Women’s Entrepreneurship and Political Engagement: The Impact of the Arab Spring

Abstract

With the Arab Spring sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, combined with a global renewal of the women’s movement, feminist organising and activism is as timely now as it has ever been. This paper conceptualises feminist affective solidarity in the Middle Eastern context of Saudi Arabia. The research is a longitudinal study, which includes interviews with 16 Saudi women between 2010-2019 exploring their infrapolitical activism and feminist affective solidarity as entrepreneurs. Based on the situated and contextualised understanding of feminist affective solidarity in Saudi Arabia- where women’s activism has been morphed into a form of “Western” neoliberal transgression against the Islamic country and patriarchal traditions- the research investigates how feminist solidarity takes place, with a specific focus on uncovering the legitimate infrapolitical practices that Saudi women employ in order to engage in feminist solidarity and political activism through entrepreneurship. The findings highlight the essential role of the situated historical, social, political and economic context that impacts women’s opportunities for activism and feminist solidarity in the movement, while appreciating the paradoxical roles they are meant to uphold, as the “ideal Islamic woman”, maintaining legitimacy for the monarchy and the state, and the symbol of “modernity”.