 'The Economic Cost of Gender-Based Violence,' carried out in Egypt jointly by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the National Council for Women, and the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), put the estimate at roughly 7.8 million women subjected annually to some form of violence. That is a prevalence figure, not a cost figure, and it covers violence by partners, relatives, and strangers together — not street harassment alone; and it is a survey figure now more than ten years old, which we cite with its date and source, not as an updated official statistic.

The law, for its part, has closed the door on interpretation. In June 2014, the first explicit criminalization of sexual harassment was introduced into the Egyptian Penal Code by Law No. 50 of 2014, with graduated penalties — according to the summary published on the website of the UN Population Fund in Egypt — ranging from six months' imprisonment at the lightest end to five years plus a fine of up to 50,000 Egyptian pounds at the heaviest; in the 2014 text these penalties are spread across two separate articles, not one, so they should not be read together as a single penalty. Then came Law No. 141 of 2021, issued on 15 August 2021 and in force from the day after its publication, which amended Articles 306 bis (a) and 306 bis (b) and sharply toughened the penalty. Precision matters here, because the two articles are commonly confused, even in headlines.

Article 306 bis (a) is the article on 'words and gestures in the street.' As amended, it punishes with imprisonment for a term of not less than two years and not more than four, and a fine of not less than 100,000 Egyptian pounds and not more than 200,000, or either of these two penalties, anyone who approaches another person in a public, private, or thoroughfare place with sexual or obscene remarks, insinuations, or hints, by gesture, word, or act, and by any means, including wired, wireless, or electronic communications. So a text message or a comment under a photo falls within the text of the law exactly as a remark shouted in the street does. Because the penalty here is 'habs' — the lighter, misdemeanor-grade term of imprisonment in Egyptian law — the offense is classified in Egyptian law as a misdemeanor, not a felony; but a minimum of two years or 100,000 pounds is no joke.

The penalty under the same article grows harsher if the offender does not stop at a passing remark: if the act is repeated in the form of stalking or trailing the victim, the penalty becomes imprisonment for a term of not less than three years and not more than five, and a fine of not less than 200,000 pounds and not more than 300,000, or either of these two penalties; and on a repeat conviction, both the minimum and maximum of the prison term and the fine are doubled. This paragraph describes exactly the reality of the girl in our opening scene: a fixture repeating itself every morning is not a single incident but a pattern, and it is the law itself — not us — that made repetition the trigger for a harsher sentence.

The felony, by contrast, lies in Article 306 bis (b) alone. This article is not about a passing word in the street but about coercion: if the offense set out in the preceding article is committed with intent to obtain from the victim a benefit of a sexual nature, the penalty is imprisonment — 'sijn,' the harsher, felony-grade term in Egyptian law — for a term of not less than five years. It becomes not less than seven years if the offender is among those described in the second paragraph of Article 267 — that is, someone entrusted with raising or supervising the victim, or holding authority over them — or if the offender has occupational, family, or academic authority over the victim, or exerted pressure that circumstances allowed him to exert, or if the offense was committed by two or more persons, or if at least one of them was armed. Here the legislator addresses anyone who believes their position protects them: authority is an aggravating factor, not an immunity.

There remains a third party who rarely holds itself accountable: the one who hears and does not step in. The laughter that goes up among bystanders when someone throws out his remark is, in effect, applause that encourages him to repeat it tomorrow. The shopkeeper who watches the fixture become a habit outside his door and stays silent because 'these people are customers' is contributing in practice — a moral accomplice, if not a criminal one — to turning the pavement into an unsafe place. And the minibus passengers who hear a remark and simply look away are giving the offender exactly what he needs: the silence of the majority. The right response does not begin at the police station or the prosecutor's office; it begins the moment the street stops applauding.

Before getting to what should be done, two wrong doors need to be shut. The first is tying what happened to the victim: her clothing, the time she went out, or how she spoke. The text of the law hinges on the offender's act alone and knows nothing, among the elements of the crime, called the victim's appearance; anyone who opens with 'What was she wearing?' shifts responsibility from the person who committed the act to the person it was committed against — and that, in itself, is wrong. The second wrong door is personal retaliation: this is not a call for a physical confrontation or street 'discipline,' because that turns a clear-cut offense into a brawl in which rights get lost. The same goes for posting the girl's photo to 'shame' the offender — the harm lands on her first.

The right response is procedural and simple: a report is filed at the police station with jurisdiction over where the incident took place, or a complaint is lodged directly with the Public Prosecution; full physical evidence is not required to act, since the testimony of bystanders is admissible evidence — which makes a witness giving their name in the report a civic duty, not a favor. It helps to record the date, time, and place, a description of the offender, and whether the incident has recurred. In cases of online harassment, messages and screenshots should be saved before anything is deleted. As of this writing, the Women's Complaints Office at the National Council for Women takes reports and provides legal and psychological counseling on the hotline 15115, daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. — the number given on the office's own page, and cited in an interview the UN Office on Drugs and Crime published with the head of the Council's complaints office.

This comes one day before the International Day of the Girl Child, marked on 11 October under UN General Assembly resolution 66/170 of 19 December 2011, whose theme this year — according to the United Nations' website as of this writing — is ending child marriage and investing in girls' rights. That is not a distant slogan: a girl reaching her school by the shortest route and coming home by it is its first and cheapest item. The Egyptian Constitution, for its part, says so explicitly: Article 11 states that the state 'is committed to protecting women against all forms of violence.' But a text alone does not walk down the street; people do.

Back to our morning: the girl who loops around by the longer street does not need a sermon on morals, or a campaign that ends when its occasion does. She needs the fixture that frightens her to have understood that a single remark can cost its owner at least two years in prison or a fine of no less than 100,000 pounds, that repeating it as stalking raises the term to three years or more, that coercion means imprisonment of no less than five years, and that the bystanders will not be laughing this time. That is the day she chooses the short route simply because it is shorter — and we will have won back seven minutes in one girl's day, which, counted properly, is a gain for all of us.