Women and The Arab Spring

On 18 January 2011, in Cairo, Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26-year-old blogger, posted a video on Facebook calling for a demonstration in Tahrir Square to protest against the Mubarak regime. The next day, in Sana’a, Tawakkol Karman, a 32-year-old activist and journalist, demonstrating in solidarity with the Tunisian people, called on Yemenis to rise up against their corrupt leaders.On 15 February, in Benghazi, mothers, sisters, daughters and widows of men killed in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison took to the streets to express their rejection of an oppressive regime.

From Tunisia to Bahrain, from Egypt to Syria, women from all backgrounds demanded democracy, social justice, freedom, dignity and equality. Women activists, bloggers and journalists mobilised and informed the world what was happening. These uprisings, through the demands they generated, reasserted the universality of human rights. Across the region, women occupied public spaces despite different degrees of freedom. In Tunisia, Morocco and Tahrir Square, women demonstrated shoulder to shoulder with men. In Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen the segregation of women in public has not prevented women participating as

demonstrators, organisers and leaders. In each country women, as well as men, have been arrested, detained, killed and tortured by regimes clinging to power. 

But women have been targets of additional forms of violence including rape, “virginity tests” and abduction. While women played leading roles in the long years of resistance to dictatorships, the movements of the Arab Spring have given them unprecedented

visibility, shattering stereotypes. Images like those of a young Tunisian woman shouting and brandishing a banner proclaiming “Ben Ali, get out!” have been etched into people’s consciousness around the world.

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