Beyond the Veil - Examining the role and representation of Women in the Arab Uprisings

“I, a girl, am going down to Tahrir Square, and I will stand alone. And I’ll hold up a banner, perhaps people will show some honor…Whoever says women shouldn’t go to protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25th.”

-       Asma Mahfouz’s video message posted on Youtube on January 18th, 2011.

The young Egyptian activist played on the state’s masculinity and notions of honor to her advantage and called the people out to protest in what later was known as the Egyptian Revolution. As the 2011 uprisings spurred across the Middle East, women were at the front of the revolution as they demanded regime change, economic equality, and social change. Even though this was not labeled as a feminist movement and their appearance was not the same compared to the Western Woman during the Suffrage, much of the Arab women’s depiction in Western media was from an Orientalist lens. The name “Arab Spring” was coined by Marc Lynch in the U.S trade magazine, Foreign Policy. Much like any other connotations, the use of “Spring” in association with the uprising was a tactic used by the West to westernize the revolution with neo-liberal notions of progressive, democratic, and freedom. In this framework, progress in the Middle East heavily lies upon the status and freedom of women. During the protests that spread across the Middle Eastern countries in 2011, women were at the frontlines, serving as a catalyst to drive social change and transformation both in the physical and digital space. However, the portrayal of women in Western media during the uprisings was too often reduced to be a representation of Islamic oppression or a symbol that confirmed the lack of democracy in the Middle East. With this paper, I aim to investigate the West’s visual and linguistic portrayal of the “Arab Woman” in established news sources and investigate the overlooked and silenced messages of women’s activism in the 2011 uprisings. 

Literature Review:

The nuanced and empowering role of women in the Arab Uprisings transcends the generalistic and underplayed portrayals prevalent in Western media.          

The enduring influence of women revolutionaries and leaders in shaping the political landscape both during and after the post-Arab Spring uprising in the Middle East has long been overlooked and undermined. The paper attempts to depict the impact created by women in both organizing and mobilizing masses during the uprisings by using both quantitative and qualitative data derived from primary and secondary sources.

The topic of gender and women's rights is largely discussed in most scholarship on the Middle East such as seen in the uprisings of 2011. Gender issues are often targeted by Western media and foreign scholarship to fuel Islamophobia, demean the ‘Arab Woman,’ and allow a Western savior narrative to take up space. There is an effort to represent the ‘Arab Woman’ as apolitical and their role in the Arab Spring was a fleeting moment of female activism (Stephan and Charrad, 2020).

The portrayal of women in Western media has been a stereotyped image of an oppressed individual shackled behind the dangerous veil and in the Arab Spring, there was an effort to denounce this narrative. For instance, Moruzzi (2013) examines the relationship between gender and politics beyond the segregation of “women issues” and provides an insightful analysis of how concepts such as masculinity and femininity are constructed by state repression.

To further conceptualize this, the representation of Egyptian women in media had stories about women rising against sexual harassment or their mobilization in the political space. Nermin Allam’s “Women and the Egyptian Revolution” (2018) found that women were less visible in Egyptian media up until 2011 and the different frameworks such as “feminine” and “maternal” roles served as traditional motifs while also deconstructing traditional gender stereotypes (Allam, 2018). On the other hand, Nadine Naber highlights the West’s fixation on Egyptian women’s political struggle to be nothing beyond the fight against sexism. Naber in Stephan and Charrad (2020) provides a nuanced perspective about gendered socio-economic conditions and grievances that pushed Egyptian women to protest out on the street. Although a clear “feminist” agenda was not in their chants or slogans, the fight against gender injustice continued along with class oppression and authoritarianism (Stephan and Charrad, 2020).

Paul Amar in the article titled Turning the Gendered Politics of the Security State Inside Out pushes the discussion on gendering the revolution further by examining the ‘respectability’ of women and using it as a tactic against the Egyptian security state. Deploying ‘respectable’ middle-class women in hypermasculine mass protests challenged not only the baltagi effect but the social history of Arab nations that takes form in the respectable, literate, middle-class mother (Amar, 2011). This is echoed in Laura E Fox’s article titled Challenging Egyptian Masculinities through Feminist Graffiti. She cites the Westernized story of the ‘Savage Arab’ linked with the oppression of women and terrorism as not an accurate portrayal of masculinity. In Egypt’s case, masculinity is produced by the state, the street, and the home (Fox, 2022). Women such as Asma Mahfouz play with the idea of the ‘male protector’ and use stereotypical notions of masculinity to further her agenda in calling more people to join in Tahrir Square. 

