Abstract
This paper examines the participation of Algerian women in the 2019 Hirak protests and their efforts to claim gendered and economic recognition within a society shaped by authoritarian and patriarchal structures. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and forty-three interviews conducted in 2019 and 2023, the study explores how women navigate both public protest spaces and more intimate âsociospacesââsuch as markets, schools, homes, and informal gatherings within the Hirakâto assert claims for autonomy and recognition. The article introduces the concept of a âgendered moral contract,â showing how Algerian women across social classes mobilize moral, religious, and familial frameworks to demand state-backed compensation for unpaid domestic labor by positioning themselves as essential contributors to family and society. By linking these claims to broader economic resources, including oil wealth, women negotiate recognition within culturally intelligible forms. This study contributes to understanding agency and strategies within social movements, highlighting how women employ culturally grounded, morally framed approaches to frame and share their demands under restrictive political and social conditions.
It is a Friday afternoon in early September 2019. We are sitting in the living room after lunch, preparing to go to the weekly Hirak protest. Through the open window, the sounds of cars parking and voices echoing down the street signal that the march is about to begin. Inside, women are getting ready; some are fixing their headscarves, others are helping children wrap flags around their shoulders. One child carries the Amazigh flag, another the Algerian. I sip my water as I listen to the women talk. Their conversation, as it often does, turns to politicsânot in the abstract, but through the language of daily struggle. âThey steal everything, le pouvoir,â one woman says, referring to the ruling elite. âThey should give the money to usâwe do a lot for this country.â Another adds, âWe educate, we raise the children, we keep the house running. Weâre not only housewives.â The others agree.
These statements illustrate how Algerian women actively negotiate the boundaries of public and private life, translating domestic and care responsibilities into claims of economic recognition and moral legitimacy. It is a familiar conversation, one that takes place not only on protest days, but in grocery stores, kitchens, and doorways across the Great Kabyliaâwomen voicing frustration over economic dependency and the devaluation of their labor. Yet, when these same women step out into the street and join the protest, their personal claims dissolve into the collective demands of the movement. Their words about money, fairness, and womenâs contribution to the nation fall silent in the public sphere, replaced by broader calls for political change. This shiftâbetween what can be said inside the home or in female collective spaces in the protest, and what disappears in the crowdâforms the entry point of this article.
In this paper, I focus on President Abdelaziz Bouteflikaâs (1998â2019) era and explore how his authoritarian rule shaped the unique ways in which women engaged with the Hirak (Arabic for âmovementâ), the mass protests that began in February 2019 to demand his resignation 1 and the dismantling of âle pouvoir,â the term commonly used by Algerians to refer to the opaque network of political and military elites who are seen as having long controlled the state. 2 While the movementâs dominant discourse often sidelined womenâs gendered and economic demands, I argue that the Hirak nevertheless enabled their articulationâby bringing women together in new spaces of encounter, dialogue, and collective reflection that made such expressions possible. Within this context of authoritarian rule and gendered inequality, womenâs participation in the Hirak offers a lens through which to examine how political and personal demands are expressed, negotiated, or silenced. This article asks: In what ways did Algerian women negotiate gender and economic demands within the patriarchal constraints of the Hirak movement?
I argue that, out of concern that gender-specific claims might depoliticize the Hirak, many women adapted their participation to the dominant discourses of the movement as their gendered demands were often silenced or dismissed as secondary. Although the Hirak created a collective space for women from diverse regions, social classes, and backgrounds to assemble and perform their political agency, articulations of womenâs rights and gender equality were perceived as divisive. When some protesters raised issues related to womenâs rights, gender identities, or religion, these were often considered ânot political enoughâ and unrelated to institutional reform. 3 For example, when feminist activists established a âfeminist squareâ in Algiers to demand more rights for women, the square was portrayed as a resistance movement against the Hirak and its social discourse, with female activists suffering verbal and physical harassment, as well as smear campaigns on social media. 4 This illustrates how the movement was limited in its discourse, focusing almost exclusively on the fall of le pouvoir. Claims that fell outside this frameworkâsuch as womenâs demands for economic independenceâwere not recognized as part of the political struggle. Instead, women often displaced these claims to private or semi-private spaces, or kept them among themselves while walking in the protests. Yet, I argue that it was precisely the Hirak that made the expression of these womenâs demands possible, by bringing women together in shared spaces of preparation and reflectionâspaces such as living rooms where they would gather before going to the protest, where intergenerational discussions and collective articulation of demands could emerge.
Drawing on field research conducted in Algeria during 2019 and 2023, particularly in the Great Kabylia region and the capital Algiers, 5 this research is based on forty-three interviews 6 conducted over two periods: four months from September to December 2019, during Algeriaâs presidential campaign, and seven months from May to December 2023, leading up to the 2024 presidential elections. I aim to present a holistic understanding of womenâs experiences during and after the Hirak protests through a post-conflict lens, focusing on how Algeriaâs national reconciliation project and authoritarian rule shaped womenâs roles in the protests, particularly under the Bouteflika regime. The aim is to explore how and where women articulated economic demands and moral legitimacy in ways that were not always visible within the formal political discourse of the protest.
