This week the Irish get to have their say. While the other countries simply need parliamentary approval, in Ireland the decision is being made via a referendum. In February the Attorney General advised the government that a public vote was needed, as any significant changes to the constititution in Ireland require a referendum.

Unlike the votes on the Lisbon and Nice Treaties, both of which the Irish rejected on the first go, there is no veto this time. The Fiscal Treaty comes into force when 12 of the 17 euro zone members ratify it.

The latest polls indicate that the Irish are going to vote in favor of austerity, bucking the recent voting trend in Greece, France and even Germany. But that doesn’t mean that the Irish are enthusiastic adherents of Merkel’s belt-tightening fixation.

As much as anything, the Irish referendum could be described as a battle between fear and anger.

“It depends which motivates us more,” says Ben Tonra, professor of international relations at University College Dublin.

Only countries that ratify the Fiscal Treaty will have access to the euro zone’s new permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which comes into force on July 1. Many Irish voters realize that, even if they hate austerity, they may well need access to the ESM.

In November 2010, Ireland obtained 85 billion euros from the troika of creditors — the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

While the government has professed that it will again seek funding directly from the bond markets at some stage in 2013, that is looking increasingly unlikely. With the current level of uncertainty in the euro zone, Dublin could well be forced to look for a second bailout.

As for the referendum, the “yes” campaign argues that without access to the ESM, future austerity could be even harsher. And they say that many of the requirements of the Fiscal Treaty are already being met as part of Ireland’s bailout program.

They also warn that a “no” vote could undermine the country’s credibility, since Ireland is hugely reliant on foreign direct investment. Those advocating in favor of what they call the “Stability Treaty” argue that Ireland’s recovery would be threatened if foreign investors were spooked by a rejection of the treaty and any implications that it could have for Ireland’s position in the euro zone.

On Sunday night in a televised speech, Prime Minister Enda Kenny warned that rejecting the treaty would bring “uncertainty at a time Ireland definitely doesn’t need it.”

That sense of uncertainty could persuade many to vote yes, even if they disagree with the wisdom of the treaty itself.

“I think this is a lousy treaty,” says Tonra. “It’s bad economics, it’s bad politics and it’s badly written. But what it does do is it gives us access to cash.”

On the flipside of these fears about the future is a profound anger in Ireland over the country’s current predicament.

Many Irish people are furious at their political elite for getting them into this mess, and at the European Union for forcing them to effectively take on the gambling debts of speculators, bankers and property developers.

The bailout became necessary as a result of the previous government’s ill-fated decision to guarantee all of the country’s banking debts in 2008. Those debts turned out to be astronomical, as a result of reckless lending to property developers, and Ireland bailed out the banks at enormous cost.

As the state took on these liabilities, the markets pushed up its borrowing costs, leaving Dublin with little choice but to turn to the troika.

Making matters worse, the state has been overly reliant on real estate transaction taxes. Once the property market crashed, that left a massive hole in public finances. At the same time, there is more demand on the public purse due to soaring unemployment. For 2012, the funding gap is an estimated 13 billion euros.

That deficit comes despite a succession of harsh budgets that have been imposed at the behest of the troika, including billions of euros worth of expenditure cuts and new taxes.

At the same time, the bondholders — who had loaned to the reckless Irish banks — have been paid back billions of euros from the state coffers.

The Irish government’s attempts to persuade the ECB of the need to write down this albatross of bank debt have been to no avail so far. As a result, the public anger is directed not just at their own politicians but at Brussels and Frankfurt, too.

“The ECB has been utterly dogmatic in terms of protecting not only senior bondholders but junior bondholders,” explains Tonra. “And has basically said all these speculators have to be paid back and they have to be paid back on the shoulders of Irish taxpayers.”

Commentators often point to Ireland as Europe’s austerity success story. Unlike in Spain and Greece, on the surface, Ireland’s economy appears to have returned to growth, albeit modestly, with the EU predicting a rate of just 0.5 percent for 2012. Moreover, official figures show a trade surplus, although this may not be a reliable indicator since it is distorted by the many multinationals based in Ireland who repatriate their profits.

