How Middle Eastern Women Leverage Digital Platforms to Influence Legal Reforms

Topic: How Middle Eastern Women Leverage Digital Platforms to Influence Legal
Reforms
Focus:
– Understanding how digital platforms are being used as tools of empowerment and
resistance in a region where women’s voices are often marginalized
– How Middle Eastern women use the internet (social media, blogging, online campaigns)
to advocate for legal changes
– Case studies:
– #IAmMyOwnGuardian campaign in Saudi Arabia – a viral hashtag campaign
which challenged the country’s male guardianship system to make decisions
without a male’s permission, nearly 15,000 women signed
– My Stealthy Freedom blog in Iran – talk about issues their towns and villages
face, clothing freedom for women
– Writing blogs
– The Women and Memory forum: founded by a group of women academics,
researchers, and activists who are concerned about the negative representations
and perceptions of Arab women. They host events, workshops (which you never
hear about), stories or poetry about problems regarding women, and make a small
tableau and read the poetry, every year they have a big holding in the opera house,
it is done very quietly but it moves in terms of social movements, or they get the
young girls who want to write stories that are girl-friendly which they change into
shes the heroin and not him and go and act it, activities everywhere, publish the
work of mothers unpublished work
– Musawah organization – important webpage where they publish their works
seeking equality and justice for women in the Muslim family
Juxtapose the topic (counter argument)
– Working in silence gets better results
– Lawyers in Jordan – take cases that they know they can fight with the Sharia
language, they see what the judge said as a failure, go back with the same case,
studied the response, build precedence, change laws very quietly and institutional
without making a political show
– When the government is under pressure they will not succumb, sometimes when
your celebrating or showing what you’re gonna do through a political show online
all lawyers will be against you, insulting you
– Untraditional methods of women activism – doing things through art and music
– Doing it anonymously
Questions hoping to answer throughout the research paper:
● How are digital platforms enabling Middle Eastern women to overcome traditional
barriers in activism?
● What has been the tangible impact of these digital movements on legal reforms regarding
women’s rights? Evaluate the effectiveness of this activism and if it brought about any
change?
● What risks do women face in this digital space, and how do they navigate them?