The Chronikler

Gender segregation is increasingly being viewed as a solution to widespread sexual harassment in Egypt. Signs of segregation have been apparent all over the country. In recent years, the government has designated two carriages in each metro train for women. Also, private women-only beaches, coffee shops and restaurants have been created to cater for women who want to remain beyond the reach of curious virile eyes (and sometimes hands).

A study on sexual harassment titled Clouds in Egypt's sky was carried out by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) as part of its Safer Streets for Everyone campaign. The study surveyed a total of 1,100 Egyptian and non-Egyptian women. The results were shocking: 83% of Egyptian women and 98% of foreign women in Egypt reported being sexually harassed.

The most recent reaction to this "social cancer" (as it is described by the ECWR) came last month when a Cairo taxi company allocated some of its fleet to female customers with women drivers. There was also a proposal endorsed by the late Grand Imam of al-Azhar to introduce pink taxis driven by women drivers for women passengers.

Some form of segregation has always existed in Egypt in places like government schools, mosques, hairdressers and funerals. However, it was never really as brutal as segregation in Saudi Arabia, where schools and colleges and even private and foreign institutions, such as the British Council are gender-based.

Even on the individual level, women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to be in the company of non-relative males. A few years ago, a Saudi girl was sentenced to six months in prison and 90 lashes after being gang-raped just for being alone with a non-relative man at the time of her kidnap.

However, in Egypt, segregation is still done voluntarily and it is mostly the woman's choice to stay away from men. It is understandable why women would use their women-only facilities to escape sexual harassment. If I were a woman in Cairo, I would definitely jump in the no-men carriage in the metro instead of rubbing shoulders with men who, at best, are going to check me out from head to toe. But is this really the right way to combat this negative phenomenon?

Gender segregation seems like the easy way out. How would someone harass a woman if she's not there? But an honest approach to the problem is essential, and isolating women would be merely be treating the symptoms, not curing the disease.

There are many reasons behind sexual harassment: poverty, bad education, unemployment, sexual frusturation due to the social unacceptance of premarital sex and the difficulty of marriage due to economic reasons and a patriarchal society where women don't enjoy equal rights just to name a few.

Ahmed Salah, the founder of a campaign called "Respect Yourself", designed to target sexual harassers, believes that sexual harassment is a form of violence and anger at the current economic and political conditions that men bring against what they perceive as a "weaker" creature.

"People are unemployed, poor, and even if they're not; they still suffer from the country's bad conditions and want to bring their anger against someone, and this someone is the creature they perceive as weaker," says Ahmed.

Hamdi Abdul Azim, an Egyptian economist, said in a conference last year: "Economic conditions and culture don't allow people to satisfy their sexual needs in a legitimate manner and by mutual consent. Therefore, they sexually harass women in the street because this is where their only interaction with women takes place."

We should rethink our strategy of fighting sexual harassment because segregation itself is one of the reasons behind it. The more the sight of a woman becomes unusual, the more harassment women will suffer. Additionally, segregation would make women feel more alienated and marginalised in society.

Al-Azhar's approval to have taxis with women drivers might be well-intentioned, but it is policies like this that partly led to the situation we suffer from now. If we isolate females more from society, chances are it will be harder for them to get their voices heard, let alone fight for their rights.

Gender segregation would also increase the communication gap between males and females, creating more social problems such as sexual harassment and domestic violence. Running away from sexual harassment in women-only taxis, beaches, metro carriages and coffee shops might sound like a good short-term solution, but would only lead to more long-term gender-based troubles.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 29 March 2010. Read the related discussion.

Published here with the author's permission. ©Osama Diab. All rights reserved.

At first sight, any quiz show that claims to be a contest to find the "smartest person in the world" should be dismissed as delusional. But anyone who has watched Belgian TV's De Slimste Mens Ter Wereld will quickly realise that the declared aspiration is very much tongue-in-cheek.

Unlike highbrow quiz shows – such as University Challenge and Mastermind (which I enjoy watching just for the entertainment of getting lost in obscurity and the sense of achievement when I get some answers right) – De Slimste Mens does not deal much in arcane niche knowledge.

Instead, each episode's three celebrity contestants must make rapid fire knowledge and word associations pitted against one another and the clock, with the winner being crowned the "smartest person in the world" for a day. In addition, humour is provided by a celebrity jury whose role is to mock the contestants and their answers.

Now into its eighth season, De Slimste Mens is so popular that it has won the prize for best entertainment programme on Flemish television two years running. In recent weeks, this easy-viewing show has been at the heart of a controversy centring on one of its contestants: political journalist Linda De Win, who became its joint most successful participant ever, having survived 11 episodes in a row.

The victories of appropriately named De Win, whose day job is grilling politicians and parliamentarians on the political show Villa Politica, sparked a hate campaign of an intensity unknown in the programme's history.

