“I don’t think you can ever protect your child from the patriarchy, but you can educate your child to recognize what it looks like and give them the tools to combat it,” says Salma El-Wardany. At this time in Egypt, and the world, where many incidents including aggressions against women, leaking of photos without consent and sexual harassment are coming to light, one has to wonder how such issues can be prevented from the root. Is it education? Upbringing? The media? In Egyptian culture, there’s a well-known adage saying that raising sons is much easier than raising daughters. Even in American culture, a song called “Soliloquy” that Frank Sinatra sang in the 1950s echoed the same sentiment, saying “You can have fun with a son, but you’ve got to be a father to a girl.” From this angle, it starts to make sense why the majority of acts of violence against women are perpetrated by men. While women are often raised to the highest standards of behavior and ethics, many men are raised with the understanding that they can do close to anything because of their biological differences, perpetuated by…