State masculinity cannot exist without its relationship with women. Hesham Shafick explores a case of gendered injustice in his article titled “Why is the Egyptian State Anxious about young women dancing on TikTok.” The association of family values with a woman’s honor and decency is what he sees as a reflection of “a standardized code of practice integral to the protection of the system of gendered inequalities by which the Egyptian society is structured and governed,” (Shafick, 2020). However, the use of women’s bodies is also weaponized such as seen in the Egyptian protests. The incident of a policeman dragging a protestor by her abaya, exposing her blue bra and trousers to the public created the #BlueBra campaign that became not only a symbol of resistance, but also challenged notions of modesty, state authority, and women’s place in the revolution (Fox, 2022).

A UN report co-authored by Dina Tannir and Vivienne Badaam highlights women's voices on the frontlines of the revolution in various ways of expression. From Rima Dali, also known as “Syria’s lady in red” stood in clothing splashed with red paint demanding an end to the killing to Eman Ol-Obeidy from Libya storming inside a hotel to tell journalists she had been gang-raped, all the while breaking the forced silence of rape victims in Libya (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, 2013).

While this paper highlights the portrayal of women in the media and the expression and mobilization of women in the uprisings, it is also vital to discuss the gender dynamics of language. The book Freedom Without Permission – Bodies and Space in the Revolution highlights the gendered and sexual dimensions of the uprisings can be understood by closely looking at the language used. For instance, the revolutions were founded on the demands of economic freedom and agendas of democracy but calling these uprisings names such as “Spring of Equality” represented the fight against gender injustice that was always an undertone in the uprisings (Hasso and Salime, 2016). In most scholarly works, women are almost always segregated into their own category of “women” or “females” rather than being recognized as part of a collective group. Maya Mikdashi echoes the sentiments made by Hasso and Salime arguing the use of gendered language becomes evident when women or the LGBTQ community disrupts the conversation. (Mikdashi, 2012). Both authors question whether the involvement of women and girls has been in “protestors”, or a segregation must be created. Hasso and Salime (2016) argued that Arab women were major drivers in the digital realm of activism by creating strong relationships in the blogosphere such as the “We Are All Laila” group where the topic of sexual harrassment was widely discussed with open letters, testemonies, and personal accounts.

Middle Eastern countries are subjected to the question of religion in relation to the rights (or the violation) of women in most, if not all, narratives. Naber (2011) questions the Western media’s framework of the revolution being viewed through an Islamophobic lens and only showcases images of Egyptian men. The article explores the relationship between the United States and their legitimization of Mubarak’s regime to be directly contradictory to the supreme state’s so-called promise of democracy and freedom. By hindering and sidelining the women of the revolution, discourses on Islamic fundamentalism fuel Islamophobia in Western media allowing the justification to legitimize the torture Mubarak’s regime utilized against the revolutionaries  (Naber, 2011). Furthermore, adding gender to the Islamophobia conversation requires “the Arab woman” to be nothing more than an abject being, an invisible sister, wife, or mother of "the real revolutionaries” (Naber, 2011). The development of the uprisings was not a gender equality issue, yet the role of women and their participation in mass mobilizations debunked taboo topics, opened public spaces, and gave media attention to women’s rights. One of the key threads of this paper is to examine the role of women after the uprisings and if their efforts have sustained them today. Arshad (2014) writes that in some instances, the revolution has favored women in the sense that they are not only the subject of discussion, rather they are owning their narratives themselves.

Case Discussion:

The liberal woman of the West is a dream for the Middle East:

Equality is for the WestDemocracy is the foundation of freedom, according to the West and to achieve it in the Middle East, women’s participation holds center stage in their narrative. On March 14th, 2012 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi published an article for The Wall Street Journal titled “A Warning for Women of the Arab Spring.” Ebadi (2012) makes an effort to highlight women’s activism in the Arab Spring to be revolutionary but according to her, the true “Arab Spring will only dawn when democracy takes roots in countries that have ousted their dictatorships, and when women in these countries are allowed to take part in civic life.”

Similarly, another article in the Economist (2011) shares the account of Asmaa Mahfouz where she says “there was no difference between men and women,” as she recalled the days of the protest. The article is a celebration of the newly received victories of Egyptian women. However, the linguistic choices in both these articles serve as tools of agenda-setting for U.S foreign policy in the Middle East. In Allam (2018) analysis of local and international media, the author contends that the “successful recognition of the agential Muslim women” is constructed to confirm the U.S self-image and their discourse on terrorism. Veiled women from the East reporting accounts of “just wanting what you have,” the ‘you’ here being the liberal and free woman of the West is just one example of how the media promotes this image (Allam, 2018).