On Facebook, numerous groups cropped up attacking De Win and calling for her removal from the show. The most popular of these groups counted a peak membership of about 23,000, an enormous figure for tiny Flanders. Comments ranged from the mild, with some claiming that they opposed her because she was "boring", "arrogant" and "charmless", while the more vindictive stated opinion of the sort that "woman + ambition = bitch", that De Win is a "cow" and the most extreme believed that she "must die".

"I thought I kind of understood how the media worked," the seasoned journalist said in an interview with De Standaard. "But I watch with dismay what is occurring on Facebook: shocking, what hatred!"

She blames the tabloid press for setting the tone. "That a newspaper like Het Laatste Nieuws has engaged in character assassination of this kind is outrageous."

As no male candidate has ever elicited such a reaction, though there have been a number of obnoxious and arrogant men, and that beautiful young actresses and models routinely elicit admiration – mostly for their looks – when they appear on the show, De Win's supporters and fans believe that she has been the victim of machismo and sexism. "The makers of De Slimste Mens think that it is mostly because I am a woman, and one who likes to win," says De Win. "It seems that the Flanders of 2010 is not ready for a woman that comes across as competitive."

Many members of the Facebook groups set up against her claim that their hatred of De Win has nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with her personality. Some even point to the fact that there are women members of the group. But that's neither here nor there, since women have traditionally been some of the most ardent upholders and defenders of the patriarchy.

In addition, many people may believe that they dislike someone like De Win – a hard-as-nails 50-something political journalist – because of her personality, but this is partly because, while uncompromising toughness and abruptness, à la Jeremy Paxman, are widely admired in men, such characteristics are often still seen as unbecoming in women, despite decades of female emancipation.

Moreover, age is more of a challenge for women, as highlighted by the controversy surrounding the jettisoning of older female journalists at the BBC. As one former BBC executive put it, "as male presenters got older they become an authority and as female presenters got older they became a problem". And older female television journalists face a similar challenge in Belgium. "As an [older] woman in the media, you know that you will elicit vicious responses," notes De Win.

Despite the presence of some last bastions and strongholds of male chauvinism, we must recognise and acknowledge how far things have progressed in recent decades. Last year, Gail Trimble, the grand boffin of University Challenge, became a veritable media sensation, despite the predictable grumbles from the tabloids about her alleged smugness and superiority. The BBC is also seeking to set right its patchy record by attracting more older women presenters to the Beeb.

In Belgium, the intensity of the vitriol targeted against De Win has prompted an outpouring of popular sympathy for her, and she has had her mailbox jammed with messages of support and a number of fan groups have emerged to voice their support for the "smartest woman in the world".

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 7 January 2010. Read the related discussion.

They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But it does: the roaring rage of injured male pride. This was amply demonstrated in Egypt when a female Saudi journalist had the audacity to apply logic and consistency to challenge an area of traditional male privilege.

In an article provocatively entitled My four husbands and I, Nadine al-Bedair quite sensibly posed the logical question: if Muslim men are entitled to marry up to four wives, why can't women, in the spirit of equality between believers, have four husbands?

"I have long questioned why it is men have a monopoly on this right. No one has been able to explain to me convincingly why it is I'm deprived of the right to polyandry," she complains.

The outspoken Saudi then goes on to deconstruct and question the traditional justifications for polygamy, including that, in a traditional patriarchal society, it is a shelter for widows, divorcees and women who can't find a spouse; that men have greater sexual appetites than women and get easily bored; that women can't handle more than one man; and that, if women could have multiple husbands, determining paternity would not be possible (an excuse made obsolete by modern science).

"They tell me that I, as a woman, can't handle more than one man physically. I say that women who cheat on their husbands and the 'sellers of love' [ie prostitutes] do much more," she counters.

Unsurprisingly, the article's honest tone and irreverence has triggered a furious response from the traditional male establishment. Some Islamic clerics have denounced the article and promised the "blaspheming" author divine retribution, while an Egyptian MP has decided not to wait that long and has already brought a lawsuit against her.

While few have openly voiced support for al-Bedair's call for this kind of equality in the Islamic marriage stakes, some Islamic authorities have defended her by saying that her true purpose was to highlight how badly some women are treated by their husbands, especially those who take on second or third wives, despite Islam's demand that a man treats all his wives equally.

For her part, al-Bedair ends her article with a call that society either allows polyandry for women or comes up with a new "map of marriage". One Cairo imam, Sheikh Amr Zaki, believes the way to go is to confine polygamy to the scrapheap of history. "In our world today, polygamy should be unacceptable. There is no need for it and, besides, no man can truly love more than one woman and vice versa," he opined.

And his view corresponds with that of the Egyptian mainstream. Although Islam permits polygamy, most Egyptians are jealously monogamous, with men who take on more than one wife often mocked or marginalised by the community and the first wife often so full of shame that she requests a divorce. Nevertheless, the question remains: which is fairer and more equitable – monogamy or polygamy for all?

