Cultural and legal barriers often stop women from speaking out
Since gaining popularity late last year, the social media ‘#MeToo’ movement to raise awareness of sexual harassment has widely been praised. While the hashtag has been used in more than 85 countries and included in tens of millions of online posts, the initiative remains a predominantly Western phenomenon.
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the hashtag and various language equivalents have appeared only variably, exerting a relatively significant influence in some nations but largely limited to small pockets or altogether non-existent in others.
“I think there’s a lot of interest, but ‘#MeToo’ as a movement has not taken hold in Arab countries. I would say not in the same way [as in the West],” Dr. Lina Abirafeh, Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World, told The Media Line.
In October, American actress Alyssa Milano urged her Twitter followers to use the hashtag as a medium through which to share stories of sexual harassment and assault; this, after dozens of accusations were levied against famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In the ensuing months, scores of high-profile men in the entertainment, media and political spheres have been publicly accused of misconduct.
In some Arab states such as Lebanon women have harnessed the power of the social media drive to continue advancing existing debates on women’s issues. “Human rights organizations and groups in particular have been working on gender-based issues for a lot of time now,” Diala Haidar, Media and Communications officer for the Lebanese feminist group KAFA, explained to The Media Line.
Most recently, KAFA and its supporters advocated for the enforcement of a domestic violence law that was passed by Beirut in 2014.
Haidar revealed that the fight for women’s rights in Lebanon took off in 2005, when widespread protests broke out in the wake of the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. “‘#MeToo’ is only one campaign that was in line with all the advocacy and activism and initiatives in this part of the world and in Lebanon,” she said.
The topic has similarly gained increased recognition in other countries since the so-called Arab Spring, with women’s rights groups making their presence and voices heard as part of the demonstrations that swept across the region.
In Tunisia, for example, human rights organizations hailed the government’s passage last year of a law making it easier for sexual harassment crimes to be reported and prosecuted.
While she was not familiar with the ‘MeToo’ hashtag specifically, Farah Mnekbi, an employee in the Tunisian government’s Center for Research, Studies, Documentation and Information on Women, stressed that conversations about sexual harassment have become more prominent, including in online forums.
“Our center is trying to make women more comfortable and we try to provide psychological care and especially to let women talk and to implement the laws on this concern,” she told The Media Line. Mnekbi noted that even before the ‘MeToo’ movement was launched her administrative body had creation a campaign to fight sexual harassment on Tunisia’s public transportation system.
But in more conservative MENA countries a hashtag can be viewed as threatening according to Dr. Abirafeh, who stressed that conversations about sexual assault remain largely taboo due to prevailing cultural norms and also the sense of apathy that exists in the absence of legal frameworks that provide opportunities for recourse.
“If you don’t feel like legislation is going to do any favor…then what would be the incentive in reporting it?,” she expounded, while noting that the social media movement’s popularity in the region is also directly correlated to levels of Internet access, economic status and education levels.
Dr. Abirafeh highlighted as an example the emergence of the hashtag ‘MosqueMeToo,’ which aims to facilitate discussions by Muslim women about sexual assault in religious settings, including in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca in Saudi Arabia. “I still found the region to be far quieter that I would have liked in this regard,” she told The Media Line, “as even ‘#MosqueMeToo’ is not very widespread.”
With respect to Palestinian women, ‘MeToo’ has similarly made only a few waves, mainly among social media’s most avid users; namely, youth. Twenty-one-year-old Palestinian-American Yasmeen Mjalli recently made headlines for her effort to bring the ‘#MeToo’ movement to the West Bank through the sale of “Not Your Habibti [the Arabic word for darling]” clothing.
“It is a taboo [subject] of course, taboo in the Arab society and mostly people they don’t like to talk about it because it’s a label,” Mona Mahajneh, Community Department Coordinator at Kayan, a women’s rights organization for Palestinian women in Israel, told The Media Line. “Sometimes, especially at work places or at university, there is also the relationship of power [that keeps women from speaking out].”
Elsewhere, conversations about sexual harassment are entirely discouraged—even by the victims themselves. “What most people in the West do not understand is that women are often the staunchest defenders and enforcers of patriarchy—more so than men,” an academic from the Gulf region, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained to The Media Line via email.
“A man who harasses or rapes a woman is viewed as the victim of a woman’s inherent seductiveness,” she elaborated, “and, as such, he is the one deserving of sympathy and she of punishment and shame.”
The academic concluded that while small groups of young, educated women in urban MENA areas are increasingly changing their views on the matter, they are liable to remain silent out of fear of retribution from family members.
KAFA’s Haidar also suggested that the context in which the ‘#MeToo’ movement originated played a key role in its dissemination. “‘MeToo’ started in Hollywood. Because of all the spotlights on the actresses, it took this important topic and more people and more women joined and shared their stories.
“Would it have been the case,” she questioned, “if women of color or marginalized groups started this campaign? I don’t think so.”
(Dina Berliner is a Student Intern in The Media Line’s Press and Policy Student Program)