Renee Davis is a journalist based in Lebanon who has reported for L'Orient Today and other outlets.
In a country defined for decades by brutal repression, where any opposition or dissent was forced underground, a determined feminist movement is emerging from the shadows to help lead a new era in Syria. Organized and forged through encrypted messages, whispered meetings and bold acts of defiance, this movement has weathered harassment, imprisonment and exile. But as Syria embarks on a future finally free from 50 years of Assad family rule, its feminist leaders are not just part of the opposition—they are working to reshape the very framework of Syria's new government.
"We work inside Syria and abroad, holding workshops and raising our voices for women's issues," says Noor Ahmad, a member of the Syrian Women's Political Movement, or SWPM. Although officially launched in 2017, the group had formed in the early days of Syria's popular uprising in 2011. Its mission is to expand women's political participation and establish a democratic Syria based on equal citizenship. "This is not just about activism," Ahmad adds. "It's about creating real change and making sure women have a seat at the table."
After the sudden fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in a lightning rebel offensive in December, the SWPM was finally able to return to Syria, like other civil society initiatives and opposition groups. In early January, the SWPM held a press conference in Damascus that brought together hundreds of people, from female politicians and feminist activists to journalist and other civil society leaders. The group has held various workshops and meetings in Damascus, including with visiting United Nations officials. But they have yet to secure a meeting with Syria's self-declared interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel leader whose Islamist forces led the offensive that toppled Assad.
This is not just about activism. It's about creating real change and making sure women have a seat at the table.
- Noor Ahmad, Syrian Women's Political Movement
For many Syrian women, the struggle for justice began decades ago, long before social media and other digital networks connected them and provided a way to organize outside of the watchful eye of the Assad regime. The early life of Mariam Jalabi, one of the founders of the SWPM, was steeped in resistance. She was born in Damascus in 1971. Her father, a writer and activist, "was imprisoned, tortured and remained wanted until the regime fell," she recounts. "My whole family was exiled." They fled to Germany when she was a child. Her uncle, Jawdat Said, was a prominent Islamic scholar who advocated for nonviolent political resistance. Born in the Golan Heights, he publicly supported the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, helping lead some of the early peaceful protests that were violently suppressed by the regime. He died in exile in Istanbul in 2022 at the age of 90.
Her family's personal sacrifices shaped Jalabi's determination to challenge the tyranny of both Hafez al-Assad and his son, Bashar. Jalabi's own life—from Germany and Saudi Arabia to Canada and the United States—has mirrored the painful journey of displacement, loss and defiance of so many Syrians.
The challenges in Syria have magnified over the past week, following the worst bloodshed since Assad was toppled. More than 1,000 people were reported killed in insurgent attacks and government-led reprisals that engulfed Syria's Mediterranean coast. The violence began on March 6 with attacks on government forces by Assad loyalists, who have declared an insurgency against the new authorities in Damascus. Government forces and their allied Islamist militias responded with a military crackdown on coastal communities that are overwhelmingly Alawite. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the ensuing violence, with reports of reprisals and sectarian massacres of Alawites by militias affiliated with the new government.
As the country grapples with ongoing sectarian tensions and the aftermath of years of brutal civil war, the future remains uncertain for all Syrians, especially women. Jalabi highlights the lack of women's voices in Syria's fractured political opposition throughout the uprising and civil war. At a 2011 opposition conference in Antalya, Turkey, she says, "out of 115 invitees, maybe 15 were women. The front rows were filled with older men—former detainees, well-known opposition figures." Jalabi recalls a friend of hers asking why they were forced to sit in the back. "So, when the coffee break came, we took the front seats," she says. "And when the men returned, one of them—someone I deeply respected—told me, 'Mariam, you're sitting in my seat.' I wanted the ground to swallow me," she adds. "But I also knew that sitting there wasn't about me. It was about making space for women."
This moment of defiant solidarity was a precursor to the founding of the Syrian Women's Political Movement in 2017. Frustrated by political exclusion, a group of eight women, including Jalabi, banded together. "In 2017, 70 men met in Riyadh to reorganize the opposition," Jalabi says. "Not one woman was invited." Jalabi and the other co-founders of the SWPM set out to fix that. "We never came to be 'opposition to the opposition,'" as she puts it. "We came to team up, to correct the course. The men weren't doing enough, and they weren't including half of the population in their plans for Syria's future."
One of the other eight co-founders is Alise Mofrej, a former political prisoner and feminist activist who was arrested twice under the Assad regime—in 2011 for taking part in peaceful protests and in 2013 for her ongoing political activism. Her commitment to the SWPM was forged in the crucible of surviving Assad's jails. "Detention is a slow death, with profound personal suffering and layered effects on families," she says. In 2011, she and other activists she was detained with were beaten by members of the shabiha, the pro-Assad militia that terrorized Syrians throughout the uprising and civil war.