Yet most Irish people don’t feel that things are getting better. The number of those struggling to pay back often-massive mortgages is growing. On Friday the Central Bank announced that one in 10 mortgages are in arrears of more than 90 days. Unemployment remains around 14 percent, up from 4.5 percent just five years ago, and it would be even higher if not for high levels of emigration and the return home of many immigrants who contributed to Ireland’s boom.

The party seen to have caused the mess, Fianna Fáil, was booted from office last year. However, members of the current government, particularly the center-left Labour Party, have seen their support decline, with backers angry at them for continuing the same austerity agenda.

Left-wing nationalist party Sinn Féin, the biggest critic of the Fiscal Treaty — which it dubs the “Austerity Treaty” — has seen its support soar, particularly among working-class voters.

Other opponents include businessman Declan Ganley, who helped defeat the Lisbon Treaty first time around, and smaller left-wing groups, including the Socialist Party.

They warn that the treaty institutionalizes an austerity policy that is not working and will not fix Ireland or Europe’s problems, despite promises to tack on some kind of growth element. “Austerity contradicts growth, austerity kills growth,” says Paul Murphy, a member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party. He argues that by voting yes, the Irish people would be signing up for even harsher austerity.

The no campaign is calling on voters to not let themselves be persuaded by the warnings of the government about the ESM, arguing that the EU would never allow a member state to be in a position where it had no access to funding.

“The yes side has been overwhelmingly dominated by fear, by really scaremongering people,” says Murphy. “They are painting a bleak Armageddon picture of what will happen if people vote no.”

He and the other opponents claim that Ireland has a veto over the ESM, which has yet to be anchored into EU law, something that requires unanimity among all 27 member states. They argue that the government could say that unless the link between the ESM and the Fiscal Treaty is removed, they will block the bailout fund. However, the government says it has already agreed to the ESM.

Murphy says that if the Irish were to vote no, it would undermine the treaty across the bloc. “If you had a no vote in the only country that has a popular vote on it, it would have ramifications across Europe” and send “a clear message to Merkel and her friends across Europe.”

Yet critics say the no campaign has failed to be convincing on the crucial issue of future funding.

“When it comes to this vital question of: Where is the money going to come from? How do we fund our services? How do we bridge the gap between what goes in and what goes out? I think even fair-minded, objective people would say that they fail rather dismally,” says John O’Brennan, director of the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, outside of Dublin.

O’Brennan himself is uneasy about the Fiscal Treaty, particularly as it is another sign of a move away from the community model that was a mark of the way the EU operated for so long, whereby institutions such as the European Parliament, Commission and Court of Justice acted as a counterbalance to national interests.

Within the euro zone, the trend has increasingly been for intergovernmental decisions. This allows the bigger countries such as France and Germany to steamroll the smaller peripheral ones. And this, he argues, is leading to an increasing democratic deficit in the EU.

Yet for all that unease and rage, it looks like the great anxiety about how Ireland will pay its way could have the upper hand on Thursday. A number of polls released over the weekend showed that the yes vote was in the lead. However, the large number of people who are still undecided means that there could be a late swing to the no side.

And turnout could be crucial. While polls ahead of the first Lisbon and Nice referendums showed that those treaties would be approved, the anti-Treaty voters turned out in greater numbers.

O’Brennan predicts that on Thursday fear is still likely to trump anger. “Undoubtedly there is an element there that wants to punish the government,” he says. “But that is tempered by the risks.”

“We are very angry, but we are not angry enough that we can vote no.”

There were many hospitals much closer to the scene, but these are government run, and the risk of execution or arrest, particularly for those arriving with battle wounds, is so high that citizens throughout the area endure these dangerous journeys every day.

“Most of the death cases we see are because of the distance,” said Dr. Mohammed, a neurosurgeon who treated the Deersonpol cases at his clinic in Deir Alsharky. “Most bleed to death along the way. Today we lost three from injuries that could be treated if we’d got to them in time.”

Many doctors and patients asked to be referred to only by their first names for fear of authorities. Dr. Mohammed was no exception. After his home and his practice in Damascus were raided by authorities, he became wanted on the charge of treating injured demonstrators and members of the Free Syrian Army. He was forced to flee the city with nothing.

