Lebanese Women and the Politics of Representation

Carmen Geha begins from a familiar failure: decades of programs, research, and advocacy have not displaced male gatekeeping in Lebanese parties and state institutions. The October 2019 uprising altered the public image of political participation. Women organized, confronted violence, built care arrangements, and placed nationality, wages, healthcare, and harassment inside the revolution’s agenda.

Visibility, however, is not the same as power. Geha distinguishes women appearing at the front of a protest or occupying cabinet seats from substantive representation capable of changing institutions and priorities. Formal politics can co-opt feminist demands through appointments that leave party structures, sectarian allocation, and economic power intact. Yet remaining permanently outside institutions also concedes decisions to those structures.

The article captures an open strategic problem rather than resolving it: how can movements carry disruptive practices into parties, unions, elections, and law without becoming decorative evidence of inclusion? Its pre-pandemic moment and focus on a rapidly changing uprising require historical updating. Still, the distinction between presence and power remains indispensable wherever institutions celebrate women’s faces while resisting feminist redistribution.