After her release in early 2014 in a prisoner exchange, Mofrej was forced to confront not only the scars of her imprisonment but also the ongoing social stigma and regime extortion faced by families of detainees. Her experience underscores the brutal intersection of political repression and gender-based violence in Syria. "Whether single or mothers, women were punished twice—first by the regime, then by society," Mofrej says. "Feminism was no longer a choice for me. It became an integral part of the fight for justice and liberation."
Feminism was no longer a choice for me. It became an integral part of the fight for justice and liberation.
- Alise Mofrej
Since Assad's regime fell, Syria has seen a burst of feminist activism. The SWPM now welcomes up to five new members daily, bringing in a diverse group of women who believe in reimagining political power in a new Syria. "After the fall of the regime, our numbers surged. Syrian women, young and old, are stepping forward to claim their place in shaping the country's future," says Noor Ahmad.
The SWPM's initiatives are expansive. It has organized national consultations that have enabled women across Syria to voice their visions for reconstruction and transitional justice, including during the dark days of the civil war before Assad was ousted. "Once, in the middle of a session, the building next to us was bombed," Jalabi recalls of one consultation session held in the town of Maarat al-Numaan, in rebel-held Idlib province. Everyone fled, "but an hour later, the women returned, saying, 'We didn't come all this way for nothing. Let's continue.' That is the level of commitment Syrian women have."
But with power resting in the hands of Sharaa, Syria's interim president, the political transition has so far been more promises than action, including a "national dialogue" conference in late February that, for many Syrians, fell short of its lofty pledges and was too opaque and poorly organized. Consider the constitutional declaration that Sharaa signed last week, adopting a new temporary constitution, following the dissolution of Syria's Assad-era constitution in January. In a major break from the police state that defined Syria since the 1970s, the new constitution guarantees "freedom of opinion, expression, information, publication and press." It also promises to safeguard women's rights and the rights of all Syrians during a five-year "transitional period." But it formalizes the concentration of power around Sharaa and maintains Islamic law as the foundation of Syria's legal system.
"From a feminist perspective, the new Syrian constitutional declaration cannot be considered a genuine step toward achieving equality and justice, as it fails to meet national diversity standards and does not uphold equal citizenship," Mofrej says. "Instead, it reproduces policies of exclusion and discrimination."
"Although it guarantees women's rights to work and education, these are merely fundamental rights that should not require reaffirmation," she adds. "Feminist aspirations go beyond mere recognition of basic rights; we demand a constitution based on gender justice, one that ensures women's full participation in decision-making and eliminates the legal structures that perpetuate discrimination and restrict women's independence and freedoms."
While also skeptical of the constitutional declaration, Jalabi will wait and see how it is implemented. "We will see the practice on the ground and then judge," she says. "They have included lots of positive changes and kept some restrictive alarming clauses."
Beyond Syria's borders, the SWPM has built alliances with Palestinian, Yemeni and Iranian women who have pushed for women's rights in their own repressive contexts. "I work with Palestinian, Yemeni,and Iranian women because we share the same struggle," Jalabi says. "This isn't 'white liberal feminism.' We don't need saviors—we need solidarity." She views concerns abroad about whether Syria's new Islamist rulers will force women to wear the hijab as misplaced in a country ravaged by civil war. "People ask me if I'm afraid that the new regime will force women to wear hijabs," she says. "I tell them 95 percent of Syrian Sunni women are already veiled. What people need right now is electricity, food and survival, not Western debates about dress codes."
The journey from underground resistance to open leadership has been long and fraught with hardship. Yet as Syria transitions into a new, post-Assad reality, the women behind its feminist movement have transformed personal loss, repression and exile into powerful symbols of collective empowerment. "Let Syrian women decide what they want for themselves," Jalabi says. "What we need from the international community isn't a lecture on women's rights. We need sanctions lifted, infrastructure rebuilt."
The rapid growth of the SWPM underscores how a truly democratic transition in Syria is only possible if every voice is heard, and if women are not only participants in politics but leaders in shaping how they are governed. While Syria's feminist movement pushes for greater representation and equality, there are many threats to its hard-won progress, from the specter of more sectarian violence after the massacres in the predominantly Alawite coastal region, fueled by competing factions in Syria's fractured political and ethnic landscape, to growing questions about the power amassed by Sharaa, the militia leader turned president. Women's rights activists fear that the gains they have made, in both political participation and social rights, could be eroded without an inclusive, democratic transition that prioritize the voices of all Syrians.
