Egyptian women top the world in “abusing and beating their husbands,” Renad Ghanem writes for Saudi Gazette, citing alleged ‘UN crime statistics.’ Ghanem says: “According to the data, wives don’t only use their hands in beating their husbands, but use implements such as pins, belts, weapons, kitchen tools and shoes, with some even using sleeping pills to be able to beat and burn their husbands.”

<rant>The Saudi Gazette “report” is the kind of defamatory garbage you might expect to hear on Egyptian talk radio, presented as fact-free entertainment while attempting to trivialize domestic violence and establish a false equivalence on violence between spouses. The author makes no mention of which United Nations agency is being cited, nor does it give the name or publication date of any study. The United Nations Office on [illicit substances] and Crime does not track domestic violence. However, as we noted at the beginning of last month, Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, the National Council of Women and the United Nations Fund for Population Agency launched Egypt’s Economic Cost of Gender Based Violence Survey (pdf, English, Arabic), the first such study of its kind in the region. The study found 7.8 mn Egyptian women faced violence from men in 2015, with 5.6 mn of those facing violence from their husband or fiancé.

Domestic violence cost Egypt EGP 2.2-6.2 last year in the form of lost wages and other costs arising after women missed work after suffering domestic violence.</rant>