Cyberfeminism in the Arab World

Abstract

Cyberfeminism has emerged as one of the key recent innovations in feminism that harnesses the power of online technologies to promote gender equality and social justice. The advent of the internet has also significantly impacted the feminist movement in the Arab region in recent years, where Arab women's cyberactivism has contributed a new chapter to the history of both Arab feminism and the region. In the context of the Arab Spring, particularly, digital media have given women activists an unprecedented visibility through their strategic roles at three important stages: before the outbreak of the Arab revolutions to express “publicly” their social and political grievances without the fear of retaliation, during the series of uprisings in the mobilization, documentation of the events, and cultural dissemination phases, and, finally, in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions where women activists continue advocating, through digital storytelling and art and activism, the idea of the ongoing gender revolution today. Therefore, such a new technologically enabled visibility actually defies the traditional and widespread dichotomy of men versus women and public versus private that is used to characterize Arab and Muslim women's lives; the online sphere, therefore, becomes a “gateway” through which Middle Eastern women can access the public space, make their voices heard, and advocate for their rights as equal citizens.