Between Violence and Everyday Resistance

An Intersectional Feminist Study of Women’s Voices in Beirut and Cairo

Abstract

Violence against women is a major public health issue that causes severe physical and mental health consequences, including permanent injuries, depression, and suicide, affecting more than 35% of women worldwide (UN 2017; WHO 2021). In the post-Arab Spring era, the prevalence of sexual and physical violence against women in public spaces has prompted numerous international and national interventions. Yet, despite these efforts, only a small proportion of survivors access support services, report incidents to the police, or receive healthcare, legal, or social assistance. Research suggests that many international and humanitarian programs struggle to engage women survivors effectively, often due to limited cultural sensitivity and reductive representations of Middle Eastern societies. In response to these limitations, a range of grassroots and feminist initiatives have emerged to provide alternative spaces of support and advocacy. This study examines six local and transnational initiatives in Beirut and Cairo that use both online and offline platforms to amplify women's voices and make visible experiences of violence. Drawing on eighty-one narratives of violence collected through these platforms, as well as eleven semi-structured interviews with initiative founders, this paper explores the relationship between women’s experiences of violence and their practices of resistance. More specifically, it examines how women resist in the face of intimate, structural, and political violence. This relationship is analyzed through a critical interdisciplinary framework informed by anthropology, transcultural psychology, critical sociology, and feminist studies. Our findings demonstrate how gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, migration status, and disability shape both experiences of violence and possibilities for resistance. An intersectional feminist perspective allows us to situate these practices along a continuum ranging from highly visible acts—such as public testimonies, political activism—to less visible forms of resistance, including storytelling, solidarity, social awareness, and silence. Importantly, our analysis also highlights how silence and subtle acts of defiance—such as refusal, non-compliance, and strategic disengagement—can function as meaningful forms of resistance, particularly among women whose opportunities for overt political action may be constrained.