I conceptualize this process as a gendered moral contract (GMC), an informal and affective negotiation through which women make claims on the state and society as moral actors rather than as explicitly political or feminist subjects. This concept moves beyond existing frameworks such as the patriarchal bargain, 7 which focuses on womenâs strategic accommodation to patriarchy, and the social contract in authoritarian states, 8 which describes exchanges between citizens and rulers. Instead, the GMC illuminates how womenâs everyday speech, practices, and affective labor constitute a moral understanding of justice and belonging, which reconfigures the boundaries of the political in contemporary Algeria.
The GMC is deeply embedded in Algeriaâs moral and religious landscape. Rather than rejecting Islamic morality and the values of the Muslim family, many women in the Hirak drew upon it by invoking care within the Muslim family to legitimate their claims. Through the lens of Islamic morality and the values of the Muslim family, women framed household labor, child-rearing, and participation in public life as both a religious duty and a social contribution. In doing so, they reinforced their claims for recognition in ways that aligned with broader societal and religious expectations, rather than openly challenging them. Their demands for fair distribution of wealth, state protection, and recognition of womenâs contributions were often expressed through the language of moral duty rather than rights. In this sense, women negotiated their demands not against Islam or patriarchy, but through them, by repositioning themselves as moral subjects who sustain the family, the nation, and the faith. This moral reasoning complicates the binary between resistance and submission: womenâs everyday negotiations reveal how Muslim values and nationalist discourses intertwine in the making of political subjectivities. Thus, the GMC captures a distinct form of agency that does not take the language of rights or emancipation as its starting point but, instead, reworks the moral foundations of social order. By strategically invoking religious morality and the ideals of the Muslim family, women were able to assert both economic and gendered claims while navigating social scrutiny and public visibility constraints. Building on their negotiation of social and religious norms in everyday life, Algerian women have similarly navigated political and historical arenas, mobilizing within state structures and broader struggles for national and gendered recognition.
1 Womenâs Mobilization, State Power, and Gendered Constraints in Algeria
Algerian women have long engaged in political and social mobilization, dating back to the 1954â1962 war of liberation from French colonial rule. During this period, the Algerian woman became both a symbol of national identity and an instrument of resistance in the war, as they faced less scrutiny by French soldiers when moving around the streets of Algeria due to not being seen as fighters by French colonial rulers. 9 However, although women participated in the struggle for independence as active participants in the National Liberation Frontâs (FLN) fight against the French colonial regime, as Adrienne Leonhardt points out, the liberation movement âprojected a certain image of womenâs social and political roles that served their own interests during the war, with few tangible benefits for women themselves.â 10 In doing so, the FLN utilized womenâs participation symbolically for the liberation but maintained limited expectations for their roles in the post-independence era.
Although Algerian women anticipated greater recognition in return for their contributions to the liberation struggle, promises of equality faded in the post-independence period as the FLN government reinforced traditional roles for women as wives, mothers, and cultural preservers. 11 The liberation movement projected an image of womenâs social and political participation that primarily served its own wartime interests, offering few tangible benefits for women once independence was achieved. 12 In the new nation, womenâs liberation was subordinated to the stateâs broader priorities of national reconstruction and the protection of cultural and religious authenticity against perceived Western influence. In 1984, despite earlier efforts toward gender equality, the Family Code defined women as legal minors under a patriarchal framework, restricting their rights in marriage, inheritance, and divorce, and emphasizing women as âpatriotic mothersâ upholding family values and religious integrity. 13 Despite protests and over a million signatures, calls for full equality were ignored. 14
The 1990s civil war, or Black Decade, saw further restrictions on womenâs roles and rights. Sparked by the governmentâs cancellation of elections after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) gained momentum, the conflict claimed around 100,000 lives, 15 and armed groups targeted women who defied conservative norms by working or engaging in public life, turning womenâs bodies into battlegrounds. For many Algerian women, this brutal decade highlighted the fragility of their safety and autonomy in a polarized, militarized society. 16 Womenâs rights activists recall the extremism of this era, with Maro Youssef noting that women who supported Bouteflika did so in part âto prevent Islamists from regaining power,â fearing a return to violent repression if the stateâs authority waned. 17
With Bouteflikaâs rise to power in 1999, Algeriaâs post-conflict period was marked by a national reconciliation strategy designed to consolidate peace without addressing the root causes of conflict or expanding democratic freedoms. Many in this period saw reconciliation as turning the next chapter, by prioritizing national unity, building the economy, and developing society, while at the same time failing to reconstruct social cleavages from the 1990s. Bouteflikaâs policies, while offering a form of stability, restricted political reforms, allowing the state to control narratives of national unity and peace. Womenâs support for Bouteflika was partially rooted in this promise of stability, as many, especially feminists, saw him as a protection against the Islamist factions that had threatened their rights and safety during the civil war. 18
In 2005, Bouteflika introduced selective reforms to the Family Code, offering limited advancements in womenâs rights concerning divorce, custody, and inheritance, which activists criticized as superficial gestures aimed at appeasing international audiences rather than empowering women. 19 Bouteflikaâs reforms allowed the state to control gender dynamics under a façade of modernization, leaving many Algerian women still constrained by authoritarian policies and societal expectations. 20 Over time, the regimeâs lack of genuine political reform and its reliance on authoritarian governance deepened citizensâ disillusionment, as promises of participation and equality were replaced by mechanisms of control and co-optation. This led to the failure of a social contract that had aimed to establish a democracy, and the traces of this failure was felt in the Hirak in 2019, where social divergences and cleavages of the past, reinforced through Bouteflikaâs authoritarian rule, became a barrier in contributing to real change. 21
Thus far thereâs no violence, Itâs fine. However, youâre scared because during these years [Black Decade] the terrorists were not the cause [of deaths and violence]. It was the military, they were the terrorists, they killed and slaughtered people. We donât have terrorists; where would terrorists come from?
