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What are Arabian women doing online? And why it matters for gender inequality in Arabia?
Abstract
Academic discourse on gender (in)equality, (often) driven by Arabic governments or/and Western intellectuals, neglects a key factor: the agency of Arabian women as manifested in actions and discourses on social media – a platform renowned for anonymity and transparency. To fill in this critical lacuna, this paper examines the role that (mostly anonymous) women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman have played on Twitter (since the 2010 Arab Spring) in managing sexism, inequality and patriarchy; challenging the status quo; and, in turn, igniting social change. The analysis is motivated by current contentions in new media discourse on the link between social media and social change (i.e. whether or not digital actions lead to tangible social change [Morozof 2011; Blommaert 2017]. The data set is taken from a larger decade-long ethnographic project on social media and Arab identity. I identity four types of digital gender-transformative actions/mini revolutions carried out by Arabian women on Twitter: 1) Religious activism (e.g. challenging religious texts and authority); 2) Linguistic activism (e.g. changing sexist Arabic vocabulary and language); 3) Legal activism (e.g. learning about and spreading awareness of local and international laws on human rights; 4) Journalistic activism (e.g. exposing social taboos through reporting crimes, including honor killings and domestic violence; and 5) Global activism (e.g. creating lines of dialogue with Arab feminists in the West). In addition to listing the main actions, hashtags, tweets, and trends that have shaped feminism in Arabia over the past decade, I ground the discussion in larger concomitant social phenomenon (e.g. the end of the Sahwa in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the war in Yemen, the rising power of Qatari media, and the social move towards a more humanistic approach to life). Connecting the micro digital actions of Arabian women with macro political discourses enables the capturing of the agency of Arabian women and the palpable shift in Arabian consciousness, resulting in emotional and societal discrepancy between inner change and outer rigid reality. I chart an inclusive agenda to enhance gender equality based on the actions of women in Arabia. The findings thus contribute to contemporary discourses on sociolinguistics, gender inequality and social activism amidst growing instability and social unrest. References Blommaert, Jan. (2017). Ludic membership and mobilization: On slacktivism and all that. Tilburg papers in Culture Studies, paper 193. Morozov, Evgeny. (2011). The net delusion: The dark side of internet freedom. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
Discipline
Linguistics
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Arab Studies