How would you react if
your virginity becomes the gateway to higher education? According to some
members of Egyptian parliament, before female students are worthy of receiving
higher education, they must prove that they are virgin. According to one
parliamentary member Elhamy Agina, who last month spearheaded the campaign of
FGM for women to be compulsory, has once again called on the Egyptian Minister
of Education to introduce compulsory virginity test before girls are admitted
to the universities.
Egypt which declared
these kinds of tests illegal in 2011 when the Egyptian court outlawed the
compulsory virginity tests to detainee as illegal and disgusting has really
been shocked at the utterance of Elhamy Agina. Although women remain to be seen
as a tool of sexual satisfaction in many countries like Swaziland, Lesotho and South
Africa where virginity is used as a measure to be given scholarships, this kind
of practices only aim at downgrading the level of education among girls.
To strip them of their
humanity by making them take a test is nothing short of unacceptable. We know
in this 21st century that a virginity test doesn’t work. A number of things besides sex, including the
physical strength, social standards, quality of education and parental guidance
can affect whether a girl or a woman passes or fails. But more importantly, the
use of what is between their legs for educational purpose is illegal and
degrading to our mothers and sisters. They attempt to measure something which
plainly has a zero impact on the woman’s ability to
graduate from college. Women who have endured such kind of tests describe them
as “traumatic, humiliating and more so horrifying” to them. They are just one
form of sexual violence women face in their lives.
