Why War on Iran?
March 6, 2026
Why Iran Is Allowing Bangladeshi Tankers Through the Strait of Hormuz
March 16, 2026
It is incorrect to think that the glass ceiling for women in Middle Eastern politics is just a cultural barrier. It is, instead, a calculated political structure through which autocratic regimes use state feminism to secure legitimacy, which ensures that real power remains out of women’s reach. Therefore, although Arab women’s parliamentary representation has increased today due to gender quotas, this progress remains largely superficial as these women hold seats with limited legislative authority.
The Arab world witnessed the first female prime minister of Tunisia in 2021; the United Arab Emirates’ female parliamentary representation reached 50%; and Jordan’s recent elections produced the highest number of female parliamentarians in its history. Yet control remains in men’s hands as regional autocrats evidently promote women’s rights to shield their regime and display a progressive image compared to conservatives.
The Quota Paradox
Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in the rise and fall of gender quotas across the region. In Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s regime implemented a female quota during the Arab uprisings in 2011. The reform was globally applauded for boosting women’s parliamentary representation from under 8% to over 30% in the 2012 elections, the highest in the Arab world at that time.
However, instead of empowering women, the quota was paradoxical. Firstly, it was abandoned in 2020, shortly after Bouteflika’s fall, resulting in a drop to just over 8%, and secondly, these reserved seats did not translate into genuine power for the women who occupied them. Since the gender quotas were regime-dependent, they died with the regimes that created them. Either way, women’s representation was mocked by male politicians who labelled them a “parliament of hairdressers” and “well-selected strawberries.”
Similarly, after the 2011 revolution, Tunisia implemented a parity law, requiring political parties to alternate male and female candidates on their electoral lists, which increased women’s parliamentary seats to 31% in 2014. But President Kais Saied’s 2021 self-coup and the 2022 electoral law reversed women’s political progress and ended the parity list system, reducing women to 16% of seats by 2023. Even the appointment of Najla Bouden as the Arab world’s first female prime minister was pure window-dressing, as she led a government under an autocratic president who dismantled the parity electoral system that had supported women’s representation.
The 2026 parliamentary elections in Jordan witnessed female candidates participating in unprecedented numbers. Yet even here, the limits are still evident, as on six electoral lists, female candidates’ photos were replaced with images of flowers or animals to respect conservative sensitivities. While some female parliamentarians advocate repealing Article 308, which pardons rapists if they marry their victims, others are still beholden to the tribes that appointed them.
The pattern repeats in executive appointments across the region. Lebanon appointed the Arab world’s first female finance minister (Raya Haffar El Hassan) and the first female defense minister (Zeina Akar). In Egypt’s recent governors’ reshuffle, one woman was appointed among 20 new governors.
Nevertheless, these women hold hollow power as they lack independent political constituencies and owe their positions to male patrons. Instead of serving as a means to promote women-friendly policies by changing the systems that exclude other women, they serve more as a symbolic value that women can reach high office.
As the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights puts it, “The continued token representation of women in leadership positions constitutes a violation of the Constitution, particularly Article 11, which stipulates ‘appropriate representation’ in elected councils, public positions, and senior management.” With just 2 women out of 27 governors (7.4%), Egypt falls well below any reasonable standard of “appropriate.”
The picture worsens even more in conflict zones, where fragile peacetime gains disappear completely. The conflict in Gaza has triggered new types of gender-based violence. Recent research indicates that 40% of women in the West Bank and Jerusalem experienced politically motivated digital attacks, with Israeli authorities accounting for approximately 44% of these incidents in the West Bank. This research highlights digital gender-based violence as a means of political repression, targeting women discussing politics, exploiting their vulnerabilities amid conflict, and strengthening patriarchal control under the cover of war.
Yemen also shows increased violence and suffering against women, especially in female-headed households and for disabled women. Despite economic insecurity, safety risks, and social exclusion from public participation, they are expected to keep communities united while systematically being denied formal power roles.
Is Any Progress Real?
Critics argue that the Algerian quota system undermines meritocracy. Yet symbolic representation can lead to policy gains, as seen in Algeria’s 2015 law on domestic violence and Tunisia’s 2017 law on violence against women, both of which appeared during increased female representation. Jordan’s case shows parties include women as valuable electoral assets, ultimately normalizing female political participation.
These arguments, however, overlook whether women are gaining seats or power. As in Algeria, women’s representation decreased without quotas, and in Egypt, women hold about a quarter of parliamentary seats but are underrepresented in executive leadership, with only a few provincial governors.
The region’s autocrats use women’s rights to project modernity while maintaining control. On this Women’s Day, we should not be complicit. We need more than just optics; women must hold real power that is independent of men, capable of shaping policies, managing budgets, and fighting patriarchy. This requires increasing leadership quotas, repealing discriminatory family laws, and criminalizing slander against women in public life.
Islamic law granted women rights centuries before modern democracy. The 11th- and 12th-century reign of Queen Arwa al-Sulayhi in Yemen was notable but did not bring systemic change for women, highlighting that genuine progress requires legal rights, not just leaders. Yet Tunisian feminist Ikram Ben Said argues that real women’s empowerment cannot be separated from democratic empowerment.
Regardless of the form of governance, when regimes use women as shields without granting them legal rights, they betray women and justice. The glass ceiling in Middle Eastern politics is real. But it is not an accident of culture or religion; rather, it is a structure deliberately maintained by regimes that benefit from it. Breaking it will require not just more seats, but more power. Not just more appointments, but more accountability. Not just state feminism, but governance that secures women’s rights in law and practice.
That is the change worth demanding this International Women’s Day.