“The soldiers would come into the hospitals and kill and arrest patients, especially after the Friday demonstrations,” he said of his work in Damascus before he fled the city in January. “Even in the intensive care units, the soldiers would come in and kill the patients in their beds or drag them into the streets. I have seen this many times.”

Due to the risks, secret hospitals have sprung up across the country. Some are manned only by untrained nurses. Volunteer doctors and surgeons working in primitive conditions run others, like Dr. Mohammed’s clinic. Immediately after surgery, the patients are sent to safe houses protected by the Free Syrian Army, where their condition is monitored.

Doctors Without Borders, an international nongovernmental organization, confirmed the government practice of targeting medical workers and patients in a report released earlier this month.

“We saw militarized health care facilities, meaning that access to medical care depends on which side you belong,” said Brice de le Vingne, the organization’s director of operations in Brussels. “Health facilities are being targeted, thus endangering patients and preventing health care workers from doing their jobs. Health facilities and pharmacies are looted and destroyed.”

Dr. Mohammed said most of his equipment is donated and smuggled in from Turkey. He shows a respirator, two new surgical sets and a radio that just arrived. Medical supplies and medications are always in short supply.

For some patients, the treatment they need is simply not available in these makeshift secret clinics.

In Maarat Al-Numaan, a government checkpoint stands by the city hospital. A few blocks away in a narrow alley is the door to the secret clinic. The doctor here, Ahmed Rawin, said they are afraid to keep patient records in case of a raid. They list only those who need follow-up treatment in the safe houses in a small notebook. Dr. Ahmed told the story of one recent patient in desperate need of life support.

“We moved him to the international hospital under a fake name,” he said. “Within days the soldiers came and killed him. They threw his body into the street.”

Many seek treatment in Turkey, but the journey is difficult. Rowad, 22, said he just returned from surgery across the border. As a member of the Free Syrian Army, he was injured by shrapnel during a clash with government forces. Nerve damage caused him to lose feeling in his right leg. After surgery performed by Dr. Mohammed, members of the Free Syrian Army snuck him across the Turkish border for follow-up surgery.

“Most of the way we managed to go by car, but they had to carry me for about three kilometers,” said Rowad, who still has no feeling in his leg, but can now walk with the help of crutches.

Dr. Mohammed said in the past week he has sent three urgent cases across to Turkey. Two died en route.

Activist Abdul Aziz Agini, who works with the Free Syrian Army near the Turkish border, said he receives requests to arrange transport for patients almost daily.

“We suffer a lot to get them there. We must carry them on our backs,” he said.

There isn’t enough manpower for everyone, however, and many in desperate need of medical treatment must wait to find a safe passage.

In Ariha, another town in Idlib province, the smell was nauseating as a 60-year-old man removed a bandage from his infected feet — most of the skin and flesh was gone. The man, who works as a butcher, was arrested at a checkpoint. His court papers say he is accused of “participating in demonstrations.” He was held and tortured for 45 days.

“They hit my foot with a wire cable telling me to confess,” he said, adding that he was released 10 days earlier. “When they took me to court, they had to carry me. When the judge saw me, he didn’t even question me. He ordered my release.”

So far, the route through Turkey has been too dangerous for someone in his condition. Until now he has been unable to get any treatment.

“We are in a large concentration camp called Syria,” he said. “My fate is in God’s hands.”

Volunteer doctors say they receive many cases of torture by authorities. Treating these patients often leads to their own arrest. Dr. Najib Aledel has been imprisoned twice for his work in a secret hospital in Ariha. Ten days after his last release, Dr. Aledel said he was back on the wanted list.

“There was no injury for me,” he said in reference to his two months of total prison time. “But I saw very bad deeds happen to others, and there is no [medical] treatment inside the prisons.”

Dr. Aledel said the cease-fire agreement between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the Free Syrian Army is in name only. The patient number has dropped, but not significantly, he said. And medical supplies, he said, are so low he and his staff often give their own blood to patients in need of transfusions. He said there are no humanitarian groups or overseas aid, and the only supplies come through private donations, both local and international. In all clinics, doctors said they desperately need more support from abroad.

Mohammed, an activist and pharmacist that secretly supplies these underground clinics in Ariha, believes these attacks on the medical system are yet another way to instill fear into the people.

