Description
This article explores how the gendered governance of urban (im)mobility – particularly through the regulation and contestation of street harassment – (re)produces neoliberal authoritarianism. Focusing on post-revolutionary Egypt, it situates women’s constrained mobility within the broader consolidation of neoliberal authoritarianism following the 25 January Revolution. Through a case study of HarassMap, a grassroots initiative aimed at challenging the social acceptability of sexual harassment, the article examines how non-state actors negotiated shifting political conditions and an increasingly repressive state apparatus. Drawing on interviews with HarassMap staff (2014–2018) and critical scholarship, the study traces the evolution of the organization’s strategies: from community-based outreach during Egypt’s transitional period to constrained engagement under President el-Sisi’s regime, which simultaneously appropriated women’s protection and suppressed public activism. The article argues that HarassMap’s interventions redirected gendered governance toward everyday conduct and subject formation, yet also reproduced neoliberal hierarchies and exclusions. By foregrounding the relational and multi-agent governance of urban (im)mobility, the article contributes to critical understandings of how neoliberal authoritarianism is sustained through mundane, spatialised practices. It highlights the ambivalent role of grassroots activism in shaping dominant political and economic orders, offering insight into the gendered logics underpinning contemporary authoritarian neoliberalism.
