CAIRO — Samar Sultan resorted to taxis on her daily trip from the Egyptian capital’s Mohandessin district to downtown. Her aim was to stay safe, even for just a little while, from the constant sexual harassment she faces in the streets of Cairo.
But then, one day, she was stunned to find the taxi driver was masturbating as she rode in the backseat.
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“He was looking at me from time to time,” she recalled in an interview with Al-Manassa.
After the taxi driver asked for napkins to clean himself, Sultan opened the door at the next traffic stop and ran away. “I was devastated,” she recalled.
Now 38, Sultan recalls that she didn’t report the taxi driver to the police. “At the time, I was afraid of being in the middle of a scandal, or being blamed,” she said.
Just as bad as public transport
Sultan has tested out all kinds of transportation options in Cairo, from minibuses and other public transit, to ride-hailing apps like Uber and Careem. None of them are free of harassment.
Her hope that ride-hailing apps would be safer were dashed — she has been met with the same harassment on them. She used to sit directly behind the driver seat to avoid being looked at by drivers. One day, a Careem driver leaned his seat back, in an attempt to force her to sit in the front seat or in the other backseat.
This time, Sultan filed a complaint against the driver. The company returned the trip fare and told her that the driver won’t show up on her app again. “But of course he will show up to others,” she said.
More than 80% of women using public transportation in Cairo say they’ve experienced sexual harassment
She was also assaulted while riding in one of the public transport 14-passenger minibuses that are popular across Egypt.
“An old man put his hand in my pants’ pocket,” she recalled. “I turned and slapped him in his face. But people (other passengers) blamed me for beating an old man.”
The only thing left to do was to sit in the two seats next to the driver. “That way I can be isolated from the rest of the passengers, even if sometimes there is no space.”
Sultan’s experience with transportation is what so many women in Egypt go through on a daily basis. More than 80% of women using public transportation in Cairo say they’ve experienced sexual harassment — of them 60% cite the minibuses as a particular problem, according to a 2022 study by Human and City Center for Social Research.
Deadly escape
Women have taken to social media to complain about sexual assaults, attempted kidnapping or robbery while using public or private transportation. Social media platforms are filled with accounts in Egypt of sexual assaults, and attempted kidnapping or robbery while using public or private transportations.
Still, few cases are reported. An exception was two years ago with the case of Habeiba el-Shamaa, whose Uber driver was trying to kidnap her. El-Shamaa jumped out of the car as it was moving, and died of her injuries after spending 20 days in a coma. There was also the case of Nabila Awad, who reported an attempted rape by another Uber driver.
Asma Abdul Hamid, a 32-year-old school teacher, has her own experience with an Uber driver. After he drove her to her destination, he insisted on waiting for her outside her home. “I was afraid of him from the beginning because he looked suspicious,” she said.
Hamid says that the only solution is to boycott Uber and other companies and transport providers to force the company to improve its drivers’ conduct
Like a black box
Nashwa el-Bahnasawy said the safety standard at Uber is flawed. She said she was robbed while riding with an Uber driver. She reported it to the police but the company didn’t take any action.
The U.S.-based company has no branch in Egypt and no customer service.
A 43-year-old Human Resources manager at a private company, El-Bahnasawy said she found that the robbery was not an isolated incident. “It’s something organized. A gang network on a small scale,” she said.
Part of her criticism of the U.S.-based company is that it has no branch in Egypt and no customer service.
Dina el-Jundi, an advisor at Egypt’s National Council for Women, agreed with el-Bahnasawy. “There are many loopholes, which doubles the chances of girls and women being exposed to danger,” she said.
Following the el-Shamaa tragedy, Othman Ibrahim Othman, an Uber legal representative, said the company closed the driver’s account due to many customer complaints, but he managed to create a different account using a different national ID.
In an attempt to fix its system, Uber Egypt recently built an audio recording feature for trips, allowing the application to record audio during the trip – like the Black Box in airplanes.
El-Jundi says that tightening state control over private transportation companies and instituting severe penalties on drivers would contribute to reducing abuse against women.
Paying extra to be safe
Nada, 32, says the daily harassment she faced on transportation forced her to resign from her job as a customer service specialist at a private company to avoid her commute. “I am not able to wear anything that makes me happy or go out with my friends,” she said.
Although she is aware of the impact on her professional career, she prioritized her “psychological well-being.”
Women resort to taxis and ride-hailing apps for their safety, but at higher financial cost. Mariam Suliman, who studied cinema in Cairo, said that she withstood the abuse on public transport as a student because that was all she could afford. But as soon as the now 27-year-old woman had a stable financial income, she began using ride-hailing apps: “But it is not comfortable and there is harassment,” she said.
Tasneem Munir, 28, used to pay extra money to have an extra seat empty on public transportation. “That way, no one can stick to me or touch me,” she said. But, Munir adds, “Even when we pay extra, we are not safe.”
