Egyptian actress to face trial for wearing revealing dress

An Egyptian actress will face trial next month charged with public obscenity after she attended the closing ceremony of a film festival in Cairo wearing a see-through embroidered gauze dress that revealed the entirety of her legs.

Rania Youssef's trial, which is scheduled to begin on January 12, follows a complaint to the chief prosecutor by a group of lawyers against the young actress.

Youssef, who is in her 40s, faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Egypt is a mostly conservative country with a Muslim majority, however the Arab country of 100 million people has retained vestiges of secularism through decades of growing religious conservatism.

Debates over women's clothing have sparked huge controversy in Egypt, where some 60 percent of women in have said they had been victims of some form of sexual harassment during their lifetimes, according to a 2017 report from the UN Women and Promundo.

Three-quarters of men and 84 percent of women polled said that women who "dress provocatively deserve to be harassed".