ABSTRACT
Recent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region provide an opportunity to reflect upon the role of gender in transitional processes. While most studies of transition focus broadly on institutions, elite configurations, or wider democratization processes, 1 few have focused on the impact of transitions upon women in particular. 2 To be sure, political transformations that are sweeping the MENA region raise a number of important questions regarding how these transitions will impact women: Will recent political changes in the MENA region, which have seen Islamic movements, at least for a period of time, secure power in a number of states such as Tunisia, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories, bring about a retreat in women’s rights? Recent debates on equality between men and women in Tunisia might lead one to believe that the political opening created by dramatic events in the region, as noted in Zemni’s contribution, 3 might also contain the risk that women might find themselves further marginalized within increasingly patriarchal social orders. This contribution will explore challenges confronting Arab women in the context of the Arab Spring, and it will argue that women in the MENA region are caught between two different sources of oppression: internal and external.
