Understanding Politically Motivated Sexual Assault in Protest Spaces

Abstract

Women have been at the forefront of protest movements in Arab revolts, and whilst their activism has been the subject of a growing body of scholarly work, there is a paucity of literature on their exposure to sexual assault during demonstrations. This article is an empirical study of the increasing politicization of sexual assault in Egypt’s transition between March 2011 and June 2013, which seeks to contribute to the broader literature on sexual violence in contexts that are politically tumultuous and polarized but are not technically ‘at war’. It draws on the literature on rape as a weapon of war without isolating sexual aggression in protest spaces from the continuum of gender-based violence that is socially, politically and legally embedded in the context of Egypt. The article argues that a number of factors if analysed individually suggest there is no difference in the dynamics of sexual violence in protest and non-protest spaces, however, when taken as a constellation of factors, they suggest a pattern that is politically driven, in particular, when their commissioning and targeting are commensurate with the political deployment of sexual violence identified in the rape as a weapon of war literature.