This article argues that more women's participation in the protests and their advancement in the ranks is not only a guarantee of their success, but it is the main way to further their access to their rights, and adds that the experience of the past decade in our region - which extends civilization to include Iran and Turkey - indicates that more escalation of authoritarian regimes in The region in the face of the uprisings has led to a decline in indicators of gender equality, and therefore those who wish to fight the rising tide of authoritarianism will need to make strengthening the political and civic participation of women - through their participation in the protests - central to their work.
Misogyny and authoritarianism are not just co-morbidities but mutually reinforcing ones.
But how do women make the protests more successful?
Around the world, movements led by women tend to be more innovative than those that marginalize women
Harvard political science professor Erica Chenoweth's research, based on a study of revolutionary movements from 1945 to 2014, found that the presence of women in revolutionary movements at high levels makes those campaigns more likely to succeed, so women involved in the movement pose a threat to authoritarian leaders and those with authoritarian tendencies. Thus, these leaders have a strategic reason to be sexist.
The most important reasons are:
Movements in which women play a prominent role tend to attract much larger numbers of participants.
On average it is about 7 times the size of movements that marginalize women.
Movements with large numbers of participants tend to be seen as more legitimate in the eyes of observers, who often respond to the symbolic strength of grandmothers, mothers and schoolgirls who bravely participate in the demonstrations.
Women's participation in mass movements gives activists access to the tools of social change that women influence within their families and communities, where they can draw on networks and norms different from those dominated by men.
for example;
In families and societies, women are often able to make moral claims and exercise social power in ways that shape the behavior and attitudes of those around them.
Gender-inclusive protest movements are often better at undermining the loyalties of regime elites, empowering reformers, and sidelining hardliners as conflict intensifies.
Around the world, movements led by women tend to be more innovative than those that marginalize women.
State violence against female protesters can backfire;
Attacking women and children is often seen as illegal and a sign of government weakness.
Campaigns in which women prominently participate are more resilient in the face of repression, in part because protests inclusive of broad social groups are more likely to remain nonviolent.
Substantial participation by women and other diverse actors increases the social, moral, and financial capital that a movement can use to undermine its opponent's support system.
Women's participation also enables culturally gendered tactics such as parading in full beauty queen attire, as women did in Myanmar's pro-democracy protests in 2021, and cooking food on the front lines of demonstrations, as Iraqi women did in 2019 and during the farmers' uprising in 2020 and 2021 in India, as well. Some social scandal protest movements.
for example;
During anti-government protests in Algeria in 2019, grandmothers told riot police to go home and threatened to report the officers' bad behavior to their mothers. In Sudan that same year, a women's group on Facebook named and shamed plainclothes policemen, whose members they considered their brothers. Their cousins and nephews are members of shadowy militias that have been trying to terrorize the opposition into submission.
patriarchal authoritarianism
It is no coincidence that women's equality is declining at the same time that authoritarianism is increasing.
Political scientists have long noted that women's civil rights and democracy go hand in hand, but they have been slower to realize that the former is a precondition for the latter.
Understanding the relationship between sexism and democratic backsliding is vital to those who wish to resist both.
Clearly, women's political activism has expanded and fortified democracy, a fact that autocrats understand intuitively and explains their fear of women's empowerment.
In the past seven decades, women's demands for political and economic inclusion helped catalyze democratic transitions, especially when women were on the front lines of mass movements.
Various analyzes show that broad frontline participation by women is positively associated with an increase in egalitarian democracy.
In other words;
Women's participation in mass movements is like a rising tide that lifts all boats.
And in less authoritarian settings — where sexist policies cannot simply be overtly imposed — authoritarian-leaning leaders and their political parties — such as Trump and the forces of the right in Latin America and Europe — use sexist rhetoric to galvanize public support for their reactionary agendas, often disguising it in the guise of populism. .
From the point of view of patriarchal authoritarianism;
Men are not real men unless they control the women in their lives.
Patriarchal authoritarianism can do significant damage in the short term to women's rights, reversing hard-won gains that have taken generations to achieve.
In doing so, they propagate misogynistic narratives of traditional "national womanhood."
One researcher described these leaders as promoting "anxious and insecure nationalism" that penalizes and dehumanizes feminists.
Where possible, they pursue policies that emphasize greater state control over women's bodies, while decreasing support for political and economic equality between the sexes.
They encourage—and often legitimize—the subjugation of women, and demand that men and women abide by traditional gender roles out of patriotic duty.
