Are women more likely to increase their political participation through Internet usage in the Middle East? Are women’s levels of political participation greater through new media usage compared to men? Using data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey, detailed historical research, and elite interviews with activists from the Middle East and North Africa during the “Women and Public Service Institute” in the summer of 2012; this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on information ecology and contentious politics in the Middle East by assessing the transformative effects of Internet usage on the political participation of Arab women. We hypothesized that the Internet increases political participation for all individuals but differentially enhances women’s involvement in the Middle East. We used a comprehensive measurement of formal political participation that included voting, signing of a petition, attending protests, and campaigning for a candidate. We suspected that the Internet offered a gender-neutral space where low costs of producing and consuming information resulted in greater political participation of women compared to men. Statistical and interview evidence suggests four major findings: 1) women that do not use the Internet are less politically active than men that do not use the Internet; i.e. there exists a gender gap in political participation without Internet; 2) Internet usage increases political participation of all citizens (regardless of gender); and 3) Internet usage does not differentially increase political participation among women in all types of political activity compared to men, and (4) the Internet is a useful tool (among many) for improving participation but not a panacea. These results hold even after controlling for a range of individual background variables like formal education levels. Finally, our study problematizes the notion that the Internet is generally believed to be a low cost and safe space for women’s political participation. It is not a de facto safe space for women in the Middle East. In fact, disincentives in the form of high visibility in unregulated spaces and easy targeting for state violence prevent women for harnessing the full potential of the Internet for whole scale political activism.