“The government is aiming for social chaos so people will get desperate and ask for the government to come back,” he said. “But now we have started. There is no going back.”

Campaigning on law and order and a heavy-handed crackdown on anti-regime protesters, Shafiq secured second place in last week’s vote. In what many Egyptians say is the most polarizing outcome of the elections, Shafiq will face the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, in a run-off that pits Islamists against a Mubarak holdover on June 16.

Both Shafiq and Morsi scored surprise, upset victories against the other candidates, after trailing considerably in pre-election polls behind secular-liberal candidate, Amr Moussa, and independent Islamist, Abdel Meneim Aboul Fotouh.

Analysts and observers of Egyptian politics are reeling from the results, cautioning that right now the Egyptian electorate is so dynamic — with alliances and voter sentiment shifting so rapidly and unpredictably — that attempting to accurately forecast a winner of next month’s run-off is ultimately futile.

“Everything I thought I knew about this country has collapsed,” said Hisham Kassem, independent publisher and longtime opposition activist, of the divisive election results. “All analyses of the polls are so far unconvincing. The game has changed considerably.”

Indeed, for weeks preceding the elections — the first free, multi-candidate polls in Egypt’s history — both local and international think-tank surveys put Moussa, a former minister of foreign affairs and centrist figure, in the lead, with as much as 40 percent of the vote.

In the final tally, Moussa scored just under 11 percent.

In another bombshell, Hamdeen Sabbahi, a leftist-socialist candidate who, along with Morsi, never broke 10 percent in pre-election surveys, won both of Egypt’s most populated governorates — Cairo and the Islamist stronghold of Alexandria — to land in third place nationally.

Morsi, with the strong electoral machine of the Brotherhood behind him, was catapulted to first place with the most votes, after being written off as a weak candidate with only 8 percent of the vote prior to the vote.

The Brotherhood flourished for years as Egypt’s largest and most organized opposition force.

Some observers blamed the gross miscalculations on the difficulties of conducting research in Egypt, particularly in gauging voter sentiment in rural areas.

The government-affiliated Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, for example, conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,200 respondents for their surveys, but did not publish the socio-economic breakdown of the survey’s subjects.

“But sometimes in face-to-face interviews, villagers are influenced by having a village elder nearby,” said Rasha Hassan, a social researcher with Harassmap, an Egyptian, online social initiative that tracks sexual harassment trends through text messaging. “You have to take [things like this] into account.”

Telephone polls are also misleading, because most rural village households do not have landlines — only mobile phones.

Still, the polls, including one from the DC-based Brookings Institution that was in fact quite rigorous, could not capture the tumult and fluidity of voter sentiment in Egypt’s transition period, said Michael Hanna, a fellow at The Century Foundation in New York.

Similar to other countries that have made the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, the Egyptian political landscape is likely to change drastically from one election to the next in the immediate post-revolution period, experts say.

There are many factors that could have swayed the vote, even at the last minute.

Least surprising was Morsi’s jump to first place, buoyed by the mammoth grassroots network of the Muslim Brotherhood that energized voters to go to the polls, analysts say. Many of their core ideological voters, particularly in Egypt’s impoverished southern region, may not have been represented accurately in the surveys.

Kassem said he had predicted there would be two strong voting currents — Islamist and pro-stability — but that the so-called “stability” vote would be represented by Moussa, who echoed many ordinary Egyptians’ sentiments by chiding demonstrators for spreading chaos.

Shafiq, as a member of the old regime who emphasized his military credentials during the campaign, did not have a true constituency among Egyptian voters, he said.

Shafiq was indeed ranking low in the polls, until a last-minute surge at the end of May, when several surveys from the Cabinet Information Decision and Support Center, a government-linked research group, put Shafiq in the lead.

Hanna credits his rise to violent clashes between protesters and military police at the ministry of defense in the Abbaseya neighborhood of Cairo earlier this month, and state media still controlled by Mubarak holdovers.

“Obviously the control of state media, the law and order narrative put forward by SCAF” — the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, made up of Egypt’s ruling generals — “is potent in combination with Abbaseya,” Hanna said. “It had a big impact on the election, drawing the stability vote from Moussa to Shafiq, whom some state-run polls were putting in the lead in the last days of the campaign period.”

