Recent social developments in the Middle East suggest that women are making slow but definite advances into the public sphere, from the adoption of gender quotas in Tunisia, to driving rights in Saudi Arabia. Yet many observers are cautious in the interpretation of these events, pointing out the ulterior motives of some regimes to impress Western governments and appear modern and democratic on the international stage. While the actions of governments and various organized women’s movements have been widely studied, much less has been said about the public sentiments underlying these events. Absent public opinion analysis, it is impossible to know if advances made by women are deeply rooted in changing social norms or are the by-product of an authoritarian version of state feminism that co-opts and uses feminist policies for its own ends. Is authoritarian state feminism a sustainable trend that reinforces public support for women in politics, or is it merely the product of extant political circumstances? In the latter case, feminist reforms may be susceptible to political changes and vulnerable to conservative backlash. This paper explores these questions by combining cross-national analysis of public opinion data in 12 Arab countries with an in-depth case study of support for women in politics in Qatar, as a case that has witnessed considerable state-led feminist reforms without a widespread women’s movement. The current study considers several established theoretical expectations such as the implication of socialization (Beaman 2009), status discontent (Banaszak and Plutzer 1993) and elite cues (Kittilson 2010) theories on feminist attitudes, while adding two theoretical consideration appropriate to the Middle East context. First, it examines the country-level variation in democracy with the expectation that elected female leaders are more closely tied to public opinion. Secondly, it accounts for Westernization as an individual-level factor that potentially socializes individuals into acceptance of women in politics. The analysis leverages public opinion data from a 2018 survey on social and economic life in Qatar. Consistent with the cross-national analysis, we look for evidence of socialization, status discontent, and elite cuing theories in the individual-level analysis. However, the case-study data are richer and permit analysis not available in the cross-national study. Thus, the paper move the theoretical discussion beyond state-centric conceptualizations of feminism in authoritarian regimes to explore the pressing issues surrounding public support for women in politics in the Middle East.