If you’ve ever heard the saying “breakdown before the breakthrough”, then you have some idea of what the women’s movement in the Middle East looks like. Rarely, on good faith and kind gestures, do women in the region get anything handed to them in terms of equality and rights. It’s almost always a fight. Every advance for women can be linked back to a significant event which triggered outrage or brought global attention to the issue.
In 2013, many women activists and woman-specific issues dominated trending media and news rooms globally. The open forum of social media had done much to offer a more open, honest debate about women in the Middle East. Social feeds such as Twitter and Facebook have given women a global audience combined with the safety of anonymity in some cases.
“I truly believe that women online are the next wave of change,” saysPunditMom blogger Joanne Bamberger, author of the recently published Mothers of Intention: How Women & Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America. Social forums have also allowed some of the poorest women in the world to reach out to some of the wealthiest women, at times, creating a unification to enable efforts that create change.
We will look at some of the more recent advancements in the field of women’s rights in the Middle East. Keep in mind that while some may seem an obvious right or a simple step, small changes are big changes for women in Arab countries. The ship turns slowly here…it is the desert after all. Movement is movement and eventually, all the tight bolts will be loosened…in time.