But to draw a linear plot from secular and Islamist voter choices in the first round to the run-off would be a mistake, Hanna and Kassem say.

Saleh Ali Ahmed, a 39-year-old voter and self-described devout Muslim from the Brotherhood stronghold of Ismailia province, exemplifies the complexity of the Egyptian electorate.

“If the run-off is between Morsi and Shafiq, I will vote for Shafiq,” he said on the first day of the polls, before the official results were announced. “Morsi is very weak within the Brotherhood, and he will have no real power.”

Kassem said one can assume that those who voted for Moussa, a non-Islamist, will switch to Shafiq, who has promised to curb rising Islamist power.

“But it is just a guess,” he said. “And anyone’s guess is as good as mine.”

Tokyo Disneyland condoned this and all future same-sex ceremonies after receiving an inquiry from Higashi. Cue a confused response from a subsidiary, Oriental Land Company, which licenses the name and characters from Disney in the United States.

Higashi, 27, and her partner could “marry” at the park, they were told, but only if they dressed “like a man and a woman.” Park officials were worried that other visitors might be offended by the sight of two women in wedding dresses or morning suits.

The park relented on the dress code after a storm of protest on Twitter and other social media networks — it had all been a misunderstanding by an individual employee, it said — but the couple will not be allowed to exchange vows in the park’s chapel due to “Christian teachings.”

Those restrictions go to the heart of the flimsy protection offered to the rights of LGBT people in Japan, say campaigners. Homosexuality is not illegal, but same-sex marriages are not legally recognized.

“There needs to be more pressure for legal unions between gay people in Japan,” said Taiga Ishikawa, one of only a handful of openly gay politicians in the country. “This is only a guess, but I’d say there are more people now who are in long-term relationships and want that to be recognized in the form of a civil partnership.”

The 37-year-old, who won a seat on the Toshima Ward assembly in Tokyo last year, is campaigning to introduce an ordinance in the area to offer some form of marital recognition and to increase the number of administrative rights and services afforded to same-sex couples. But he admits that it’s “some way off.”

If Disneyland was being held up as an agent of progress, one of Japan’s most popular celebrities popped up to demonstrate that, in some quarters, ignorance reigns.

Commenting on TV on President Barack Obama’s recent declaration of support for gay marriages in the US, the film director and comedian Takeshi Kitano told a fellow guest: “Obama supports gay marriage. You would support marriage between humanoid and animals eventually, then,” before questioning the ability of gay couples to raise children.

Kitano has since tried to explain his outburst: “I was only talking about people who love their pets so much that they may think of marrying them,” AFP reported him as saying. “There is no way I look at gay people in the same way as I do animals, let alone implying sexual relations with animals.”

His were not the first comments with homophobic overtones to be made by a high-profile public figure in Japan. In late 2010, Shintaro Ishihara, the outspoken governor of Tokyo, suggested gay people were “deficient” after watching same-sex couples take part in a parade in San Francisco. “We have even got homosexuals casually appearing on television,” he said. “Japan has become far too untamed.”

Yuji Kitamaru, a journalist who writes about LGBT issues, said he was “very disappointed” by Kitano’s remarks, particularly as he has spoken up for minorities, including transgender people, in the past. “I felt it was a big betrayal not only to us and the audience, but also to himself. Public figures like Kitano can easily indulge in that kind of bigotry because Japanese people in general haven’t considered the difference between public discourse and private gossip.”

Yet Kitamaru, who has written on LGBT issues in Japan for two decades, believes social media has quickly become the forum for a more open discussion about sexuality, citing Twitter’s role in the Disneyland decision and a meeting held in Ni-chome, a gay neighborhood of Tokyo, to thank Obama for his support.

Higashi and her partner, meanwhile, have visited Disneyland to break their good news to Mickey Mouse. They have yet to set a date for the wedding, and there are reports that their inquiries were intended only to test the theme park’s commitment to equality.

