Young Women's Civic Awareness and Public Engagement: A Challenge in a Bahraini Context

In recent years, growing attention to cultivate civic participation among young citizens has been mounting. In Bahrain, young women receive some attention via their participation in civic, political and public engagement initiatives. This paper presents the theoretical and conceptual background for a field study that intends to examine whether young Bahraini women are equipped with the civic knowledge and understanding necessary to participate effectively in community. It also presents their conception of citizenship, their perception of their identity, their political awareness, and their concern about their community issues. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this paper analyses the ways in which young Bahrainis perceive their identity and citizenship status. In this mixed methods approach, a questionnaire was administered to 245 Bahraini young women at the age of 18, followed by in-depth interviews with a stratified sample of 11 young women who had participated in the questionnaire survey. Although the gender gap is closing or reversing in regard to specific forms of participation, some inequalities remain (Lorenzini and Bassoli, 2016), this study contributes to understanding the gender differences in issues related to civic participation and to find if there are any significant differences among women themselves. Keywords: Civic Participation, Public Engagement, Bahraini Women, Civic knowledge.
Introduction Towards the end of the 20th century, there was a rise in the use of gender-neutral language in the world. Women wanted to be valued, respected, recognized and be [...]