Egypt doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for women. Sexism is said to have got worse since its 2011 uprisings and it's got so bad that it was deemed the worst Arab nation for women to live in 2013 (that’s really saying something, when you look at the treatment of women in other Arab nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia).
And this video neatly shows just how horrible it is to be a woman in public in the early evening. Called Creepers on the Bridge, it’s filmed by Collette Ghunim, who along with Tinne Van Loon is making a 30-minute documentary about the sexism faced by 99.3 per cent of Egyptian women. To make the clip, Collette filmed her POV as she walked across the Qasr al-Nil bridge, which goes across the Nile in central Cairo. The short clip has clocked up 363,000 views since it was it was uploaded five days ago, and we’re pretty intrigued to see The People’s Girls, Collette and Tinne’s full-length film.
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Creepers on the Bridge from Tinne Van Loon on Vimeo.
If you can’t watch the video right now, it’s cut together to show groups and groups of men staring at Collette as she walks along. Her and Tinne told Egyptian Streets they did because: 'We wanted to capture the persistent feeling of anxiety every time we walk alone.'
It's possible that the men are staring at the camera – we don’t know if it’s concealed – but we're giving the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt with this. Hopefully, in the full documentary, we’ll be able to see that the camera’s concealed. And, failing that, even if the guys are only staring at the camera, the video shows how hugely masculinised the area is. You may thing there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but as the women put it in their description of the video, which was uploaded to Vimeo: ‘As a woman, Egyptian or foreign, comments and stares are the norm every time we step out the door, no matter what we’re wearing.’
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Because it’s not about the actual threat that’s there, it’s about the fear of threat that stops women from feeling free to use public space in the same way men do - especially when you live in a country where public harassment is so rife.
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As the filmmakers put it, that’s why the video is going viral: ‘because so many people worldwide connect with the issue. Unfortunately Egypt just happens to be one of the most affected countries. This behavior is not inherently Egyptian or Arab. This behavior is that of people in a patriarchal society.’
The only positive is that it’s totally great that these women can shine a light on just how grim things are.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.