Even in monogamous societies, informal polygamy is a reality. In Europe, for instance, though most people, myself included, are serial monogamists, many men and women have multiple partners or lovers simultaneously, and there is a growing tendency to be open about this. However, the law has not kept up.

"A man can live with two women in Britain perfectly legally, but if he marries them both it's a crime punishable by up to seven years in jail," Brian Whitaker observed on CiF. "If a man wants to have more than one wife, or a woman to have more than one husband, and everyone enters into the arrangement openly and voluntarily, what exactly is wrong with that?" he asks.

Of course, traditional models of polygny (and polyandry, in a minority of societies) tend to reflect social inequalities, both between genders, generations and classes. And assuming a 50:50 gender divide, polygamy not only means that women in polygamous relationships not only receive a small fraction of a man, but that some unfortunate men lower down the pecking order will get no woman at all.

But there are perhaps more equitable modern models of polygamy and polyandry emerging in which men and women who are largely social equals enter into complex relationships that go beyond the nuclear family through which they hope better to fulfil their emotional and physical needs.

Of course, as my wife points out, marriage is becoming, in many ways, obsolete, as fewer and fewer people choose to take that path, and European largely have the freedom to choose the living arrangement that best suits them. But to my mind, it's a question of principle. For example, gay people don't need to marry to share a life together, but that should not mean they have no right to.

In my view, if the institution of marriage is to survive, it should not be so limiting and be made flexible enough to enable people to customise it to their unique needs.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 2 January 2010. Read the related discussion.

Iskander, shortly after his birth.

Saturday 28 November was the best birthday I have ever had. The sight of our son, Iskander, breathing his first, after a long and taxing journey for both mother and child, has to count as the single most emotional and moving moment of my life.

The memory of his cries mixing with our tears is one neither my wife nor I are ever likely to forget. But this magical moment, this three-way bonding experience, this blind date with our new life partner is apparently one I shouldn't have savoured, according to French obstetrician Michel Odent, who is against what he bizarrely derides as the "masculinisation of the birth environment".

The eminent obstetrician even links the rising number of emergency caesarean sections to the presence of fathers in the delivery room. While this, at first sight, appears to be a troubling side effect of our modern lifestyle choices, I find it does not stand up to scrutiny. Pregnancy and birth are complex biological processes and so linking a rise in C-sections to the possible inhibition of oxytocin, also known as the "love hormone", caused by the presence of a nervous male strikes me as somewhat tenuous.

If this were true, then one would expect fewer emergency C-sections in societies where men are barred or discouraged from attending the birth. But this does not appear to be the case. C-sections, including emergency ones, are on the rise not just in rich, liberal societies, but across the globe, including in China (where men are generally not welcome in the delivery room), Iran (where some husbands have only just been allowed to attend), Saudi Arabia and India.

And what about all those other factors? Surely, one of the reasons why more caesareans are performed is largely thanks to the massive advances in medical technology that have transformed what was once a potentially lethal intervention for the mother to a relatively low-risk life-saver.

In addition, not only can doctors better monitor what goes on during labour for danger signals and react rapidly when they are exhibited, the medical community is rightly averse to putting the lives of the mother or child at undue risk. Also, the increasing levels of obesity are making natural births more difficult, while the growing stature and head size of babies has not really been matched by pelvic size.

My wife was forced to undergo an emergency C-section, but the reason for it had little to do with my presence. It was due to pre-eclampsia and foetal distress caused by a loosening of the placenta, leading our baby's heart rate to fluctuate dangerously, reaching worrying lows.

Had we not been there for each other, the endless, agonising crawl of the clock as the surgeon on weekend call dashed to my wife's aid would have been unbearable torture – Katleen, alone, hearing Iskander's weakening heartbeats and me, outside, wearing away the floor with my apprehension. Instead, we gave each other strength and took it in turns to offer reassurance when one of our spirits flagged.

My presence in the operating theatre was also useful. Katleen, whose anxiety for the baby had completely eclipsed any possible concerns about her own wellbeing, as she admitted to me later, was somewhat reassured by the fact that I could see what the surgeons were doing and could communicate that everything was going okay to her with my eyes.

I was also able to hold the fort while the surgeons performed the more laborious post-op procedures. Instead of our newborn son spending that time in an impersonal neo-natal unit with minimal human contact, I held him to my bare chest to give him some of that essential, reassuring skin contact he needed at the start of his life. In return, he gave me one of the most extraordinary feelings I've ever experienced. When his mother was ready to take him to her breast, the moment was overwhelming for her and for me, out of both joy and relief.

Although Odent may be wrong to link the presence of men in the delivery room with the rising rate of emergency C-sections, he does have a point when he says that nervous dads are a hindrance.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 12 December 2009. Read the related discussion.