Sustainable progress in women’s rights cannot be achieved through top-down, externally imposed frameworks. It must emerge from local knowledge, local leadership, and locally driven solutions.
The ongoing political transition in Syria presents a critical moment for examining the conditions shaping women’s lives and rights. Understanding how women experience legal systems, social dynamics, and shifting governance structures is essential not only for assessing gender equality but also for evaluating broader prospects for social cohesion, accountability, and sustainable recovery. Women’s experiences during conflict and transition serve as key indicators of whether the emerging Syrian state will advance justice or reproduce patterns of exclusion and vulnerability. Drawing upon recent fieldwork, interviews, and engagements across different Syrian communities, this brief outlines the evolving realities Syrian women face, the risks and opportunities emerging from the transition period, and the kinds of policy approaches most likely to support Syrian women effectively and legitimately.
Structural Inequality: The legal architecture shaping women’s lives
One of the most persistent factors constraining women’s rights in Syria is the structure of the legal system, particularly the Personal Status Law, which was originally issued in 1953 and has undergone various amendments. Despite limited reform efforts, the law continues to embed gender inequality in family life, property rights, and personal autonomy. Guardianship over children remains harder for the women to obtain if they get remarried compared to the men. Mothers have limited authority over financial or legal decisions concerning their children. Property inheritance rules, derived from classical Islamic jurisprudence, typically grant women half the share allocated to male heirs. Polygamy remains legal, and mothers risk losing custody of their children if they remarry, in contrast to fathers who retain custody rights regardless of marital status.
While the Syrian constitution formally guarantees equality, these legal structures effectively undermine women’s autonomy, economic security, and participation in public life. Legal protection of Syrian women from gender-based violence remains very limited. In the transitional period, the persistence of such discriminatory provisions risks entrenching old patterns of gender inequality into the emerging political order unless meaningful and locally grounded legal reforms are pursued.
Conflict-era realities: Hardship, responsibility and resistance
The inequalities embedded in the legal system are compounded by the devastation caused by more than a decade of conflict. Women across Syria have taken on unprecedented responsibilities in maintaining households and communities despite lacking the legal protections or institutional support that would allow them to do so securely. Many women now head their families because male relatives are dead, missing, detained, or displaced. For the wives of the disappeared in particular, legal limbo creates daily hardship: without clarity on their marital status, they cannot access inheritance, register property, or make decisions that would allow them to provide stability for their families. Displaced women are especially vulnerable. They face restricted economic opportunities, limited mobility, shaped both by insecurity, and discriminatory policies. This is in addition to the psychological strain of trauma and displacement.
Yet despite these pressures, women continue to play essential roles in sustaining social and economic life. They find ways to negotiate within traditional community structures, lead local initiatives, and remain active in civil society even in conservative or insecure areas. Female university enrolment has remained consistently higher than male enrolment across the country, reflecting women’s determination to pursue education and professional development despite the wider collapse of the economy and services. These realities make clear that women have been central to ensuring community survival during conflict and are equally crucial to shaping the country’s transition.
Post-Assad transformations: Women between perceived threats and everyday realities
Insights from recent engagement in Damascus and other urban areas reveal a more complex and nuanced reality than the initial fears that circulated immediately after the fall of the Assad regime. Early in the transition, domestic and international commentators expressed concern that Islamic-oriented governing actors might impose severe restrictions on women’s mobility, dress, and public participation, mirroring the practices of the Taliban or ISIS. These warnings gained traction in media and public discourse and contributed to widespread anxiety about the future of women’s rights.
However, daily life in major cities suggests that these fears have not materialized in the extreme forms anticipated. Women continue to move freely in public spaces, wear diverse styles of clothing, frequent restaurants and social venues, and participate in economic and cultural life. Urban environments retain a degree of social openness that contradicts expectations of abrupt and severe Islamization. While governance institutions increasingly incorporate Islamic principles, this has not resulted in the kind of totalitarian control over women’s lives associated with extremist groups.
At the same time, developments within certain institutions indicate emerging risks. Some security structures and parts of the Ministry of Interior have adopted internal codes and conduct regulations grounded in conservative interpretations of Islamic values. For instance, the ministry recently issued a code prohibiting officers from consuming alcohol or visiting “doubtful” nightclubs. While framed as internal discipline measures, such regulations reflect a broader institutional shift that may gradually influence enforcement practices, public morality policing, or restrictions on women’s access to public spaces. In some areas, local actors have begun to apply more restrictive interpretations of women’s mobility or participation in community life, though these patterns vary significantly between regions.
Women’s daily security remains a pressing concern. Reports from rights groups include incidents of kidnapping and abduction, including incidents targeting minority communities such as Alawites. Some reports suggest that while some such cases are genuine, others are exaggerated or fabricated, making it difficult for communities to distinguish between real threats and misinformation. Criminal networks continue to operate in several regions, and the state’s response has been insufficient. The Ministry of Interior’s creation of a committee to investigate the issue raised additional concerns: its membership appears to be exclusively male, its methodology was not publicly disclosed, and its public statements downplayed the scale of disappearances, contradicting assessments by feminist groups and international organizations. These shortcomings have reinforced public distrust in the authorities’ capacity to protect women effectively.
Women also remain severely underrepresented in political institutions. In the most recent parliamentary elections, only 14 percent of candidates were women, and just six women won seats, accounting for 4 percent of contested positions. Such marginal participation prevents women from influencing the legislative and institutional reforms that will define the next phase of Syrian governance, further entrenching the structural obstacles they face.
Overall, the transitional landscape presents a dual reality. In many urban areas, women continue to exercise considerable social freedom and agency. Meanwhile, signs of institutionalized Islamization, weak protection mechanisms, and political exclusion create serious risks that could undermine these gains. A nuanced reading of this context is essential for designing policies and interventions that strengthen women’s rights without reinforcing polarization or inadvertently legitimizing reactionary narratives.
Toward locally driven reform: Rethinking support for Syrian women
The challenges Syrian women face—legal inequality, insecure environments, economic strain, and political exclusion—underscore the need for thoughtful, context-sensitive policy interventions. These interventions must be locally driven. Western and international institutions currently face a significant credibility gap in Syria and across the region, particularly in light of their complicity in the genocide in Gaza. This has severely weakened their standing as guardians of human rights and has made many Syrian actors skeptical of external involvement. In this environment, approaches perceived as foreign, colonial, or rooted in Islamophobic assumptions are likely to provoke resistance, strengthen conservative factions, and undermine local feminist initiatives.
Effective support for Syrian women requires an approach grounded in local legitimacy, community priorities, and respect for Syrian agency. This means investing in women-led organizations and grassroots networks that already advocate for accountability, legal reform, and social support. Legal reforms, especially of the Personal Status Law, must be designed collaboratively with Syrian legal experts, civil society, religious scholars, and community leaders to ensure both relevance and social acceptance. Strengthening women’s security requires building transparent and gender-responsive oversight mechanisms within Syrian security institutions, developed in partnership with local actors. Increasing women’s political participation demands training, mentorship, and institutional pathways that prepare women for leadership roles and embed their voices in governance structures. Equally important is the need to support community-based storytelling, oral history, and public memory projects that document women’s experiences and ensure these perspectives inform policy and public discourse.
Sustainable progress in women’s rights cannot be achieved through top-down, externally imposed frameworks. It must emerge from local knowledge, local leadership, and locally driven solutions. The role of international actors is not to dictate priorities but to provide resources, solidarity, and technical support in ways that reinforce—rather than overshadow—Syrian agency. Only by centering Syrian women, respecting their expertise, and empowering their initiatives can the transition lead to a more inclusive, just, and resilient Syria.