Inside Egypt's Muslim Sisterhood

Supporters of Morsi shout slogans as they continue a sit-in protest outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo (Photo: Reuters)

[This story was originally published on Ahram Online on 7 October 2013] 

As army tanks came to a halt in front of a group of protesters lying in the road, the air thick with teargas, Wafaa Hefny didn’t hesitate.

“I walked up to the soldiers standing on each tank and said ‘your mothers will curse you. Do not fire at your brothers - go back,’” she recalls. “All the tanks moved back.”

Hefny, 46, is a university instructor and an active Muslim Brotherhood member. Speaking at home, she wears a crimson traditional dress, her hair streaked with a few grey lines. 

When security forces began to disperse a sit-in by supporters of Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi at Rabaa Al-Adawiya on 14 August, Hefny and her husband immediately went there.

Hefny had spent several weeks camping at the Rabaa protest with her family. When she arrived at the site - in Cairo's Nasr City - she found no way in. So she joined people going to nearby Al-Tayaran Street where they forced tanks to retreat. 

After her encounter with the tanks, she spent the night transporting dead bodies out of the ruins of Rabaa. 

Women on the streets

Hefny was not the only female member of the Brotherhood who took to Cairo’s streets when the protest camps were dispersed.

Though the Brotherhood, an 85-year-old Islamist group founded by Hassan El-Banna, is seen as a male-dominant group, it has a lot of “sisters” who participate in different roles. They may not, however, reach leading positions or rise to the fore after a lot of the men were arrested recently.

“Women are more active on the street than men,” Sameh Eid, a former member of the Brotherhood, tells Ahram Online. 

“They engage actively in public relations and elections campaigns; they are passionate and enthusiastic members,” he says.

Policewomen patrol women's carriages on Cairo's packed metro

Colonel Roqayah El-Seify speaking to women passengers in the metro (Photo: Reem Gehad)

[This story was originally published on Ahram Online on 2 October 2013] 

As crowds increase on Cairo’s underground with the return to school and closure of a central station connecting two main metro lines, a female police force has appeared on busy trains. 

Colonel Roqayah El-Seify, 57, saluted high-ranking officials as she walked into the police office at Shohada metro station in downtown Cairo, one of the city’s busiest stations.

She wore a white police suit, pink-coloured make-up and a black headscarf under her police cap. 

“We work with policemen in order to secure and protect the metro - trains and stations,” she told Ahram Online. 

The female force on the metro includes officers and lower-ranking police personnel. El-Seify says at least ten women are part of this force. They come from a larger women's division within the Interior Ministry, recruited mostly from administrative positions. 

Their task in the metro is primarily focused on the two carriages allocated for women on each train. 

“We secure these carriages through moving patrols inside them, raising awareness of pickpockets, beggars and harassers,” she said. 

Passengers in the female-only carriages often complain about men who ride in them, especially during late hours, as sexual harassment has become a daily issue for most women in Cairo. 

More than 99 percent of hundreds of women surveyed in seven of the country's 27 governorates reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment, ranging from minor harassment to rape, according to a report issued by the UN, Egypt's Demographic Centre and the National Planning Institute in April.