مركز النديم لتأهيل ضحايا العنف والتعذيب

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Once again.. Women speak out.

Results of a Field Research on violence against women in Egypt

Introduction

In 1994 the New Woman Research foundation together with El Nadim Center carried out the first field research on women's perceptions of gender violence. The research was a contribution to the preparatory activities of Egyptian civil society organizations for the Beijing conference on women. It came as a reply to those who claimed that violence against women does not happen in our societies, that it is rare and limited to poor, deprived and marginalized classes and that even when it happens, women do not object to it and consider it a natural component of their personal lives and therefore should not be addressed by outsiders.

At that time, because we are women, and because we believed that human beings all over the world and across all times were thriving for physical and psychological safety and wellbeing, and because we are convinced that our people and our women are not an exception to that rule, since they are first and foremost human begins, we decided to seek the voices of women themselves concerning their attitudes towards violence in general and that violence which befalls them and their children in particular. The results of the 1994 research confirmed that we Egyptian women are no different from all the rest of the world.. we reject harm, humiliation and oppression and wish for a life that is free of violence, injustice and discrimination, even when such a life seems difficult to achieve because of social and economic factors and religious interpretations colored by the mentality of the interpreters.