PERSPECTIVES ON THE ROLES AND IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT DURING THE ARAB SPRING EVENTS AND AFTER, pp. 665-674 (original) (raw)

2014, COMMUNICATION, CONTEXT, INTERDISCIPLINARITY Studies and Articles Volume III Section: History

From a historical perspective and varying on different intensity levels, one may say that in the long years of resistance to dictatorships women have always played a crucial role. A perfect example to illustrate this fact is the women's involvement in the movements of the Arab Spring, be they riots or peaceful demonstrations, events that have given women unprecedented visibility. However, even after the years of the Arab Spring turmoiled events, women are still confronting attempts to exclude them from decision-making processes and the public sphere through discrimination and violence. As a reaction to this situation, the last years have revealed an increasing tendency of the engagement of Arab feminist activisms online, most notably during the citizen revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and, specifically, women's use of online social networking to aid social change. Therefore the specific Arab organizationseither feminist or just expressing the demands of women -mobilize, produce knowledge, and develop and share resources online, the new social media becoming in the traditional Arab context precisely the key-element of communication, able to turn the local knowledge into global knowledge. By looking at the opinions and perceptions of Arab women, with particular reference to Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, this paper aims at giving key insights on the Arab Spring and its impact on women's rights, and on new social media as the most effective means of communication. It also addresses the different views and approaches of the post-authoritarian regimes by both religious and secular Arab women.