This report presents the outcome of a study launched by the Center of Arab Women for training and research (CAWTAR) and Oxfam on the obstacles and opportunities for women to participate in civic and political life in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, specifically in Morocco, Tunisia, the occupied Palestinian territory and Yemen.

This report aims, among other objectives, to develop the view on leadership and empowerment so as to learn about particular women who started from “the impassible” to reach the possible and changed their lives through civic and political participation and, thus, affect change in their local community and in the surrounding social environment.

The methodology for this study was qualitative, using semi-structured interviews and biographies within an interactive paradigm which aimed to understand the social act, as participation, by analyzing its objective and personal motives and significance.

The study also adopted a gender-based approach in order to identify the hidden mechanisms which hindered women’s participation in political life in terms of power relations between the sexes.

A common method was adopted to begin with a general background presentation of the countries covered in the study, with specifics on each location, followed by a presentation of indicators of women’s participation in politics and the public sphere. then, a review of the most relevant literature would follow in order to highlight the contribution of this study.

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