The mismanagement of the countryâs finances by state institutions and the elite was mentioned throughout all the interviews. This discourse was also preeminent during protests in posters, slogans, and signs carried by the demonstrators. The women in this study felt that the oil revenues were not being spent to develop the country and its infrastructure. Instead, they felt that the money was coopted by the state and distributed within the networks of the political elite. As Malak, a 25-year-old student, mentioned: âThere are too many thieves in our country, itâs a rich country but there are too many thieves, it is the fault of the criminal Bouteflika and his gang.â There was hope that the Hirak would bring forth a new leader and a different state structure that would spend the oil rents on the people. Taos, a 49-year-old housewife, hoped Algeria would have a new ruler who âwill lead the country correctly, likes his population, gives them a good social and economic situation and will not khadaÊ¿a [screw over] the population.â
Gaid Salah 22 and all these thieves, not only him but all these generals, I want them all to leave. None of them are good, they are all the same, with Bedoui [Noureddine Bedoui], Bensalah [Abdelkader Bensalah 23 ] all of them, the complete FLN and RND [party: Rassemblement National Démocratique, Democratic National Rally], they are all the sons of the devil.
More individuals than just the women in this study opposed the military. Slogans and chants during the protest further demonstrate the populationâs dissatisfactions with the state and the military. An example is the famous chant and slogan, which I heard in all the protests, âdawla madania, mashÄ« Ê¿askaria,â translating to âdemocratic state, not a military state.â
2 Methodology
This study draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over two periods: four months (SeptemberâDecember 2019) during Algeriaâs presidential campaign, and seven months (MayâDecember 2023) in the lead-up to the 2024 elections. During the first period, fieldwork was conducted primarily in the Great Kabylia regionâBouira, Béjaïa, and Tizi Ouzouâwhere I interviewed nine students, nine housewives, one lawyer, two secretaries, two homemakers, one teacher, and one jobseeker, all of whom had participated in the Hirak movement. Sampling was purposive, aiming for diversity across social categories (educated/uneducated, literate/illiterate, working/housewife) and political generations: the French colonization generation (1830â1962), the civil war generation (1991â2002), and the post-civil war Bouteflika generation, born in the 1990s. Two participants had lived through colonization, thirteen experienced the civil war as adolescents, and ten belonged to the post-civil war generation.
In 2023, a second phase of fieldwork involved new interviews with eight teachers, seven lawyers, twelve doctors, and eleven politicians, almost all of whom had participated in the Hirak in 2019. Fieldnotes from renewed conversations with 2019 participants were also included. Sampling was purposive and snowball-based, focusing on women in both traditionally masculine sectors (politics, law, and some medical professions such as orthopedics and neurosurgery) and feminine sectors (teaching, some medical professions such as midwifery and gynecology). Data were analyzed through iterative inductive coding and narrative analysis, identifying recurrent themes, patterns, and contradictions to trace how women narrated their participation in the Hirak, articulated demands, and reflected on the movementâs influence on the post-Hirak political order. While the two datasets were not directly compared, the 2023 material was used to illustrate how narratives evolvedâand in some cases persistedâsince 2019.
Ahead of fieldwork, steps were taken to ensure that ethical principles guided the research process. All names are pseudonyms chosen to reflect common Algerian names across generations. Informed consent was obtained before every interview; forms were read aloud to illiterate participants, and all were informed of potential risks and their right to withdraw at any time. As an Algerian-Swedish researcher, my positionality shaped both the research process and interpretation. My strong accent from Tizi Ouzou and familiarity with local cultural codes often positioned me as an âinsider,â facilitating rapport and access, while my ability to leave Algeria and return to Sweden marked me as an âoutsider,â shaping participantsâ perceptions of me. Following PovrzanoviÄ Frykman, I understand ethnographic research not as a âquestâ for objectivity but as an engaged, relational process in which the researcherâs subjectivity, experiences, and situated knowledge shape both data collection and interpretation. 24 Recognizing this, I approached fieldwork reflexively, acknowledging how my background, generational perspective, and social positioning influenced both the narratives shared with me and my understanding of them.
