Street Harassment

On Wednesday, all of the FYS classes gathered to hear a guest speaker talk about International Anti-Street Harassment Week and about street harassment in general. The speaker showed this video which I thought was a nice little clip that fit in with what she was saying. One thing that really surprised me was that Egypt and the Middle East have really high numbers of gender based street harassment even though the women are hardly visible because of all of the clothing. It is so bad in Egypt that they have separate transportation modes just for women to limit harassment. This blew my mind. I knew that America would have bad numbers but I never thought the Middle East would. In America I have noticed women have a tendency to dress inappropriately, and men tend to be disrespectful perverts. (Not saying all men are perverts or women trash.) For the US I can simply understand why the numbers would be high. The problems line up. In the Middle East however, there must simply be a gender dominance thing that is not as prevalent here in the US. I don't see any other reason why men would hit on women that are so under exposed. Women in the US tend to over expose their bodies which would lead to harassment here, but I was truly shocked to hear about the issues in other parts of the world.
On a side note, I wonder too how the Mayan women were treated. I know some ancient cultures worshiped women over men, but others used the women as sacrifices and slaves. Just curious as to how street harassment would have been viewed in their eyes...