Female victory or maintained masculinity?

The Arab spring is a term that describes the series of uprisings that spread across the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2011. What started as an act of despair of a young street vendor that set himself on fire, resulted in a regional revolution that brought down regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. In the former three countries, long-time dictators were replaced with democratically chosen governments. Since in all MENA regions women were discriminated by law, these revolutions sparked the hope that democratization would enhance their place in society. However, to what extent has this been the case? This thesis assesses the effect of the Arab spring on gender equality through a co-variational case study between Tunisia and Algeria. It is expected that the Arab spring had a positive effect on gender equality. This assumed effect is assessed on a subset of gender equality indicators: women’s rights, women’s political representation, and women’s economic participation. Based on qualitative data on law reform, data on female parliamentarian representation and data on females' relative labour force participation rates, three conclusions can be drawn. One, the Arab spring led to an increase in women’s rights since Tunisia passed significant law reforms that eliminate gender discrimination in important aspects of family law and inheritance law, whereas such reform is absent in Algeria. Two, the Arab spring did not led to an increase in women’s political representation since the female parliamentarian representation rate increased slightly in Tunisia and, contrary to the expectation, increased significantly in Algeria due to a quota. Three, the Arab spring did not led to an increase in women’s economic participation because women’s relative labour force participation rate remained stable in both countries. The effect of the Arab spring on gender equality appears to be mixed. However, many scholars stress the importance of time as they expect that the effect will grow stronger in the long-term. Therefore, further research, both quantitative and qualitative, is needed to fully grasp the long-term effect of the Arab spring on gender equality.