3 Bargaining with Patriarchy in a Rentier Petrostate
In the protests during the Arab uprisings and in Algeria, women demonstrated complex strategies for negotiating gendered and economic demands within authoritarian and patriarchal contexts. Scholars have highlighted the paradoxical ways that women related to the state: publicly respecting and fearing authority, while privately creating spaces to voice dissent and pursue agency. 25 Asef Bayatâs concept of sociospaces is central to understanding these dynamics. During the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, women experienced the state as both a âprovider and punisherâ and, while conforming to its authority in public, created âsociospaces of kin and cliquesâ in private settings to denounce and resist authoritarianism. 26 These spaces enabled individualized and atomized forms of protest that were hidden from repressive institutions, allowing women to act despite structural constraints. In Algeria, similar dynamics emerged during the Hirak protests, where women navigated patriarchal norms and authoritarian pressures while using sociospaces to advance gender-specific concerns. As Karima, a 62-year-old housewife, noted, âI wonât go out to do anything thatâs not appropriate. I go out when I have to and only when I have to,â women carefully balanced participation with social expectations.
Islamic morality and Muslim family values further shaped womenâs public mobility and participation. As Shahrokni observes in Iran, womenâs presence in public spaces carried a risk of violating moral codes, as they were positioned as symbols of Islamic propriety and required male supervision to avoid transgression. 27 Mernissi further emphasizes that these moral expectations reinforce the division between the umma (public sphere) and the home (private sphere), structuring womenâs social behavior and constraining political engagement. 28 In Algeria, religious values intersect with state and patriarchal structures, regulating womenâs actions in both private and public spheres. The concept of the Muslim family was frequently mobilized to legitimize womenâs claims, aligning economic and social demands with culturally recognized moral obligations. 29
The economic dimension of womenâs claims can be further understood through Silvia Federiciâs work on unpaid labor, which highlights how domestic and care work sustains economies while remaining socially and economically unrecognized. 30 In the Algerian context, women framed their domestic and caregiving labor as essential to the nationâs well-being, aligning moral and economic arguments to justify demands for recognition and material support. Federiciâs framework provides a theoretical grounding for understanding how womenâs labor and moral reasoning are intertwined in their strategies for negotiating both public and private spheres.
Additionally, historical and structural factors further constrained womenâs strategies. Algeria, as an authoritarian rentier state, has largely relied on oil revenues to maintain popular acquiescence. During the Arab uprisings of 2010â11, many rentier states, including Algeria, sought to co-opt dissent through constitutional revisions, subsidies, and clientelist networks, effectively using the âauthoritarian bargainâ to preserve stability. 31 However, by 2019, declining oil revenues, economic stagnation, and rising unemployment had weakened the stateâs capacity to maintain this social contract, compelling citizens, and particularly women, to find alternative strategies to claim resources and recognition. 32 These conditions created a context in which womenâs participation in protests required careful negotiation in the public space of the Hirak between moral and religious legitimacy and economic demands. These structural and historical constraints were reinforced by colonial and authoritarian legacies. Colonial and authoritarian regimes co-opted womenâs rights and political participation, producing internalized norms that both constrained and shaped strategic negotiation. 33 Postcolonial feminist scholarship has highlighted how these intersecting structures create both limitations and spaces for agency, in which women navigate patriarchy and state authority simultaneously. 34
Building on these perspectives, this study conceptualizes womenâs strategies in the Hirak as a GMC. The GMC captures how women articulated economic demands and moral legitimacy within the time and space of the protests, navigating private and public spheres under intertwined patriarchal and authoritarian structures. Unlike Kandiyotiâs patriarchal bargain, which emphasizes strategic accommodation to patriarchy, or social contract approaches in rentier states, which focus on citizenâstate exchanges, the GMC foregrounds womenâs affective labor, everyday practices, and moral reasoning as tools for claiming recognition and resources without framing demands explicitly in political or feminist terms. This framework contributes to the literature on womenâs participation in protests by highlighting how women negotiate economic and moral demands within movements while conforming to and strategically leveraging patriarchal and authoritarian structures. By combining Bayatâs sociospaces, Islamic moral frameworks, 35 concepts of the Muslim family, 36 and Federiciâs insights on unpaid labor, the GMC offers a novel lens for understanding womenâs culturally and politically embedded agency in authoritarian contexts. Building on the GMC framework, we can see how Algerian women in the Hirak translated everyday moral and economic negotiations into concrete demands, positioning themselves within state-sanctioned gender norms while subtly asserting agency.
