In 2011, a series of uprisings took place throughout the Arab World in order to remove the authoritarian leaders that had ruled for decades. Surprising political analysts and scholars in the field, these uprisings succeeded in the removal of the authoritarian Egyptian and Tunisian dictators Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The success of these Arab uprisings hinged on the logistical efforts that were orchestrated across the region. In this paper I investigate the role that Egyptian and Tunisian female activists played in the success of the Arab Spring. I define “success” as the removal of Egypt and Tunisia’s respective authoritarian dictators. I argue that without the organizational and logistical efforts of female activists, the protests that took place in 2011 would not have been as effective in shaping the political goals of the uprisings. To assess the role that female activists played in perpetuating/organizing the uprising, I will conduct a historiography of the usage of the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and blogs in order to demonstrate how these women were able to use the technological advancements of the time as a catalyst to assist them in reaching citizens in the most rural of places. I examine these women and the unconventional role they played in creating a new genderless public social sphere. Understanding the importance of gendered public spheres/spaces which have played an important role throughout the history Tunisia and Egypt allowed for female activists to create a new sphere through the use of cyberspace and social media. In this new social sphere, they unified protesters under a single narrative and eventually mobilized protesters to demonstrate throughout Egypt and Tunisia. Lastly, I examine these women and the unconventional role they played in shaping the political atmosphere post-revolution. Although their push for social reform resulted in underrepresentation in the conventional political sphere, these activists have continued to push boundaries and create new spaces in order to advocate for social change. Ultimately this paper argues for sustained interest in the role of women in the shaping of Arab politics. The role of women is often overlooked by scholars which prevents an accurate historical analysis when examining momentous events in the Arab World.

Recent scholarly attention to Egyptian women’s feminist resistance has narrowly focused on revolution-related and/or organized activism, which overshadows other factors that awakened Egyptian women’s feminist defiance. Addressing this omission, this paper asks: what patterns of unorganized and/or non-revolution related feminist resistance have Egyptian women been publicly partaking in, prior to and after the revolution? What are their motivations and repercussions? Drawing on 12 semi-structured interviews with Cairene women in 2017, I employ feminist theory and (everyday) resistance studies to argue that women’s actions to claim rights to public space are audacious acts of ordinary feminist resistance, that they pre-date the revolution and are not always inspired by it, and that these audacities alter gender roles and relations in Cairo’s public space. This paper is built upon three concepts: audacity, the ordinary, and the revolutionary. The first two reframe everyday acts that women “unabashedly” carry out in Cairo’s public sphere, which normative discourses deem inappropriate, immoral or shameful. As women take up space for themselves, the dichotomy of masculine/public and feminine/private gradually collapses since their audacities challenge society’s standards of normative femininity. These audacities belong to categories I define as ordinary feminist resistance in public space, such as pursuing pleasure, acts of self-preservation, and the right to be in the public eye. By revolutionary, on the other hand, I mean two things: any feminist activism or resistance that occurred during the revolution, and any kind of coordinated and organized campaigning that the revolution subsequently inspired. In contrasting the ordinary with the revolutionary, I separate feminist resistances that are not related to the revolution and resistances that may have been inspired by the revolution but are quotidian actions that may seem unremarkable; they are not organized or part of a group. My focus on the ordinary enables a unique integration of literature that sheds light on women’s resistances in the public sphere in the Global South and feminist literature that challenges the public/private, masculine/feminine dichotomy in the MENA region. Furthermore, I challenge views casting the revolutionary alone as audacious. My focus claims a reconsideration of the ordinary itself as audacious. Finally, this paper foregrounds a type of resistance that normalizes Egyptian women’s appearance in public in ordinary everyday life, which, I argue, is a pertinent prerequisite to their (explicit and organized) political participation, which the state has cracked down on through repressive measures such as forced closures of NGOs and virginity tests.

Israel is the only country that has mandatory conscription for both male and female citizens. The military plays a key role in Israel’s national identity and in domestic and international politics; the role of women in the military has also been used to advance Israel’s image as a “progressive” country in regard to women’s equality. Several studies have been done exploring the role of gender in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as women’s activism against the occupation and the militarization of Israeli society. However, most of these studies have focused on civil society activism rather than activism from within the military, through groups such as Yesh Gvul, Combatants for Peace, and Breaking the Silence.. Women activists in Israel struggle against war and militarism using their position as mothers who promote and value life, but feminist activists also have campaigned for women’s equality in all aspects of Israeli society, including the military. While mixed gender combat units are increasing in numbers and military promotional materials have extensively covered the accomplishments of female fighter pilots and the first all-female combat unit, the overall percentage of women in combat units remains small (less than 4% in 2014). Based on these dual foci of Israeli female activists, this paper examines gendered narratives of military service and activism, including stereotypes, tropes and symbols used by the Israeli military as well as those protesting against military policies within and without the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). We ask three primary questions: First, to what extent do women in uniform engage in military activism? Do they speak out in the tradition of women civil society activists or do they stay quiet so as not to jeopardize women’s efforts to achieve equality within the IDF? Second, for women who do engage in military activism, how does their military activism compare to women’s activism in traditional peace movements in terms of narratives and tactics used? Third, how does the portrayal of women’s military activism differ from the portrayal of their male counterparts? Using secondary sources including Israeli news sources, activist websites and promotional materials, and military public relations documents, this paper examines whether narratives of resistance are gendered.

This paper explores the historically elevated and gendered rates of self-burning among young, poor, married women in the Persian belt countries of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Drawing on original field work in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, upwards of 150 qualitative surveys, as well as over 50 semi-structured interviews with survivors of self-immolation, their burn doctors, nurses and civil society actors in all four countries, I challenge the gendered and pathologizing language of the state that dissimulates these acts through the familiar language of ‘suicides’ and discuss the culturally-embedded and conflictual language of affect forged via the incineration of the body. Based on the findings of a grounded theory analysis, I explore how the material and symbolic power of women’s self-burnings defy both cultural forms of patriarchy at the family level and its refracted power in structures of the state. This, I argue, speaks to the broader importance of centering embodied acts of resistance occurring within the confines of the private sphere in the study of politics. Offering up the image of a ‘spotting fire’ – one that travels from the western most regions of Iran (in Iranian Kurdistan) eastward, through western and central Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and the eastern borderlands of Samarkand, Uzbekistan – as a way to conceive of the historical emergence of self-immolations as a common signifier for women’s resistance to the harsh demands of gender apartheid, I challenge the narrowness of predominant views which insist that social movements and political resistance are to be found ‘out on the streets.’ As I demonstrate, these approaches neglect to consider the structural and subjective realities shaped by gender, ethnicity and class and their impacts for how political resistance is articulated across various cultures and political landscapes.