The calls to modernization and democratization of Middle Eastern women in Western media beg the question, “Why does the U.S. support autocratic leaders that crackdown on women?” Naber (2011) highlights America’s unwavering loyalty towards Mubarak and the stability of U.S. policy to be dependent on “structures of torture and violence” in Egypt. In a case study that analyzed the frameworks of different news channels, the author analyzed 141 CNN news stories of the uprisings and found the news channels to favor the Egyptian government and SCAF more than other parties involved in the revolution (Kamel, 2014). 

Blue Bra and the Call to Women’s Equality in Western Media

In December 2011, a viral video of an Egyptian soldier dragging a woman across the street with her abaya pulled up, exposing her blue jeans and blue bra went viral across social media and mainstream news channels, both locally and internationally. The girl in the blue bra became an iconic symbol from the days of the revolution to highlight the military violence against protestors, however, the circulation of the image allowed much of the narrative to only focus on how the soldiers pulled the abaya off of this girl (Pratt and Salem, 2017). It cannot be ignored that this incident challenged the state’s masculinity and allowed more women to enter the sphere to join the protest as Fox (2022) points out the public cried out the end of state violence against protestors, and national media focused on a slut-shaming campaign. In the local media, the anchormen focused on her decision to not wear anything, which conveniently fits the state’s narrative of justifying sexual violence. While the state’s response came in defense of the military, the same incident was reported in the West to portray women as non-active agents of sexual harassment.

Isobel Coleman’s article for CNN titled “Blue Bra girl rallies Egypt’s women vs Oppression (2011) is an accurate representation of how Egyptian women’s victories are carried by accounts of their victimhood. The article does not focus on the public’s call to end state military violence however, it calls for an active emergence of a women’s movement. “In the early weeks of the revolution, women activists tried to bring attention to women’s issues but never succeeded in getting the masses behind them,” (Coleman, 2011).

Coleman’s examples of Bothaina Kamel’s presidential candidacy or “only one of the 17 victims” suing the military for sexual violence are used as props to indicate empowerment rising in an oppressed Islamic state.

By shifting the narrative from protestors demanding an end to state violence to the presence of  sexual violence for the girl in a “blue bra” the hegemonic norms of female respectability and sexual violence were used in local and international media to legitimize the violence. (Pratt and Salem, 2017).

One of the missing factors in these Western accounts is the women’s opposition. In the portrayal of sexual assault, the depiction of women in this article could be seen as non-agents in the discourse of sexual violence. The portrayal of women’s participation in CNN’s article is performative at best. Phrases such as “a remarkable show of courage,” and “one intrepid woman,” are characterizing the exceptional Egyptian women in a pool of oppressed and victimized women living in the Middle East. For example, Kamel’s candidacy has “little chance of winning” and while women activist has raised their voices for gender issues, they “never succeeded in getting the masses behind them” (Coleman, 2012). This article reinforces the “US self-image” and uses the issues of women to change the momentum from the military abuse on all protestors to shedding light on the oppressed women and their small victories that can never be fully realized.

Us vs Them: Fearless Lara Logan and Victimized Samira Ibrahim

Lara Logan Samira Ibrahim

Lara Logan, a CBS correspondent was beaten up and sexually assaulted by an Egyptian mob as she reported on the ongoing protests. During the month of March 2011, the Egyptian military kidnapped and beat up women protestors, including 24-year-old Samira Ibrahim who was subjected to virginity tests. Both of these stories are of sexual assault, yet the reporting of these two women is strikingly different. For this analysis, two articles from the Daily Beast are highlighted.

Howard Kurtz (2017) in his article “The Price Lara Logan Paid in Egypt,” frames the journalist to be determined to get the job done and fearless in the face of any obstacles. Testimonials from other journalists about Logan’s personality are used by the author to further compliment the “utterly fearless” journalist (Kurtz, 2017). The article is an ode to the journalist, as it goes on to describe her rise to fame, and her aspirations “With her striking looks, lilting Johannesburg accent, and bulldog style, it was little wonder that Logan found television stardom,” (Kurtz, 2017).  There is less about the sexual assault, but more about preserving her Western image and almost a sense of how she rose from the experience, hence the title being the “price she paid.” Not only is she framed as a responsible journlaits that goes after the story, she is a dedicated and modern mother. The author describes her return to warzone in Afghanistan as her child was only 8 months old and she expressed her “hesitation” and how it’s the “hardest thing she has had to do” (Kurtz, 2017). She is portrayed to have agency over her body, and the sexual assault is secondary because her resistance to fight back is quoted as “I just don’t want to die.”

