The Power of Secular Feminist Mobilization in Democratizing Societies: Findings from Tunisia, 2011-2021

Gender politics scholars argue that women's political participation temporarily increases during political transitions, but conservatives and nationalists marginalize women over time and their participation declines. In Tunisia, women participated in the 2010-2011 Arab Spring and sustained their political participation through activism for at least a decade afterward. Social movement scholars either focus on coalitions in stable and mature democracies or under authoritarianism. Less is known about coalition dynamics during political transitions. Drawing on interviews with secular feminists, state officials and international actors and textual data, I show how secular women from the professional class with little to no experience with activism before the Arab Spring created two small secular feminist organizations that remained active throughout the transition. They did so by (1) drawing on state feminist ideals and (2) joining feminist coalitions that prevented backsliding on women's rights. This article is one of the first and only to focus on novice organizations that emerged during the transition in Tunisia. It has implications for social movement studies and gender politics beyond Tunisia and the Arab world.