What Does a Feminist Look Like? Arab Women’s Activism as a Challenge to Authoritarian Politics

As the so-called “Arab spring” revolutions got underway in various part of the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, some outside observers noted the emergence of a new form of feminism as Arab women took to the streets in large numbers. This article seeks to problematize and contextualize the term “feminism” through women’s own voices and argues that, through their activism, it may have been that women had “no choice but to become feminists”. However, while they enacted emancipatory roles in the public sphere, the patriarchal establishment and some individual men responded through the tools of depressingly familiar authoritarian politics. It raises the question, which this article seeks to answer, of whether women’s actions were able to effectively challenge this form of reactionary politics or were unable to prevail against the rapidly reasserted status quo in the region.