4 Womenâs Demands and the Gendered Moral Contract
The Algerian women participating in the Hirak faced a dual challenge: they sought benefits within a conservative framework that restricts public roles while negotiating their rights and economic support from the state. The concept of the GMC helps us understand how these women pursued recognition and support while aligning with the stateâs traditional, authoritarian views on gender roles. By framing themselves as upholders of the Muslim family values and contributors to the social fabric, the women could make economic demands without directly challenging the patriarchal structure. By positioning themselves as essential to family and society, they argued that this labor should be acknowledged and compensated by the state. This aligns with feminist theorist Federiciâs view that unpaid domestic labor deserves economic recognition and that acknowledging domestic work as valuable labor allows women to redefine their roles and gain a bargaining position that reinforces their importance within the household. 37
Algerian women redefine what is typically seen as domestic duty, articulating a need for recognition of their unpaid household labor as economically valuable. Tassadit, a 39-year-old housewife, 38 expressed this sentiment directly: âHousewives should get paid. They are also working and doing a job. Even though it is at home, it is legitimate employment.â Her statement challenges the conventional perception that housework is simply a family obligation and not a labor deserving recognition. For Tassadit and others, viewing household labor as legitimate work enables them to position it as deserving of compensation, aligning with broader calls for womenâs economic recognition within the family as a form of legitimate work. Nevertheless, these womenâs demands for a state-backed allowance for housework reflect a desire for recognition without directly threatening patriarchal norms. This paradoxical demand is evident in the statements of women like Zohra, a 56-year-old housewife, 39 who described the limitations of economic dependence on male family members: âAre you just supposed to wait for your husband? Every time you want something, you have to wait for the man⦠We live in misery, women who donât work live in misery.â Zohraâs frustration reflects the struggle faced by many Algerian housewives, whose financial dependence restricts their autonomy and agency within the household.
Womenâs demands for a state-backed allowance, or âoil-funded salary,â challenge male-dominated control over family finances and highlight their expectations for the state to act as a supportive figure. By linking their economic needs and empowerment to Algeriaâs oil wealth, women position themselves as deserving beneficiaries of the nationâs resources. Maya, a 23-year-old student, 40 expressed her perspective, stating, âThe state has been misusing our resources. I hope the people will be able to take advantage of their wealth.â In this statement, Maya articulates a common sentiment among protesters and women from diverse backgrounds, including students, homemakers, and working women, who believe that oil wealth should be redistributed to support Algerian citizens, particularly women. However, this paradoxical view of the state reflects womenâs acceptance of Algeria as a âprovider and punisher,â 41 which has shaped their demands as part of the conditional contract between the ruler (state) and the ruled (women). By positioning themselves as protectors of cultural and religious values and contributors to future generations, women justify their economic demands within a framework that supports broader societal interests.
While the Hirakâs demands included calls for redistributing oil wealth, they did not prioritize the economic independence of Algerian women. Through these demands, Algerian women strategically framed their needs within culturally acceptable narratives that support both family values and state interests. As Kandiyotiâs concept of the âpatriarchal bargainâ explains, women make concessions within a system that ultimately reinforces their subordination, securing certain benefits in return for loyalty to patriarchal norms. 42 Karima, a 62-year-old housewife, embodies this balance in her statement advocating for state support for mothers: âI want housewives like myself to get money for educating and raising the future leaders and the future Algerian generation. Hence, the state should reward us [mothers and wives] for our work.â This demand was shared by all women, independent of their social class or background. For example, students demanded a change for themselves in the future as well as for their mothers and sisters. These demands reflect the intersection of age, social class, and marital status: younger women frame their demands as a generational claim for future independence, while older women emphasize their accumulated experience and contribution to society.
By framing their labor as essential to societyâs stability and growth, these women positioned their economic empowerment demands as integral to Algeriaâs future and as contributions that deserve recognition and compensation. In this sense, the GMC offers a way for these Algerian women to make gains within a restrictive environment and space. Their demands do not challenge the stateâs authority nor patriarchal social norms outright; instead, they emphasize how their roles within the Muslim family align with the stateâs authoritarian agenda, giving the state a strong reason to provide women with an allowance for economic independence. Many women, such as Sahra, a 25-year-old student, articulated their positions in terms of both religious language and values, stating, for example, âWe should be fulfilling our roles as mothers and wives as God intended for us.â References to God and the moral values of the Muslim family were recurrent in their statements, highlighting how religious norms are deeply intertwined with notions of duty, social contribution, and legitimacy. In this way, the GMC captures the nuanced ways that women draw on both the language and values of Islam to morally justify their labor and claims for recognition, positioning themselves as indispensable actors within society while navigating patriarchal and authoritarian constraints.
This strategy highlights the resilience embedded in everyday interactions. While the GMC highlights womenâs strategic engagement within patriarchal and authoritarian structures, it also raises questions about the limits of such strategies. By working within culturally sanctioned roles, women aim to secure gains at the same time as reinforcing the norms of patriarchal and authoritarian structures. This tension underscores the complex moral and political negotiation inherent in womenâs economic demands.
At the same time, many later expressed regret about the outcomes of the Hirak. Zohra, 43 now 60, reflected in 2023, âI regret participating in the Hirak ⦠nothing has changed for us and for Algeria; if anything, everything is much worse. It would have been better if Bouteflika had stayed.â This disappointment highlights the gap between womenâs aspirations and the limited impact of their claims on their economic independence. While some women expressed disappointment with the limited outcomes of the Hirak, their participation nonetheless illustrates how they navigated public spaces to assert influence, adapt strategies, and negotiate gendered expectations within constrained environments.
5 Visibility and Gendered Expectations in Protest Participation
Fridays are religious days. Men go to pray in the Mosque, and some women as well, but most women stay at home, pray, and prepare lunch for their husbands so that they can find lunch ready for them when they come back from the prayer. I never used to go out on Fridays before the Hirak.
