We need a feminist media agenda to protect, amplify, and institutionalise Syrian women’s voices as equal partners in shaping the country’s political future.
Syria’s current transitional phase is not simply a technical process of political recalibration. It is a moment in which national identity, legitimacy, and collective memory are being renegotiated. Such periods are historically dangerous for women’s rights. Across contexts, such as Bosnia, Iraq and Tunisia, transitions often bring rhetorical commitments to equality but little substantive change, and women’s rights are frequently treated as negotiable or peripheral – a pattern that offers a clear warning for Syria, where intentional safeguards are needed to ensure that promises of gender equality translate into substantive change.
This pattern is visible in Syria today. Despite their extraordinary contributions since 2011, women remain significantly underrepresented in decision-making structures. Their lived realities—displacement, insecurity, economic precarity, and the psychological and social costs of prolonged conflict—continue to be overshadowed by political calculations. Survivors of detention, torture, and conflict-related sexual violence still face overwhelming barriers to justice, with limited institutional mechanisms to support their claims.
Meanwhile, women remain at the forefront of humanitarian work, peacebuilding, community leadership, and the rebuilding of social fabric in displacement settings. Their participation is not incidental; it is an essential precondition for any sustainable transition because their exclusion from decision-making removes the very knowledge and experience needed to design a transition that is credible, responsive to real needs, and capable of lasting.
It is within this tension that media becomes decisive. Media in Syria has never been a neutral conveyor of information. It has been, and remains, a battleground for meaning.
Media as a liminal space of agency
In my academic work, I have applied the concept of liminality to understand how media functioned during the early years of the uprising. Liminality refers to spaces where established norms loosen and new forms of agency can emerge. Between 2011 and 2013, alternative media outlets (Enab Baladi, Radio Rozana & Al-Jumhuriya) in Syria created precisely such spaces.
These platforms allowed women to speak publicly in ways that had previously been impossible. Women journalists and activists documented violations, challenged patriarchal norms, questioned state narratives, and reshaped the public imagination of what a Syrian woman could be. This period marked a profound shift: women were not simply reporting events, but redefining themselves as political subjects with voice, dignity, and rights.
These liminal spaces also enabled the emergence of narratives that had long been silenced—sexual violence, detention, forced marriage, widowhood, life under siege, and the complex emotional and social burdens carried by women throughout the conflict. Such accounts did more than document suffering; they contested stigma, challenged impunity, and expanded the boundaries of the speakable in Syrian public life.
The transformative impact of these narratives cannot be overstated. They shifted social norms, opened political questions, and created a record of women’s experiences that will shape Syria’s historical memory for generations.
Militarisation and the reassertion of patriarchal control
Yet as the conflict intensified, the openness of this liminal moment began to contract. Militarisation reshaped the media landscape in structural and gendered ways.
Newsrooms and armed actors pushed women out of leadership roles, reassigned them to “soft” reporting tasks, targeted them with online harassment and reputational attacks, and routinely threatened them with moral judgement or social punishment—trends well-documented in studies of Syrian media and conflict. Armed and ideological actors weaponised concepts of modesty, honour, and morality to discipline women’s speech and visibility. Extremist and conservative factions imposed strictures that further restricted women’s participation.
This reassertion of patriarchal control was not accidental. It was part of a broader re-patriarchalisation—a predictable dynamic in conflict, in which hierarchy is re-imposed to provide an illusion of order. As the media space hardened, women who had once found agency within it faced renewed constraints. The openness that had enabled transformative storytelling was replaced with risk, surveillance, and hostility.
This trajectory offers a clear warning for today’s transition. Post-conflict contexts often revive traditional gender norms under the justification of national stability, cultural preservation, or political unity. Without intentional intervention, women’s representational gains can be rapidly reversed.
The critical role of media in today’s transitional context
In the present moment, independent and gender-sensitive media is not simply important—it is indispensable. It fulfils three critical functions:
1. Documenting gendered realities before they disappear from public view
Women’s insecurity, underrepresentation, socioeconomic burdens, and exposure to rights violations must be recorded systematically. Documentation is not only an act of truth-telling; it is a form of political protection.
2. Providing women with an unmediated platform to speak
Women must be able to articulate their experiences and perspectives without being filtered through state institutions, patriarchal structures, or political agendas. Voice is a form of agency.
3. Challenging ideological attempts to redefine women’s roles
Today, various actors seek to frame women narrowly—as moral symbols, as mothers, or as supporters of political projects. Independent media must resist such instrumentalisation and present women as leaders, professionals, experts, and citizens.
A feminist media agenda for the transition
To protect and advance women’s rights in this volatile period, a clear feminist media strategy is needed. Five priorities stand out:
1. Centre women at the margins
Media must amplify the voices of rural women, displaced women, women with disabilities, minority women, and survivors of detention and sexual violence. Their experiences reflect the deeper structural inequalities shaping Syria’s future.
2. Protect women journalists and media workers
Safety is a precondition for voice. This includes digital security, legal support, psychological assistance, and organisational reforms to address discrimination within media institutions.
3. Monitor gendered outcomes of the transition
Media should closely track representation in ministries, political appointments, legal reforms, rhetoric about women, and access to justice. These indicators reveal whether the transition is inclusive or exclusionary.
4. Foster cross-community feminist solidarity
Media can highlight shared struggles and amplify forms of solidarity across sectarian, ethnic, and geographical divides. Such narratives are essential for rebuilding social cohesion.
5. Resist symbolic manipulation
Women must not be deployed as icons of modernity or conservatism. Media must insist on portraying them as full citizens whose rights are non-negotiable.
Personal reflections from the frontlines of storytelling
When we founded Enab Baladi in Darayya, our aim was simple: to tell the truth. Yet through that work, I witnessed forms of courage that continue to define my understanding of women’s agency.
I saw women organising schools in basements under bombardment; documenting atrocities when no international journalists could enter; sustaining their families and communities in displacement; and insisting on dignity when every force around them tried to strip it away.
These experiences revealed a fundamental truth: when women speak, they expand the boundaries of what is politically possible. When their voices are heard, society’s imagination shifts.
Conclusion: The future depends on whose voices shape it
As Syria navigates the uncertainties of transition, the question is not solely who governs, who legislates, or who negotiates.
The deeper question is: Who gets to shape the public imagination of what it means to be a Syrian woman? Media is where this question is contested, and where its consequences will be felt most deeply. If women’s voices are strong in media, they will be strong in political processes, legal reforms, and community life.
If women’s voices are marginalised in media, they will be sidelined everywhere else.
This moment demands vigilance. It demands intentionality. And above all, it demands that we protect, amplify, and institutionalise the voices of Syrian women—not as symbols of suffering or as instruments of political narratives, but as equal partners in shaping the Syria of tomorrow.