Privilege, Marginalization, and Solidarity: Women's Voices Online in Western Sahara's Struggle for Independence by Joanna Allan • Solidarity Rising

March 8, 2024

Privilege, Marginalization, and Solidarity: Women’s Voices Online in Western Sahara’s Struggle for Independence

Joanna Allan argues that the internet amplifies many women’s voices, but that in the Saharawi online community the voices heard most are those that repeat Polisario’s official account of gender equality. This account presents Saharawi women as already emancipated and is used to set the movement apart from Morocco and to win support in the West.

Allan’s main example is the anonymous blog Wurud Asahra, started in 2007, which questioned official claims about women’s control over reproduction and described the treatment of unmarried mothers. Its editor received mostly hostile responses and stopped writing. To show how critical voices can be sustained, Allan looks at examples from the UK, Kenya and Nigeria: activists in the UK who documented online abuse of feminist campaigners and reported it to the police, the Blogs for African Women project that paired experienced bloggers with newcomers, and the #justiceforliz campaign led by FEMNET, which gathered more than 1.2 million signatures.

She concludes that the Wurud Asahra writers lacked a support network, and that feminist solidarity across differences of privilege could help marginalised Saharawi women keep speaking out despite criticism and abuse.