Tag: Voluntarily women-only spaces

For the past decade, women-only spaces have been multiplying around the world, including around the Mediterranean, a trend particularly driven by the #MeToo movement. It continues to broaden its horizons and expand into increasingly diverse areas, offering women the opportunity to reclaim spaces traditionally occupied by men or to create spaces of their own where they are able to express themselves freely.

The desire to distance oneself, even temporarily, from men and the male gaze is also present in sports, where women are often subject to judgment. This is what prompted a group of French female students, enrolled in a master’s program in sports communication, to start an organization in Paris that offers women-only classes.

What happens when women stop asking for permission to think, debate, and act together? Single-sex spaces are never a problem as long as they exclude women. But they suddenly become problematic in the eyes of men (especially) when women choose them in order to organize among themselves. The issue is a political one.

Every week, Algerian women log on to practice English. They end up talking about much more: work, family, friendships, feminism, and the everyday negotiations of womanhood. In just a few months, The Saturday Club has become a space where speaking a new language and being heard have come to mean the same thing.

Alawite women in Syria are facing a wave of kidnappings that has made moving around, or even leaving home, a daily challenge fraught with fear. In response to this reality, women and girls have begun creating safe spaces where they can support one another, from private gatherings in their homes to WhatsApp groups where they exchange support, information, and reassurance.

The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has left no private space for residents, but the weight of this has been particularly severe on women, who have found themselves forced to share every detail and space of their lives with others. Out of this reality emerged the idea for a women’s gym, a space where women and girls could reclaim a sense of themselves.

Following the huge success of their winter and spring tours, Sarah Malnerich and Francesca Fiore, Italian feminist activists and the comedic authors behind the hit blog Mammadimerda, continue to tour Italy with their women-only event, where attendees laugh, sing, and dance without judgment, finally feeling safe. All in a spirit of sisterhood and sharing.

In a country with over two million cafés, with Cairo alone as home to some 150,000 of them, cafés have remained a male-dominated space. Against this backdrop, Sarah Essam founded the first café exclusively for women in the heart of Cairo, in one of the city’s most conservative and working-class neighborhoods. It has become a safe haven where women can talk openly, take a break from the pressures of daily life, and smoke away from the social stigma that continues to haunt women in Egypt.