Women's rights update: Hymenoplasties in Tunisia and harassment in Egypt

From Al Arabiya:

It happens every April ahead of the summer marriage season, says Tunisian gynecologist Faouzi Hajri - desperate brides-to-be beg for surgery to make them "virgins" again for their wedding night.

Fearing rejection as "used" women in a conservative Muslim country where premarital sex is nevertheless common, Tunisian women are increasingly opting for the sort of surgery offered by Doctor Hajri.

But it doesn't stop them regretting the need to convince new husbands of their purity.

"A woman's honor shouldn't be determined by a few drops of blood," says Salima, a 32-year-old who admits she had the operation so that her "honor" was not in question on her wedding night.

It is easy for a woman to have her hymen surgically reconstructed in Tunisia.

The routine hospital operation takes around 30 minutes and costs from 400 to 700 euros ($550 to $960), with a less permanent version needing to be done within a week of the wedding, while the stitches hold.

"The number of women resorting to hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy (as the operations are known) has gone up a lot in recent years," says Moncef Kamel, a doctor in the southern island of Djerba.

The women he operates on -- around 100 each year, aged between 18 and 45 -- come with their faces hidden behind a scarf and dark glasses, "have a normal, active sex life", and generally hail from working-class backgrounds.

"It's a taboo subject, which explains why there's a lack of official statistics," says Doctor Hajri.

The Tunis-based gynecologist says he also treats about 100 women annually, including from neighboring Libya and Algeria.

...

Research by psychoanalyst Nedra Ben Smail indicates that just five percent of Tunisian young women are not worried about losing their virginity before marriage, while more than 75 percent of women appearing to be virgins on their wedding night have had the operation.

Meanwhile...

Last December, Egyptian academic Mariz Tadros wrote that women’s human security was not on anyone’s agenda. According to her research, the security breakdown since the Arab uprisings has led to a dramatic rise in incidents of sexual harassment due to the sense among perpetrators that, in the absence of law and order, they can get away with anything. Women’s mobility, including their ability to go to work, has been severely curtailed. This is not only true in Egypt. Tadros found that women working night shifts—for example, as doctors and nurses—in the Libyan city of Benghazi could no longer carry out their jobs.

... A 2013 survey conducted jointly by the United Nations, Egypt’s Demographic Centre and the National Planning Institute found that more than 99 percent of Egyptian women had experienced some form of sexual harassment. This is surely a fact that is unacceptable to all, regardless of where they fall in the harassment debate.

One way to begin to move the debate along and to restore women’s ability to go about their daily lives is to shift the focus onto the unacceptability of the sexual harassment of women full stop, and less on discussing the various justifications for it. This requires a social and political will to move towards a culture of mutual respect and acceptance between men and women. In a country still wrestling with itself over its future, it is unlikely that this will find itself at the top of a national agenda in the near future.