Yemen’s Revolutionary Women: A Photo Essay

Luke Somers has been documenting Yemen’s revolution since late February.  Below is a selection of images highlighting the role women have played in the protests, along with the twists and turns that Yemen has experienced throughout 2011.

To the Western eye, it may be difficult to apprehend the significance of Yemeni women taking to the streets in protest.  It may help to realize that for Yemenis themselves, the sight of hundreds and at times thousands of women pouring onto main thoroughfares has been unexpected and even bewildering.

The sight of ten thousand women, covered from head to toe in black, essentially clogging Sana’a’s Ribat Street is indeed a sight to behold.  In Sana’a, almost every woman you encounter in public is, with the exception of a slit for the eyes that varies in size, concealed by black cloth.  It could take a foreigner days or perhaps years to recognize as never before that when eyes are all you have to read, eyes smile almost as much as mouths.  Yet such perspicacity has not been needed on such days, when Yemeni women, in huge numbers, have issued full-throated chants and exclamations, their emotions effectively on their sleeves and their feelings in no sense uncertain.

Egypt’s revolution swept before the world’s eyes.  In eighteen days, its central aim was achieved.  Yemen’s revolution is ten months old and counting.  There are different ways to analyze its – relatively speaking – delayed progress.  On the one hand, you can say that it has so far been unsuccessful.  On the other, you can say for a culture with traditions as deeply entrenched as Yemen’s, and with so many women and men expressing a desire not just for regime change but a new future, at this point there is no turning back.

Yemeni women tirelessly tend to injured and slain protesters arriving at makeshift hospitals in the day, only to slip without complaint under bed frames at night when the sounds of gunfire and heavy shelling are heard nearby.  After massive Friday street prayers, members of the press have learned that Yemeni women, young and old, are eager to speak in front of video cameras.  During marches, though women and men will occupy separate sides of the street as they progress, both direction and purpose are shared, and chants alternate from one side to the other.

Women did not take to Yemen’s streets to demand gender equality.  They did so for a political and social cause, that of removing Ali Abdullah Saleh and his regime from power.  For this cause, they have united their efforts and their aim with Yemeni men.  However, in the process of giving voice to this cause, many Yemeni women – particularly in the public sphere – have gained just that:  a voice.  In demanding to be heard as citizens, they have, inescapably, demanded to be heard as women.

When Tawakul Karman, Yemeni woman and activist, recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, it was reasonable to infer that the decision was based on a perceived need of attention for the cause of Yemen’s as-yet-unresolved revolution.  It is however just as possible to infer that the decision revealed perceptiveness and sensitivity:  an ability to fathom the depth and breadth of the chasm that Karman and thousands of Yemeni women have bridged over the past ten months.  Passionately, on short notice, and without looking back.

by Luke Somers