Meanwhile, the story of Samira Ibrahim by Ursula Lindsey (2017) is not a personal profile of her accomplishments, or decorated with sentences to celebrate her revival, rather her assault and the case she took to court seem to be the only story of her life. The sexual assault holds center stage in the story, as the author describes in detail the nature of the crime. Although there is no one side the author takes, the neutrality of this statement does not provide sympathy for Ibrahim, as the previous article for Logan did, rather it can create doubt in the reader’s mind. “Ibrahim comes from the town of Sohag, in Egypt’s conservative rural South, where opinion on her case was divided: some believed the Army could never have behaved as she described, while others supported her.” (Lindsey, 2017). The argument of a difference of opinion on the matter is only applicable in Ibrahim’s case while Lara Logan’s experience is confirmed, sympathized, and mourned. Moreover, the use of phrases such as “I truly wished for death,” is again a contrasting statement between the two accounts, as one reinforces the idea of resistance while the other hints at giving up. Lindsey’s article does not give agency to Ibrahim and does not promote her as ‘fearless,’ rather it provides an in-depth coverage of the court case, the support it garnered, and Ibrahim’s experience is treated not as a singularity but one that is representative of Egyptian women living in a society where sexual assault is rampant (Jones, 2012).

This framing also speaks to Mikdashi’s (2012) point that selective emphasis of sexual and gender violence “decontextualizes those violence from the larger infrastructures of oppression that people live under.” (Mikdashi, 2012). For example, in this case, Salima Ibrahim’s story is a much larger issue about military violence and the use of sexual violence as a strategy to silence the revolutionaries.

The treatment of the two stories in Western media highlights how the Western woman can rise stronger from dreadful experiences such as sexual assault but Middle Eastern women such as Samira Ibrahim must always be victimized.

Using Cyberspace to reframe Western Narratives:

These previous cases show how Western media has framed women in the uprisings, however, it is pertinent to mention that women in the uprisings were more than just protestors on the street, rather they were consciously aware of their own portrayal in the West. The use of cyberspace in the forms of blogs and videos was used by them.

Asma Darwaish, the 20-year-old Bahraini activist, felt strongly about the “bridging the Arabic-English media divide,” so she started blogging about her experience of living in exile after her family’s arrest (Radsch, 2012).  Her tweets written on X, formerly known as Twitter, garnered a lot of attention as they were in English and could assist in having a public discourse.

Similarly, in an interview with Egyptian activist, Shima’a Helmy remained an anonymous blogger till 25th January when she joined the protests to cover on realities. This was her form of activism and controlling her agency – as she wanted to aid an accurate representation for the “non-Arabic speaking media that were portraying our story.” (Radsch, 2012).

Conclusion:

In this paper, I have tried to highlight the Western media constructions of women in the Arab Uprisings of 2011 and the silenced meanings behind the linguistic and visual portrayals. In an effort to justify the thesis statement, examples from media conglomerates such as CNN and Economist aided in providing an analysis of how the ‘Woman issue’ is almost always used to promote the values of U.S foreign policy in the Middle East such as democracy and freedom, while overlooking the larger issue present in the conflict which may be military violence.

The aforementioned cases have also highlighted that there is a clear difference between how the Western woman is portrayed compared to the Arab woman, speaking to the Orinetalist perspective of “othering.” The portrayal of the Arab woman is rather victimized and oppressed and in the Western media, Arab women are aspiring for the freedom the Western woman enjoys.

Furthermore, the absence of personal accounts of resistance in western narratives adds to the “victimized” portrayal of women. It also finds that resistance and the ability to fight back is reserved for a higher class such as the Western and for an Arab woman to fight back is an exceptional case, sometimes. This research found that many news headlines did not cater to the response by women after the crime had been committed against them, rather they were only portrayed as the subject of the crime.

In an effort to highlight their active role and participation in the uprisings, this paper has tried to compare the lived realities of women to their Western depictions, highlighting their portrayal to be inadequate and incomplete to their cause in the uprisings.

References:

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https://merip.org/2013/09/gender-and-the-revolutions/

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Ebadi, S. (2012, March 14). Shirin Ebadi: A Warning for Women of the Arab Spring. WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203370604577265840773370720

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Pratt, N., & Salem, S. (2017, August 6). Revisiting the “Blue Bra” incident: Towards a new agenda for researching politics and popular culture in Egypt. Jadaliyya - جدلية. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/33962

Shafick, H. (2020). Why Is the Egyptian State so Anxious about Young Women Dancing on Tiktok? Jadaliyya - جدلية. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41642

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