And when these regimes adopt some of the demands that they call for, such as increasing their share in parliaments through the women's quota, or increasing their appointment in ministries and state structures, many studies shock us with their results that confirm the failure of this formula.
Contrary to findings in Western democracies, female politicians do not serve as role models in Asia. Instead, the presence of women in the national parliament reduces women's political participation, and a quota system that forces female representatives reduces women's participation in local politics. In Africa, one way that authoritarian and illiberal leaders make gender hierarchies acceptable to women is through the politicization of the "traditional family".
From the standpoint of patriarchal authoritarianism;
Men are not real men unless they control the women in their lives.
And patriarchal authoritarianism can do significant damage in the short term to women's rights, reversing hard-won gains that have taken generations to achieve, so pro-democracy groups and organizations must understand that truly inclusive movements — those that transcend class, race, gender and gender identity — are most likely to be achieved. permanent change.
In the Arab Spring, women's demands were integrated into the public movement, and the male/female dichotomy was transcended through full citizenship for all, so the slogans revolved around freedom, human dignity and justice, but in the current Iranian protests, women's grievances were the entrance or gate that was expressed Through it for economic, political and social grievances.
Hence the importance of the slogan, which began with women and ended with life, passing through freedom.
Where women are the secret of life, which is not good (“the good life,” according to our civilized expressions) except with freedom.
The centrality of women in these protests is important for reasons that go beyond representation or equality;
According to civil resistance scholars, higher levels of women's participation tend to make mass movements more inclusive, innovative, non-violent, and, as I have argued, more likely to achieve their goals.
And while the protests continue to focus on women's rights and demands, their calls for change are being resonated by ever larger segments of the Iranian public including university students, labor unions and ethnic minority groups.
They see women's interests and demands for gender equality and non-gender discrimination aligned with the larger pro-democracy, human rights, anti-corruption, and egalitarian demands of the larger society.
The centrality of women's rights to Iran's uprising makes it different from those earlier instances of women's political mobilization, and unique among recent mass movements in the broader Middle East.
From the Arab Spring in 2010-2011 until the 2019 Sudanese revolution, protests in the region often erupted in the wake of the killings of young men.
In Iran, this is the first time in the region's recent history that a nationwide uprising has been sparked by the death of a young woman, one of an ethnic minority.
Women's protest and gender equality
Women protesters usually not only demand changes in government policies, but through their organized protest as women, they also present visions of equality for women in politics and society.
Several studies indicate that due to the appearance of women in these protests, it normalizes their presence in the public and political spheres and challenges the gender hierarchy in politics.
The results indicate that gender protest affects gender attitudes especially for young people who are less supportive of gender equality. These studies argue that women's protest - regardless of issue focus - shapes youth attitudes towards gender for several reasons:
Because gender hierarchies often exist within social movements, protests in which women play a major role raise issues of gender inequality and ultimately challenge existing hierarchies.
Activism and leadership in women's protests may highlight these women as role models, leading young people to become more gender equal.
Girls are more supportive of gender equality than their male counterparts as a result of their self-awareness at all levels of women's protest activism.
The natural presence of women protesters in the streets may stimulate a desire for gender equality and a willingness to adopt gender equality roles, so in countries where there are more women's protest events there will be a corresponding increase in attitudes towards gender equality, among boys and girls.
Studies on the symbolic impact of women's representation show that women's presence in the political arena leads to greater political participation than men.
Being in an environment where women's political presence is the norm motivates women and girls to believe in themselves, develop political ambition and confidence, and desire to participate in politics.
Field research also indicates that women's protests influence girls' gender attitudes more strongly than boys, because they sympathize more with female protesters who act as direct models of women's equality in protest politics, so women's protest events will lead to girls' more gender equality attitudes than boys , but it will lead to higher attitudes towards gender equality in societies with low levels of gender equality than in countries with high levels of gender equality.
We are facing a model that must be picked up by the feminist movements in our region, which portray a significant sector of them, as a result of the desire to intrigue the Islamists and the legitimate fear of some of their tendencies that it is possible to achieve the liberation of women in alliance with authoritarian regimes, which has proven to be a failure, as indicators of gender equality in the region indicate that It's in decline.
A noteworthy observation here is that women demonstrating in countries with high levels of gender inequality may frame their protests on the basis of more traditional values in order to reach a broader group of populations, hence the importance of cultural/religious discourses promoting women's liberation However, it should not, in any case, be a substitute for the political movement, as its role is supportive and supportive, not a substitute.