By joining the Friday protests, Karima and other women briefly redefined their roles in public spaces. However, this visibility in the public sphere remained limited by both Islamic moral expectations and cultural norms, which continued to restrict womenâs presence and behavior outside the home. Historical experiences and bureaucratic hurdles also shaped womenâs engagement in public life. Taos, a 49-year-old housewife who lived through the Black Decade, highlighted the risks of public visibility, stating: âI feel dumb and insecure in the public sphere.â Similarly, Anita, another 49-year-old housewife, reflected on navigating state bureaucracy: âIf I go to the hospital now, I will have to stay and wait there. You need connections to see a doctor⦠Because of my lack of connections, I was unable to get the papers I wanted from the state administration.â These statements demonstrate that womenâs participation in public spaces requires constant negotiation of risk, fear, and procedural obstacles, especially for illiterate women, housewives and homemakers, illustrating how historical authoritarian pressures continue to influence contemporary visibility.
Public spaces in Algeria remain highly gendered and precarious, especially for working women, whose autonomy and movement are often limited by both social expectations and the practical realities of the countryâs economic instability. Professional women, particularly those in politics, face additional scrutiny. Zahra, a politician, 45 described the pressures of navigating public life as a woman: âYou have to be careful in how you talk, dress, and walk. Anything can be misinterpreted when youâre a woman in politics.â This scrutiny places additional pressure on female politicians, who are already working in a predominantly male field. For unmarried women, the challenges are often even greater. Souad, a local politician, 46 noted, âBecause Iâm unmarried, my actions are scrutinized even more. People question why Iâm working in politics without a husbandâs approval.â She added that her male colleagues often view her presence in male-dominated settings, such as construction sites or late-night meetings, as inappropriate, remarking, âThe men I work with donât like it when Iâm there, especially on assignments that require us to be at construction sites or out late.â These quotes were often followed by a reference to God, as expressed by Souad: âI know what I am doing and God knows what I am doing.â She did not have to prove herself to anyone but herself and God.
These restrictions reflect broader societal expectations that confine women to specific roles within Algerian society. Public life is structured around the ideals of the âMuslim Family,â reinforcing the idea that womenâs primary responsibilities are within the domestic sphere. For many, simply being seen alone in public or engaging in work that places them alongside men risks social judgment or suspicion. Islamic moral expectations, as well as cultural norms, contribute to the policing and a gendered segregation of womenâs visibility in Algeria, subtly encouraging them to retreat from public life and focus on traditional roles. For many women, the scrutiny extends beyond professional life to their personal identities and conduct. Souad noted that being unmarried adds a layer of judgment and suspicion to her work, as her decision to work in politics without a husbandâs approval is often questioned. She explained how her interactions with male colleagues are frequently scrutinized, particularly in situations that require collaboration outside of standard hours. âThe men I work with donât like it when Iâm there alone,â she said. The underlying expectation is that unmarried women, in particular, should avoid spaces where they might be seen as transgressing boundaries around gender, gender interactions, and propriety.
Now, because of the economic situation, itâs even harder for me to travel back and forth. There arenât as many buses, and sometimes I travel early in the morning or late at night. Itâs not safe as a woman, whether waiting for a bus or just being outside alone.
These experiences illustrate how Algerian women navigate both public and private spaces under significant social pressure. In response, women increasingly turn to sociospaces to assert their agency. Within these spaces, women continue to push for change in ways that align with culturally sanctioned roles and Islamic values, demonstrating their adaptability in Algeriaâs restrictive environment. These sociospaces, whether informal conversations among colleagues, discussions in gardens, or walking together during protests, serve as critical sites for these negotiations, enabling women to assert agency without overtly confronting patriarchal authority or resisting the unity of the Hirak.
Sociospaces provide a space where they can critique these restrictions without direct confrontation. In these settings, women discuss economic dependency, public visibility, and the recognition of their domestic labor issues. The spaces allow the women to pursue forms of agency and autonomy that align with societal norms, without openly challenging the countryâs patriarchal framework. These spaces were present in 2019 and in 2023, where I would find female lawyers talking about these dissatisfactions in their offices or female doctors discussing this together in the garden of the hospital during their lunch break. This adaptability illustrates how women build solidarity and advocate for change, using everyday interactions to resist restrictions while working within Algeriaâs patriarchal and authoritarian setting.
By articulating their concerns in familiar environments, they foster discussions that validate their contributions, highlighting their resilience and ability to pursue their demands in ways that resonate with Algerian societyâs values and limitations. These examples illustrate how Algerian women actively negotiate the boundaries of public and private life, demonstrating the interplay between socio-cultural norms, religious morality, and economic aspirations. By framing their household labor and professional work as morally valuable, women translate domestic and care responsibilities into claims of economic recognition, consistent with the GMC framework. Sociospacesâwhether informal conversations among colleagues, discussions in gardens, or walking together during protestsâserve as critical sites for these negotiations, enabling women to assert agency without overtly confronting patriarchal authority. The moral and cultural legitimacy embedded in their claimsârooted in Islamic values and the ideals of the Muslim familyâallows women to pursue incremental change while remaining socially and culturally intelligible. In this sense, womenâs everyday interactions reflect a strategy: they transform constrained social and economic positions into opportunities for recognition, solidarity, and influence within both familial and public spheres. These everyday negotiations and grounded strategies set the stage for understanding the broader patterns of persistence and agency that this study highlights in its conclusion.
