At the dawn of the wretchedly misnamed Arab Spring, Westerners hoped the overthrow of a corrupt dictatorship would liberate Egypt’s women. Instead, it made things worse. Public order deteriorated. The military regime of the immediate post-Mubarak period imposed “virginity tests” on female protesters. When the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, it began to introduce gender segregation in public places. Some politicians even argued that women who had been assaulted at demonstrations should be punished for simply showing up and inciting the assaults. Not surprisingly, a recent poll by Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked Egypt as the worst Arab country for women to live in.
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