Ishikawa welcomed Disneyland’s decision, which apparently came after officials in Tokyo contacted the company’s US headquarters. “I wrote 10 years ago that I looked forward to the day when gay and lesbian couples could hold hands and go to Tokyo Disneyland, so I’m very happy,” he said. “But we’re still not at the point where a man or woman can tell people, especially co-workers, that they have a same-sex partner.”

But she was barred from entry, an insult added to injury by the military, a powerful and patriarchal institution that has been accused of many violations, including the sexual assault of its own female prisoners and aggressive indifference to the rights of women on a wide scale.

“They were denying me entry because it was 2 a.m., with the excuse that I am a female so it is ‘too late’ for me to enter the premises,” she told GlobalPost. “I stood there regardless and continued to demand to enter because each detainee has the right to a lawyer.”

Fifteen months after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians head to the polls Wednesday and Thursday to choose the country’s first-ever civilian president. This election and the constitution to be framed in its aftermath will set a course for Egypt’s fledgling democracy, and there is almost no one who has more at stake than the country’s women.

As the debate continues about how much power the new president will have relative to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and how much influence the majority Islamist parliament will exert on society, women like Omran who were on the forefront of the revolution say they’re now being pushed out of public and political life, at best an afterthought to two rival and very male camps — Mubarak’s “old guard” and the Islamists.

None of the presidential candidates — all men after former television presenter Bothaina Kamel failed to qualify for the ballot — have demonstrated significant interest in women’s issues, advocates say, while many women have been targeted for violence and intimidation by the ruling military. But many women are pushing back against this campaign of marginalization, fighting to secure a role in Egyptian society at a pivotal time in the country’s history.

“Not a single candidate made efforts to sit down with the female coalition’s movement during his campaign, except for Amr Moussa,” said Fatma Emam, who is currently a researcher at Nazra for Feminist Studies and an activist blogger.

Emam, an outspoken 29-year-old woman from Nubia in Southern Egypt, said she is disappointed by the current front-runners, which include Moussa, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, Abdel Moniem Aboul Fotouh and the Nasserite candidate Hamdeen Sabahy.

“What’s happening now in the elections shows that women’s rights are not a concern,” she said.

Emam believes economic and security concerns have trumped social issues — including women’s rights, fair laws and education reform — in voters’ minds. Recent Pew Research Center polling confirms that 81 percent of Egyptians consider economic improvement to be “very important” in the election — more than any other issue.

However, according to Egypt’s National Council for Women, 33 percent of Egyptian households are headed by women.

“Up until recently, five years or so ago, women were not given tax cuts by the tax authority because they were not considered heads of households, even though now at least 33 percent of women are breadwinners,” Emam said.

Though women are currently a crucial part of the Egyptian economy, the society still lacks a fair legal system that would guarantee the rights of all citizens, according to Mozn Hassan, a self-described women rights defender and head of Nazra for Feminist Studies.

From “virginity tests” allegedly administered by the army upon Samira Ibrahim and dozens of other women, to excessive violence strategically targeting female protesters like the “girl in the blue bra,” the women’s struggle has been closely tied to a larger movement against military rule in Egypt.

“A huge part of the idea of militarization in society involves targeting women,” said Hassan. “All of these events, including the virginity tests, are a part of it all, [and] this won’t end with presidential elections.”

The Women’s Vote

While many Egyptians hope that significant change will come with a newly elected president, Egyptian women say they must retrieve their rights themselves.

Dalia Ziada, one of the country’s most active women’s rights advocates, is currently leading a study at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies that focuses on the situation of women after the Arab Spring.

Ziada, director for the Ibn Khaldun in Egypt, will be working closely with the center’s researchers to monitor this week’s elections in 22 governorates across the country, including Cairo, Alexandria and Upper Egypt.

As an Egyptian woman, Ziada believes that many of today’s candidates have failed to address female voters, which make up 52 percent of society.

“Although he is associated with remnants of the old regime and he may easily prolong military rule behind the scenes, [Amr] Moussa, as a liberal, is the only candidate who has reasserted that women’s rights would be a priority,” she said.

But Ziada believes even Moussa exhibits a chauvinism that is pervasive in Egyptian politics.

“When asked about the role of the first lady, all of the candidates said they do not want their wives to be involved in politics,” said Ziada.

“If a president does not respect his wife and does not see that she can play a role in politics, then how will he respect the average Egyptian woman?”