6 Conclusion
This study has examined the participation of Algerian women in the 2019 Hirak protests, highlighting how they negotiated gendered and economic demands within patriarchal and authoritarian constraints. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2019 and 2023 shows that womenâs claims did not end with the initial protests but continued to evolve, demonstrating persistence in the articulation of economic needs, moral legitimacy, and social contributions. By introducing the concept of the GMC, this paper has shown how women frame unpaid domestic labor, caregiving, and social work as morally and economically essential, positioning themselves as indispensable actors within the family, the nation, and faith. It is within this framework that womenâs claims in the Hirak can be understood: not as an absence of feminism or political awareness, but as a culturally grounded mode of negotiation within the intertwined structures of patriarchy, authoritarianism, and Islamic moral life.
The GMC captures a distinct form of agency: women do not directly confront patriarchal authority or the state but strategically leverage culturally and morally sanctioned frameworksâIslamic values, the Muslim family, and notions of dutyâto justify claims for recognition and material support. By 2023, these demands had not only persisted but also appeared to resonate with state-level initiatives. President Abdelmadjid Tebbouneâs discussion of reforms to the financial and banking framework, including support for micro-enterprises and women at home, reflects attention to the types of economic recognition women articulated during the Hirak. 48 While concrete changes remain limited, this alignment suggests that womenâs morally framed and culturally grounded claims can influence state agendas. The ongoing expression of these demands illustrates that the GMC is both a descriptive framework for understanding womenâs strategies and an instrumental approach through which women continue to assert agency and pursue incremental change, potentially shaping socio-political dynamics today.
These Algerian womenâs engagement in the Hirak and its aftermath demonstrates the adaptability, resilience, and strategic resourcefulness embedded in everyday moral and economic negotiations. By combining ethnographic insights with the frameworks of sociospaces, Islamic moral reasoning, Federiciâs analysis of unpaid labor, and the GMC, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how women navigate authoritarian and patriarchal constraints. It underscores that meaningful change can emerge through culturally grounded, morally framed, and strategically negotiated claims, an approach that may continue to influence womenâs participation and agency in Algeria well beyond the initial protests. Nonetheless, it is important to note that the findings presented here are based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily in the Great Kabylia region and in Algiers. While these data provide rich insight into how women navigate the Hirak and articulate economic and moral claims, they do not allow for generalization across all of Algeria. The persistence of these demands and the operation of sociospaces observed in this study may differ in other regions, which have distinct social, cultural, and political dynamics. Future research should expand geographically to include women from diverse regions, social classes, and professional backgrounds to examine whether similar discussions and strategies are present elsewhere. Such comparative work would help to assess the broader applicability of the GMC framework and deepen our understanding of how Algerian women negotiate gender, morality, and economic recognition in both local and national contexts.
While the Hirak did not grant women the structural changes or recognition they demanded, it nevertheless made these expressions possible. By bringing women together across generations, social classes, and regions, the movement created spacesâboth in the streets and in private homesâwhere women could speak, reflect, and collectively rearticulate their claims. Had they not gathered in the living room that Friday afternoon, preparing to join the protest, these intergenerational conversations and expressions of agency might never have taken place. The Hirak thus not only exposed the limits of the political system but also revealed womenâs enduring capacity to reappropriate space, voice their demands, and imagine new forms of collective belonging.
Frédéric Volpi, âAlgeria: When Elections Hurt Democracy,â Journal of Democracy 31, no. 2 (April 2020): 152â165.
Latefa Guemar, Chiheb Adel, and Jessica Northey, âThe Algerian Hirak: Young people and the non-violent revolution,â Open Democracy, October 18, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/algerian-hirak-young-people-and-non-violent-revolution/.
Karima Abbas-Terki, âLe Hirak: nouvelle opportunité pour les droits des femmes Algériennes,â Dossier: Femmes Dans les Révolutions Arabes. La revue étudiante de sciences humaines et sociales consacrée au monde arabe, no. 1 (2021): 11â12.
Lydia Haddag, âHirak and Feminism: An Equation with Two Unknowns,â Arab Reform Initiative, June 22, 2021, https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/hirak-and-feminism-an-equation-with-two-unknowns/.
The Great Kabylia region includes the communes of Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes and Bouira. I do not specify the commune or city in which the interviews were conducted to preserve the anonymity of the interlocutors. Similarly, for the capital Algiers, interviews were conducted with politicians and individuals in and from the capital, and I do not specify from where in the capital or their origin in order to not disclose their identity.
The interviews were conducted in either French, Algerian Arabic, Kabyle, or a mixture of all three (Darija). I translated the text to French when transcribing. The quotes used for this study were further translated into English.
Deniz Kandiyoti, âBargaining with Patriarchy,â Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (September 1988): 274â290.
