The status of women and the Arab Spring

The social movement known as the Arab Spring brings together various groups, including educated women, demanding the overthrow of decades-old dictatorial regimes. It begins in Tunisia and then extends to neighboring Arab- speaking countries of North Africa, Egypt and Libya. Similar social, cultural, and economic conditions are conducive to the unfolding of a single social movement across national borders. After the successful overthrow of dictatorships, groups that collaborated in it, clash against each other. Despite the fact that the movement was initiated by middle-class youth advocating a Western-style model of democracy, Muslims succeed in gaining control of ―democratic,‖ majority-rule governments in Egypt and Tunisia. Military force is needed to put down the rise of militant Islam. The goals, including women‘s rights, advocated by secularmodernistic-democratic sectors of the population are not attained and Islam surges with renewed vigor in a continued but muted post Arab Spring period of unrest