In the post-Arab Spring world, Arab women continue to show confidence in their collective power to fight exclusion, silence and oppression. Analyzing cases from across the region, this paper argues that Arab women are continuing their social revolution and challenging social, legal, and political norms that have traditionally rewarded their compliance. Today, male dominated social structures and powers are shaken, and women are influencing politics and challenging the secular-Islamist power poles. Just as Arab women resisted oppressive regimes, their activism during the uprisings revealed the shortcomings of how Arab women were overwhelmingly misrepresented as “victims” and subordinate by nature who operate in a highly patriarchal setting and whose activism is limited to “bargaining with patriarchy.” Since the Arab Spring, the social revolution of Arab women is manifested in overwhelming participation in public life, representation in decision-making, and emboldened leadership of women’s organizations. Women have infiltrated the contentious collective space en masse fighting for women’s rights and representation as parts of the greater plight for political and economic reforms. They partnered with international, civil society, and state actors to pass a number of gender legal reforms that protect women’s rights, combat gender-based violence, and promote gender equality. Major social transformations have occurred in the region since the Arab Spring that showcase Arab women’s determination to respond to existing and new challenges. Gaining momentum during the uprisings, women have personalized their agency and made their voices heard throughout the region.

In March 2017, the Iraqi Parliament and media experienced a huge uproar after a female MP called for the promotion of polygamy in order to support and help the high number of widows, divorcees and single women. Jamila Al-Obaidi, a Sunni member of the Iraqi Parliament from the National Coalition, convened a press conference, encouraging women to denounce the culture of monogamy. This was not the first time post-invasion Iraq that gender issues took centre stage in political and media debates. In fact, questions around women’s legal rights, their political representation as well as gender-based and domestic violence have constituted symbolic markers of difference between the old Ba‘th regime and new forms of governance in central and southern Iraq on the one hand, and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq on the other. At the same time, contestations around gender have also been at the heart of ethnic and sectarian tensions and conflict. In this talk I will illustrate that increases in gender-based violence, contestations about women’s legal rights, as well as wider gender norms and relations, are central to understanding and shaping sectarian and authoritarian governance in post-invasion Iraq. Moreover, I will show that Iraqi women’s rights mobilisation has not only attempted to challenge the shrinking of political and social spaces for women, as well as the different forms of violence they have been exposed to, but they have also been at the forefront of struggling against sectarianism and political authoritarianism. My arguments and findings are based on long-term and ongoing qualitative research on the gendered implications of the invasion and political transition in Iraq.

Discourse surrounding state policy on gender, formerly the purview of elite groups, has been shaped and driven by popular organizations and associations in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings in Tunisia. This article draws on Habermas to argue that the shift has been facilitated by the emergence of a new public sphere and engaged civil society following the fall of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali regime in 2011. To capture women’s voices in the emerging civil society, we focus on the promulgation of a new constitution and the debate surrounding Article 28, which has been contested by some Tunisians as reducing women’s status to ‘complementary’. A brief consideration of women’s status in the history of Tunisian family law, especially in the popularly valorized Code of Personal Status, illustrates how women’s rights were historically expanded as a top-down policy or ‘politics from above’. We juxtapose this historical context with the present period of transition and constitution writing following the 2011 uprisings. An examination of statements from Tunisian women, both opponents and supporters of Article 28, demonstrates the shift in Tunisia from a ‘politics from above’ to a ‘politics from below’ as women’s groups made demands upon the state and expressed their concerns in ways that have profoundly influenced the tenor of debates around gender politics in the country.

Bahrain is at a major crossroads. With the unaddressed demands of the Pearl Roundabout protests in 2011 and the failure of the ensuing National Dialogue to introduce tangible political and constitutional reforms, the Bahraini regime has managed to maintain the status quo while making minimum concessions to different opposition groups. The culmination of this gridlock is clearly manifested in Bahrain's parliamentary elections that took place in November 2014—notable for the absence of opposition forces—and the dominance of independent voices with no clear ideological or political affiliation in the current Lower House. Undoubtedly, this political stalemate not only impacts the country’s balance of power, but also has a direct effect on the status of women's rights in Bahrain. Notwithstanding the steady efforts by the government to promote Bahraini women’s educational and health outcomes (UNICEF 2011) over the past decades, women continue to face numerous obstacles due to the conflict between tradition/tribalism and modernity (Al Gharaibeh 2011) on the one hand, and the struggle for power between the rival political forces in the country, on the other. Furthermore, despite the long history of women’s cross-sectarian political activism through both formal and informal channels, the country’s increasing political fragmentation has led to a deep schism among women’s groups, dividing them into “loyalist” or “opponent” camps, with little or no attention paid to the core feminist issues of particular importance to women in Bahrain. The discussion will shed light on the transformation of Bahraini women’s roles before, throughout, and after the Arab Spring while placing it in the context of the dynamics of women’s activism in both formal and informal venues in Bahrain since the inception of its brief period of political liberalization, between 2000 and 2011. In addition, this discussion aims to explore the impact of the current political situation on the status of women in the aftermath of the Pearl Roundabout events and prospects for women’s political empowerment in Bahrain.