Jessie Mortiz, âOil and Societal Quiescence: Rethinking Casual Mechanisms in Rentier State Theory,â in The Politics of Rentier States in the Gulf (Washington D.C.: The Project on Middle East Political Science, 2019), 40â43.
Ranjana Khanna, Algeria cuts: women and representation, 1830 to the present (Stanford: Stanford University Press2008).
Adrienne Leonhardt, âBetween two jailers: womenâs experience during colonialism, war, and independence in Algeria,â Anthós 5, no. 1 (2013): 44.
Zahia Smail Salhi, âThe Algerian feminist movement between nationalism, patriarchy and Islamism,â Womenâs Studies International Forum 33, no. 2 (2010):113â124; Faouzia Zeraoulia, âThe memory of the civil war in Algeria: Lessons from the past with reference to the Algerian Hirak,â Contemporary Review of the Middle East 7, no. 1 (2020): 25â53.
Leonhardt, âBetween two jailers,â 47.
Nacima Ourahmoune and Hounaida El Jurdi, âThe march for gender equality of Algerian women: The struggle for spatial and historical recognition,â Gender, Work & Organization 31, no. 3 (2024): 1013.
Ibid, 1012â1030.
Ourahmoune and El Jurdi, âThe march for gender equality of Algerian women,â 1013.
Aili Mari Tripp, âThe fight for democracy and womenâs rights in Algeria: a long legacy of struggle,â Turkish Policy Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2019): 59â67.
Maro Youssef, âAlgerian Feminists Navigate Authoritarianism,â in Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 129.
Vishvini Arasi Sakthivel, âThe movement for a society of peace: Islamism and political sense-making in post-conflict Algeria,â Ph.D. Diss., University of Oxford, 2019.
Youssef, âAlgerian Feminists Navigate Authoritarianism,â 120â131.
Renata Pepicelli, âRethinking Gender in Arab Nationalism: Women and the Politics of Modernity in the Making of Nation-States. Cases From Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria,â Oriente Moderno 97, no. 1 (2017): 201â219.
Zeraoulia, âThe memory of the civil war in Algeria,â 25â53.
Gaid Salah was the army chief of staff and de facto ruler at the time, of the Hirak in 2019, after the resignation of Bouteflika.
Appointed interim president by Gaid Salah.
Maja PovrzanoviÄ Frykman, ââExperimentalâ Ethnicity: Meetings in the Diaspora,â Narodna umjetnost: hrvatski Äasopis za etnologiju i folkloristiku 41, no. 1 (2004): 83â102.
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), 138.
Nazanon Shahrokni, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 1.
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim World (London: Saqi Books, 2003), 15.
Valentine Moghadam, Patriarchy in Transition: Women and the Changing Family in the Middle East (Boulder: Lynn Rienner Publisher, 2003); Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries, 137.
Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1975).
Leni Brouwer and Edien Bartels, âArab Spring in Morocco: Social Media and the 20 February Movement,â Afrika Focus 27, no. 2 (2014): 9â22.
Anne Wolf, âThe Myth of Stability in Algeria,â The Journal of North African Studies 24, no. 5 (2019): 707â712.
Hoda Elsadda, âAgainst All Odds: A Legacy of Appropriation, Contestation, and Negotiation of Arab Feminism in Post-colonial States,â Journal of Feminist Scholarship 16, no. 16 (2019): 53.
Annabelle Golay, âFéminisme et Post-colonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre dâAlgérie,â International Journal of Francophone Studies 10, no. 3 (2007): 407â424.
Nazanon Shahrokni, Women in Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019).
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil (London: Saqi Books, 2003).
Federici, Wages Against Housework, 76.
2019 Interview.
2019 Interview.
2019 Interview.
Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries, 138.
Kandiyoti, Bargaining with Patriarchy, 286.
2023 fieldnote.
2019 Interview.
2023 Interview.
2023 Interview.
2023 Interview.
Kamelia Hadjib, âValorisation des salaires et allègement fiscal en 2024 : Le Président Tebboune réitère son engagement en faveur dâune politique sociale renforcée.â El Moudjahid, December 12, 2023, https://www.elmoudjahid.dz/fr/l-evenement/valorisation-des-salaires-et-allegement-fiscal-en-2024-le-president-tebboune-reitere-son-engagement-en-faveur-d-une-politique-sociale-renforcee-209919.
Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge the insightful support and guidance provided by Rola El-Husseini, Sarah Anne Rennick, and Ragnhild Muriaas for their support and guidance during the writing of this article. I also thank the members of the SUCCESS project and the participants of the University of Bergen and Chr. Michelsen Institute seminar in Bergen for their feedback on previous versions of this article, special thanks to Elin Skaar, Liv Tønnessen, and Sarah A. Tobin. I am also grateful to James Rooth for proofreading and editing this paper, and for his helpful feedback. I further thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers of Middle East Law and Governance for their constructive comments and careful engagement with my manuscript. Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the participants, who kindly shared their time, experiences, and support, making this research possible.
Funding Statement
This study is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unionâs Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant number 101002248 (SUCCESS).
