Social movements strategically frame their messages and demands to effectively resonate with the public. What implications does strategic framing have on women? This article engages social movement framing literature in order to examine gender dynamics within the February 20 Movement (F20), the main organizer of protests during the Arab Spring in Morocco. Interviewees make clear that feminist activists were increasingly active in the F20 movement, but their demands for gender equality were not. For frames to resonate with a public they need to be culturally compatible to the target audience. The article will use narratives from F20 activists and focus on how women’s demands for gender equality were self-censored by the F20 in order to resonate with a conservative public. The paper will demonstrate that women’s demands for gender equality, along with other ‘culturally sensitive topics’, were strategically relegated to the broad demand of freedom. In other words, the F20’s broadly-construed justice frame of “Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice” encompassed culturally sensitive issues like gender equality, without specifically mentioning them.

Does the promotion of women’s rights by governments in conservative societies affect individuals’ attitudes and behavior with respect to gender equality? I investigate this question in the case of Morocco, a developing country that has made significant legal and policy advances for women’s rights over the past 15 years. I argue that government action advancing women’s rights in societies where conservative attitudes prevail can contribute to shifts in perceived norms around gender equality even if personal attitudes change slowly or not at all, but that the gap between norms and attitudes can generate backlash against women. Existing evidence measures personal attitudes on an array of gender issues but does not investigate how these might align or contrast with perceived social norms and behavior. I first use an original survey of 1,000 Moroccans to measure status quo and directional norms, contrasted with personal attitudes, across a range of gender equality issues, and I test how both perceived norms and attitudes vary in response to exposure to government promotion of gender equality. Second, I present evidence from an original lab experiment conducted in Morocco testing whether exposure to government promotion of gender equality prompts less generous and more punitive behavior by men toward women. Together, the findings from these studies contribute to our understanding how gendered norms, attitudes, and behavior evolve amid rapid social and legal change for women’s rights.

Iran’s authoritarian political structure alongside the dominant conservative gender ideology of the regime has resulted in women’s underrepresentation across all political decision-making positions. Although women compose a highly politicized and mobilized section of the society, as apparent by their extensive presence in the street demonstrations or activism in grassroots campaigns, women’s presence in high level decision-making positions is quite marginal. Women compose only 5.9% of the tenth Iranian parliament (2016-2020), while only one woman has served as a minister in post-Revolutionary Iran. Women face restrictions in all other political leadership roles, including the presidency or judiciary. Despite women’s low numbers in political office, their efforts, in combination with other factors, has instigated a number of important policy changes aimed at enhancing women’s rights and status, some of which occurring under the presidency of moderate Hassan Rouhani. Such reforms include policies granting mothers the ability to pass citizenship to their children, ensuring that women compose at least thirty percent of the managers in government ministries, or at last granting women (limited) access to sports stadiums as spectators. A number of female politicians have also been publicly critical of the gender discriminatory policies and behaviors of the Islamic regime, which helped revitalize the Iranian women’s rights movement. The regime’s conservative forces however have not remained silent in the face of such outspokenness and women-friendly reforms. Justifying their actions through protecting the Islamic society and its values, Iran’s hardliners have waged harassment campaigns against critical women politicians, succeeding in their removal from office or hindering their political influence. Drawing from the literature on women and politics, this paper analyzes women’s substantive representation during the Rouhani-era gender politics to further explore the complexity of women acting as ‘critical actors’ when a ‘critical mass’ of women in politics is absent (Krook and Childs 2009). While much of the literature highlights the contexts and conditions that enable women politicians (and at times men) to substantively represent women by pursuing their interests in policy-making, this paper aims to highlight the conditions that lead to backlash and suppression of women critical actors. It argues that Iran’s closed authoritarian context with its undemocratic institutions effectively resists the influence of the limited number of critical actors that may rise to power. Iran’s Guardians Council is particularly tasked with removing incumbent women critical actors by disqualifying them to stand for the next election, as witnessed in the 2020 parliamentary elections.

This paper examines to what extent public evaluations of female candidates accord with traditional views about which areas of governance are appropriate for women in the conservative Arab Gulf country of Qatar, where little is known about support for women in politics. It uses gender role congruity theory to assess whether public sentiment relegates women to so called “women’s affairs” such as education and health but downgrades their ability to make contributions in more masculine areas such as economics. Furthermore, the paper uses status discontent theory to examine the divergent views of men and women in the public with respect to female candidates. Status discontent theory posits that as women become more empowered, men will hold to traditional values because their position in society is threatened. Accordingly, men are more likely to prefer that female candidates keep to “women’s affairs” as elected officials. Additionally, this paper considers the role of the female candidates in promoting Islamic values within the local government. While conservative Islamic gender norms have been associated with decreased freedom and political participation it is unclear how this will translate into public opinions. Thus, the analysis probes public views on whether religious promotion should be considered part of women’s affairs in governance. The paper use data from a nationally-representative pre-election survey of adult Qatari citizens fielded just prior to the 2015 municipal council elections. The survey included a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical candidates for the council. The candidate profiles included randomized information for candidate first and last name, as proxies for gender and sectarian affiliation, education, job experience, and religiosity. Respondents were then asked to evaluate the candidate in several ways, including the following issue areas: economy (a masculine domain), education (a feminine domain), religion (a dubious domain), and the environment (a neutral domain). Findings indicate that evaluations of the female candidate differ considerably between male and female survey participants, with females being considerably more supportive of the female candidate in the feminine domain of education. These findings are somewhat supportive of status discontent theory. However, in other ways the findings support role congruity theory. For instance, both men and women respondents view the female candidate as less qualified in the domain of economics. Thus, the paper moves beyond examination of general support for women in public office to provide a theoretically motivated exploration of patterns of support for women in particular aspects of political representation.

What are the social barriers to female labor force participation (FLFP) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and how can they best be overcome? In most MENA countries, employment for both females and males is constrained by educational and economic opportunity, making it difficult to observe and understand the independent influence of non-economic obstacles to FLFP such as family opposition or women’s fear of the social costs of working outside the home. To gain empirical leverage on these questions, we study public attitudes toward FLFP in a setting where the state effectively guarantees employment but where the rate of female labor force participation nonetheless reaches only half that among male citizens: the ultra-wealthy Arab Gulf state of Qatar. We implement a nationally representative telephone survey probing the character and motivations of individual resistance to FLFP. Then, in a follow-up survey of the same respondents, we test and compare the efficacy of two types of interventions in changing attitudes toward FLFP in Qatar: first, a “tailored” informational treatment that addresses the specific concerns reported by a respondent; and, second, a more general, uniform “public service announcement” regarding overall societal support for FLFP.