Women Taking Action

Shortly after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011, a few hundred women marched on International Women’s Day hoping to protest against sexual harassment, which has been a social epidemic in the Arab world’s most populous country for years.

But the women were attacked and harassed by small groups of men in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the country’s uprising. The men yelled “now is not the time” for trivial demands.

Later in December 2011, images of soldiers slapping elderly women on the face, stripping young female protesters, and dragging women by their hair quickly circulated.

Despite evidence of violence, many people brought blame on the women, criticizing their presence in the streets and, in some cases, their “provocative” clothing.

This time, thousands of determined women of all ages and social backgrounds marched in unprecedented numbers to protest the Egyptian army’s excessive use of force and sexual harassment against pro-democracy protesters. As the women marched, male protesters made a human cordon around them, fearing that the women might be attacked again.

Meanwhile, the SCAF defended the soldiers’ actions, stating that they were acting “according to the circumstances.”

In March 2012, a court ruled against Samira Ibrahim, who accused a military doctor of forcefully administering a virginity test after she was detained by the military while protesting against the SCAF’s prolonged rule on March 9, 2011.

Although military generals had publicly admitted that the military conducts virginity tests as a safeguard against allegations of sexual assault or rape in military confinement, the court stopped short of assigning specific blame.

Many advocates see it as their role to denounce the autocratic regime, which is still “very much in place” and without much female representation.

Just 10 women won seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections earlier this year. Women’s representation in the constituent assembly, which will be tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution, remains a contested issue.

“We have drafted a list of amendments in the constitution that need to be adjusted immediately, said Emam.

“The Egyptian Young Feminist Movement has also provided the speaker of parliament with a list of women who are eligible to serve on the constituent assembly who can help draft a constitution, but all of these efforts have been overlooked,” she added.

The Struggle with Legal Reform

With Islamists making up as much as 70 percent of the people’s assembly, Hassan fears that women’s voices will continue to be stifled.

“Till this day, the parliament has not passed a single progressive decision regarding the past incidents of violence,” she said. “There is also no law till now that would protect women from domestic violence.”

As the country’s ruling powers fail to hold accountable those responsible for such violence, society follows suit.

“The Nadim Center [for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence] recently drafted a petition hoping to include a law that would support victims of domestic violence, but only 2,000 citizens actually signed the petition,” Emam said.

Parallel to legal reform, Emam strongly believes there must be societal and governmental restructuring so that women can successfully work to achieve their rights.

“I hoped they would discuss these issues in parliament, but instead they discuss our age of marriage,” Hassan said, referring to parliament’s controversial debates regarding a bill that would lower a woman’s legal age of marriage from 16 to 14.

However, Hassan believes that while the current people’s assembly ignores women’s concerns, the military institution does not even hear them.

“Even if Islamists are aggressive in their decisions regarding women’s rights, the military does not even see us,” she said.

Despite these obstacles, however, Egyptian women are proving that they are doers, not victims.

“I’m against the idea of victimizing women,” Hassan stressed. “You are in a patriarchal society, they already see you as victims. But if we are subjected to violence, we are not looking to be consoled. We are aiming to empower ourselves and to to be in positions that would allow us to put an end to these problems.”

Although they both work independently, Ziada from Ibn Khaldun shares Hassan’s sentiment when it comes to the threat of rising extremism.

“The rising Islamism gave a justification for the patriarchal mentality,” said Ziada. “Everything in the past was inappropriate for women to do; now it is not only inappropriate, it is haram, or a sin. Before, it was not right to challenge society; but now you can’t challenge God, according to Islamists.”

Taking matters into her own hands, Ziada is currently working with Ibn Khaldun on a program that aims to empower women from Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

Still in the works, the program will choose women activists from the region and provide them with the tools that would allow them to compete for positions of power.

“We are going to start this initiative in two or three months. It will take about a year, and we hope to recruit women who have potential to lead in legal, religious, economic or political fields,” said Ziada.

By starting from the grassroots level and equipping Arab women with the skills of communication and international relations, the project aims to give them the opportunity to be part of the decision-making process.

“Our aim is to empower young women. This is what will achieve real change,” she added.