Anatomy of a campaign: Digital activism as a tool for gender equality

In July 2020, the arrest of university student Ahmed Bassam Zaki in Cairo on the grounds of sexual harassment sparked a social media firestorm in Egypt. Hundreds of women were soon sharing their own experiences of abuse, in what became known as Egypt’s “#MeToo” movement. 

Zaki was later found guilty of sexually assaulting three underage girls and over 50 women have accused him of sexual assault. But while many people expressed support for these women, there were also hundreds of social media posts — mostly from men — drawing a link between harassment and the way women dress.

To counter those suggestions, Gehad Hamdy, an Egyptian dentist who at the time was 25 years old, posted a poll on her personal Facebook account and encouraged women to share their own stories of sexual harassment. 

“I went out for two hours. When I got back, I found 8,000 replies on the post, with a lot of people sharing their stories in the comments,” she said. This was the beginning of Speak Up, a platform that has since grown to nearly a million followers across social media platforms and has worked on over 700 legal cases against perpetrators of gender-based violence. 

Around the world, activists like Hamdy are building movements to address issues related to gender equality and gender-based violence, providing support to those who need it while also achieving significant legal and policy changes. Often, these activists operate with limited resources and face challenges of their own around online abuse. 

“Some people just can't bear to see a woman be this vocal about issues that have previously been swept under the carpet in the name of clture or religion,” said Hauwa Ojeifo, executive director of She Writes Woman, a platform that provides mental health support and services to women in Nigeria.

While digital campaigns are useful tools for reaching a large audience, on-the-ground impact in the form of support services or educational work is equally important. 

“All the work that we have always done has been on the ground. Impact is not an intellectual or abstract word for me,” said Trisha Shetty, founder of SheSays India, a women's rights organization that fights gender-based discrimination through education and awareness raising. 

Devex spoke with Hamdy, Ojeifo, and Shetty about what makes a successful digital campaign and how such platforms can lead to real tangible changes in women's lives.

Gehad Hamdy, Speak Up

Among the many messages shared in response to Hamdy’s original Facebook post were those from individuals who clearly needed psychological, legal, or medical support. Hamdy called on lawyer and doctor friends to be able to respond to these calls for help. As more and more women came forth, the Speak Up movement was born — originally as a Facebook page and later on Instagram and Twitter.

“It wasn't planned at all,” Hamdy said. “A lot of women, when they get harassed, believe it's their fault, and they can’t speak about this. So I think we opened that space,” Hamdy said. Speak Up now counts on a large network of pro bono lawyers and medical professionals and has also built connections with the local authorities, police, and prosecutors to help with cases.

Hamdy cites the case of serial rapist Michael Fahmy as one of Speak Up’s key successes. Fahmy, who was accused of posing as a “spiritual guide” and psychiatrist within his community in Egypt, had been luring young girls to his house under the pretext of offering psychological treatment. While Fahmy’s victims had been sounding the alarm about him for years, Speak Up’s sustained social media campaign sparked investigations that eventually led to his conviction in 2021. 

“It was a very complicated case; it took a year and a half to get him arrested,” Hamdy said. 

Speak Up also successfully campaigned for a tightening of the law on female genital mutilation, which was adopted in Egypt in 2021. The organization is now calling for a strengthening of the laws around cyberbullying and blackmail, which is leading to an uptick in suicide among Egyptian women, according to Speak Up’s research.

Despite these successes, Hamdy is adamant that more needs to be done to improve the situation for women in Egypt. While women today are more likely to report crimes, there is still a lack of sufficient infrastructure to support victims. 

“Sometimes when a woman reports, we can’t help her because there are no shelters for women who get abused, so she has no place to go. It's a very exhausting process … because we don't have laws against domestic violence in Egypt. And we need to change this.” 

Hauwa Ojeifo, She Writes Woman

Ojeifo first began She Writes Woman in 2016. A survivor of sexual abuse and domestic violence, she had recently received a diagnosis of PTSD and bipolar disorder. “My organization was at first like a diary for me, an outlet,” she explained. 

At the time, the conversation around mental health in Nigeria was highly medicalized, with little acknowledgment of the psychosocial aspects, and there was barely any support available at the primary health care level, Hauwa said.

Initially, engagement was mostly limited to people liking a post or sending a private message, rather than commenting publicly. The turning point, Ojeifo said, was when she began to openly share her own story. 

“When I first started, we used to talk in third person. … Being open, creating space for others with lived experiences to begin to tell their own stories, has completely changed the game and changed the way other people view us as well,” Ojeifo said. 

Besides engaging in advocacy around mental health in Nigeria, the organization also offers a toll-free helpline and teletherapy services staffed by professional counselors and psychologists. 

“One addresses the immediate issues that I believe are imperative for us to fill in the gaps within the system. And the other approach is about changing the system entirely,” Ojeifo said. 

In January 2023, then-Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law Nigeria’s mental health bill, the country’s first piece of mental health legislation since gaining independence in 1960. A significant win was the inclusion of individuals with lived experience of mental illness in the process, including Ojeifo, who became the first person with a mental health condition to testify before the Nigerian Senate. 

“We knew that we couldn't get everything that we wanted into the law. … But it gave us an opening. Now we sit in meetings for policy. Now we sit in meetings for the national plan for suicide prevention,” Ojeifo said.

Mental illness is still surrounded by stigma in Nigeria, and Ojeifo has faced many challenges along the way, including attempts to discredit her due to her mental health. 

“To be honest, sometimes I do feel like this work is a burden. It's triggering and re-triggering,” she said. “I recognize the role of self-care, but I always say we cannot self-care our way out of a mentally unhealthy environment.”