A focus on the spaces where women asserted their public presence in the Egyptian revolution reveals a great deal about how changes in power relations between women and men can contribute to the transformatory potential of the revolution, says Nadia Taher.
In the days ahead a struggle looms over women's human rights and gender justice in Egypt. Will the Muslim Sisters rise to the occasion?
What are the evolving narratives of the Arab Spring? Hoda Elsadda reports from a conference in Cairo examining the conflicting narratives of and about the Arab revolutions, and the geopolitics of these narratives
While the Iranian government authorities attempted to appropriate the Arab spring, claiming it was a continuation of the Iranian revolution of 1979, the events revived popular longing for democratic change in Iran. Ziba Mir-Hosseini tells Deniz Kandiyoti that no movement for change in Iran can aff
The push to police the way that women dress continues across Africa on the pretext that it causes sexual harassment and violence against women. What really underlies this censorship of women’s expression? asks Bibi Bakare-Yusuf
The Egyptian elections delivered a parliament that has one of the lowest rates of female representation in the world. Yet this is the parliament that expresses the political will of the people of Egypt. It may also be one that ignores the social realities of gender and of women’s political partici
"We are constantly aware of our gender and of being watched and judged because of it, so we end up "performing". But in taking to the streets there are no performative acts and there is no audience. Now I feel that there is no going back, After all, there is no text to follow, and no director. It
Saudi Arabia’s response to the ‘Arab spring’ has been an attempt to co-opt movements for change in a bid to maintain the status quo. Madawi Al-Rasheed talks to Deniz Kandiyoti about the contradictions of a ruling elite that promotes a conservative Islam, that threatens women’s existing rights abro
The stateless in Kuwait have been trapped in poor conditions for two decades. The Arab Spring has provided hope that at long last their voices might be heard.
Will the rights of the women, who participated in the struggles leading to fall of Gaddafi, be put under pressure in the new Libya? Kathryn Spellman-Poots assesses women’s status under Gadaffi and points to the perils ahead.
Writing has come to mean place and presence, and presence gives us power to force those who don't acknowledge our existence to admit that they can hear the sound of our breath, says the young Egyptian writer Zainab Magdy
