The Egyptian prosecution dismissed Nov. 12 murder charges against the teenager known as “Ayyat girl,” in reference to the place the incident happened. The 15-year-old had stabbed a microbus driver with the knife he used when trying to rape her. Others were not as lucky. A woman was slammed a life sentence on Oct. 30 for killing a rapist who invaded her home while her husband was away. Even though Egypt’s judicial system has recently begun to side with female survivors of violence, there still remain fundamental flaws.

“The Ayyat case must be generalized, as long as the woman is in a state of self-defense,” said Intisar al-Saeed, lawyer and founder of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law. “There is no doubt that there is discrimination between men and women in the entire system — from the police, to the prosecution, to the courts and back to the laws themselves,” Saeed told Al-Monitor.

According to Saeed, gender-based violence cases are always regarded as low priority and those cases are mostly met with sarcasm from prosecutors. “‘Why don’t we leave the important work we have and work in family courts?’ they say,” she noted.

The lack of female prosecutors and units within police stations specifically for gender-based violence is problematic in another aspect. During the legal investigation, a violence survivor is asked to recall the incident up to six times, and some of its details may make a woman feel nervous or embarrassed. The nature of the questions the prosecutor asks requires gender sensitivity, Saeed stressed.