Female empowerment: Arab women rise to the mic

"I know, I am surprised I made it on time, too. I was almost late, because I am Arab and we had to prepare a meal for twenty people… because one family friend said she might come by and say hello," Mia Almas, an up-and-coming comedian of Palestinian origin in New York, says opening her stand-up comedy show.

"That's how my people roll. Like, literally roll, because we overfeed each other to show respect," she continues.

While Mia is a fictional character in Sara Hamdan's recently published debut novel"What Will People Think?," the plot highlights the growing success of Arab women as stand-up comedians across the Middle East.

"Over the past few years, performance has emerged as a meaningful vehicle for female empowerment and social critique in parts of the Arab world," Elham Manea, a Swiss-based political scientist who specializes in Gulf and Middle Eastern studies, told DW. "This visibility matters, women reach audiences well beyond activist or elite circles."

While many smaller events across the region already host female comedians who perform in Arabic, women at the region's major comedy festivals in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Amman and Riyadh were still in the single digits this year. In September 2025, three women performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. There were 47 male comedians.

"Humorous plays have a long history in the Middle East and are a rich part of our culture," author Sara Hamdan told DW in an interview.

For example, Egyptian theater and films rose to fame in the 1930s, and slapstick TV shows have been cornerstones of the Arabic entertainment industry for decades.

Hamdan's love for comedy also helped her as a journalist when she moved from New York to Dubai 15 years ago. For her first article, which focused on comedy in the Middle East, she met Jamil Abu-Wardeh who had done a TED talk on comedy and how to teach writing comedy. "I ended up interviewing the man who became my husband," she recalls with a smile. The couple has been sharing their passion for comedy since.

"We go to shows on a regular basis," Hamdan said.

"There is an appetite for female comedians in the region," Syrian comedian Ola Msharaf confirmed in an interview with Grazia magazine in 2023.

However, in the same article, Egyptian comedian Reem Nabil revealed that for her, being a female comedian means constant comparison of her work to that of her male counterparts.

"The difficulty I face is that people compare us to male comedians. They pit us against each other as if we [women] are here to compete with them and prove that one is funnier than the other," she said.

"Comedy does not dismantle gender hierarchies," Manea confirms. "Women comedians are often more tightly policed than men, and certain topics remain difficult or risky to address."

In contrast with many successful international stand-up comedians, performances by both men and women in much of the Middle East tend to avoid politics, sex and profanity during formal festival lineups. Organizers are reportedly restricting what can and what can't be said ahead of events.

However, outside of official festival circuits, political comedy exists, and many Arab and Arab-diaspora comedians do address a wider range of topics.

"Over time, what feels sayable and normal has expanded," Manea points out. "Moreover, by placing women at the center of humor rather than judgment, comedic performance has helped recalibrate how women's voices, frustrations and authority are perceived in public culture."

In her view, the impact is rarely overtly political, but rather lies in visibility, repetition, and tone.

"Comedy enables women to address marriage, family pressure, work, respectability and double standards without presenting their commentary as ideological confrontation," she explains.

Laughter makes these experiences socially legible and shareable, often reaching audiences who might resist explicit feminist discourse, she finds.

Furthermore, comedians don't depend on traditional platforms like TV stations, event organizers or directors any more.

"We have the power in our hands with mobile phones," Sara Hamdan told DW.

She follows her favorite Arab comedians, Saaniya Abbas, Roxy and Mina on Instagram. They have between 5,000 and 500,000 followers each.

In 2023, the Emirati TV broadcaster OSN also aired "Stand Up! Ya Arab!", the first of its kind comedy series featuring 56 Arab comedic talents, including 17 women. It has received an outstanding 8.4 out of 10 rating on the International Movie Database (IMDb) platform.

The success of up-and-coming female comedians is likely to serve as a blueprint and role model for future generations of girls in the Middle East.

"While role models continue to emerge, structural limitations must be dismantled to ensure their success is not the exception but the norm, as the next generation of girls deserves more than inspiration," Moez Doraid, UN Women Regional Director for the Arab States, told DW.

"They deserve access to opportunities, but if current trends persist, gender parity in the Arab States will be reached in 185 years," he said, adding that "this is far too long."