Gender and Demographic Aspects of the Arab Spring Protests: Youth Bulges, Women’s Participation and the Role of Internet

Abstract

This article is aimed at studying the inclusion of women in the processes of political participation using the example of the Arab Spring protests. New information technologies and, in particular, social media allowed women to participate in the Arab Spring demonstrations as organizers, activists and journalists. Due to the fact that men in the region in question tend to dominate the traditional media space, cyber activism has allowed women to express themselves both within a specific country and on an international scale. The author comes to the conclusion that the inclusion of women in protest mobilization is reasonable to consider in the context of general demographic trends in the countries under consideration. In this case, we are talking primarily about the phenomenon of youth bulges in some Arab countries, a noticeable proportion of unmarried men, which may be one of the causes of increased destabilization in Arab countries, as well as the intensive spread of Internet communication tools which became the hallmark of the Arab Spring cohort.