The powerful silence

 

 

                                                      The powerful silence

Growing up in Ayodhya, I had seen revolts, demonstrations, and rallies go up every time a religious incident erupted in any part of the country. Thus, as an echo of my surroundings, I have been highly vocal about my views on a certain topic, always having a view on everything around me gave me the sense of self, an identity that is defined by my views. I grew up on the belief that ‘explicit’ is the norm. Being antagonistic and demonstrative is what I believed activism and fighting for a cause meant. But as Ken booth explains “self is an unfinished journey” and that “the social world is constructed by the phenomenon of believing is seeing” I had chosen to see only what I believe in and there was more to activism than my past ‘self’ was aware of. There’s one approach to activism that contributed to my development of the 'self' and approach to security.

The term 'quiet activism' has gained popularity as a term to characterize a range of 'daily', small-scale behaviors that might affect social change. Knitting and other household crafts, as well as seed-sharing and forming cross-cultural friendships in small communities, have all been associated with the word. Such divergent activities are linked not just by their connections with the individual and personal, but also by the task of creating and doing being highly centralized. It focuses on the individual as the means to bring change, something that security studies have hitherto ignored and security as emancipation focuses on. The contemporary relevance of ‘quiet activism’ has been based on feminist scholarship which has indirectly provided with foundations, such that ‘quiet’ represents a contrast to the traditional understanding of activism that is confrontational and unreserved.

Saudi Arabia’s women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was released from prison on 10 February 2021, having been 1,001 days in custody. She was part of the women2drive campaign that led to the lifting of the ban on women driving in 2018. Through this incident that gathered international headlines, I encountered other lower-risk social movements that Saudi Women engaged in due to the repercussions of the explicit movement in line with the ‘security of silence’ that Lene Hanson mentions. An attempt to fight against injustice leads to threats and women must resort to silence or denial. But the Saudi women took to quiet activism and not to total silence. The entrepreneurial space became a platform for women to participate in social change. They exploited entrepreneurship not just as a way of empowerment and economic independence but also as a legitimate platform for political engagement and social change for women. These enabled them to infiltrate the banned political sphere discreetly aligning with their interests.

This activism adopted a three-step process to effectivity. To begin with, the women entrepreneurs intended to empower women in their workplaces by offering separate or women-only workspaces, on-site day-care, and safe transportation to and from work, especially before women were allowed to drive. The next stage was to cultivate a feminist perspective within their company and wider entrepreneurial network. That is, allow them to break free from their traditional and restrictive duties, as well as the gendered stereotypes of what a Saudi woman "should" be. Eventually, as this "silent" wave of feminism gained traction, the women felt empowered to face authorities who refused to support their commercial endeavors. These women took the securitization of their insecurity into their own hands. ‘The violence of everyday life’ (Kleinman, 2000) of these women is an important concept under ‘human security. This incident imposes the importance of how security studies should include the individual and every variant of violence, not only the conception of national security and war.

Then, we interpreted the above-mentioned gender-based insecurities in individual terms, like certain women in entrepreneurship because the story present involves some individuals who suffered insecurity and are adapting to a response that best suits their political environment. Focusing on these specific women however did not hide the fact women of a whole nation are under such circumstances, and we saw it from the political-gendered lens wherein the state is the source of insecurity. These women had to resort to ‘quiet activism’ because the political structure of their country does not allow them to openly organize protests and lead movements against the injustices imposed upon them. Thus, along with the need for the inclusion of individuals and the gendered lens in the security studies, there is a question of how come certain threats to security have achieved a much broader acceptance than others. In the west, protesting the mandating of vaccines that are lifesavers is being accommodated, but in Saudi Arabia women not being allowed to have basic rights such as driving, leads them to jails.

Ultimately, the self-determines the lens/ theory we adopt to look at a particular issue of security and the ability to define threats.

 

References:

1. Booth, Ken. Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist. Routledge, 1997. 

2.     Hansen, Lene. ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’. 2000. Millennium 29 (2): 285–30

 

3. Shepherd, Laura J. “Gender, Violence and Global Politics: Contemporary Debates in Feminist Security Studies.” Political Studies Review 7, no. 2 (2009): 208–19
4. Alkhaled, Sophie. Women's entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia: Feminist solidarity and political activism in disguise? Gender, Work & Organization 28(6).  January 2021