A seductive narrative continues to circulate in geopolitical circles—often echoed by Western observers—claiming that the Assad regime, despite its brutality, acted as a crucial “bulwark of secularism” in the Middle East. According to this view, without the Assads, Syria would have inevitably collapsed into religious fundamentalism. Yet once historical data and the country’s sociopolitical mechanics are brought into focus, this narrative collapses. The widespread conservatism that shaped Syria in the 2000s was not a counter-reaction to the regime; it was, in measurable ways, the product of the regime’s own strategy for survival.

To grasp the full extent of the regression, it is essential to recall Syria’s historical baseline. Pre-Assad Syria (1930s–1970s) saw a clear trajectory toward greater female independence. This progress was not merely surface-level; it was political, social, and professional. Women gained the right to vote in 1949 (implemented in 1953), placing Syria ahead of several Western states, and began entering parliament soon after, with one woman elected in 1960.

ducation fueled this transformation: women entered prestigious fields such as Medicine and Law and played active roles in a vibrant, independent civil society. Unlike the state-controlled structures that would later dominate, organizations during this period advocated forcefully for concrete reforms, including equal pay and legal protections. These women were not symbolic tokens; they were voters, lawyers, doctors, and independent political organizers. It was this upward trajectory that the Assad regime later disrupted and contained.

The crucial slowdown began under Hafez al-Assad (1970–2000). After seizing power, Hafez systematically dismantled independent civil society and political opposition. While projecting an image of secular modernity through state institutions, his regime ensured that any form of autonomous female political agency—unions, activist groups, or advocacy networks—was either absorbed or crushed. He froze the 1953 Personal Status Law and established the repressive legal and institutional groundwork that would define the decades to come, ensuring that social advancement and secularization could only be granted from above, never demanded from below.

His son, Bashar al-Assad, inherited and extended this logic. Although the regime marketed the 2000s as a period of reform and openness, the economic reality for women revealed deep structural failure. World Bank data shows that female labor force participation in 2010 stood at a staggering 13% to 15%—one of the lowest rates globally, and significantly below an already low MENA average. Even during a decade of supposed reform, this number did not improve; it stagnated or declined. A state claiming to champion women’s rights had engineered an economy in which 85% of women were effectively excluded from the formal workforce. Many were working, but without pay, legal recognition, or protection. The regression was not only visible—it was severe.

This abandonment was not incidental. It was the outcome of a calculated political strategy. After crushing the resistance movement in the late 1970s and the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982, the regime concluded that securing long-term power required neutralizing all potential sources of opposition—including the highly educated, secular-leaning female population. The regime did not reluctantly concede influence to conservative forces; it deliberately instrumentalized religious patriarchy as part of its survival architecture. It selectively empowered the most corrupt and patriarchal elements within the religious establishment, rewarding them for promoting political obedience and discouraging independent mobilization. More progressive religious scholars and feminist activists were sidelined or silenced, reinforcing norms that kept women legally subordinate, socially restrained, and politically immobilized.

The statistics on religious infrastructure further dismantle the regime’s “secular” branding. In 1970, when Hafez al-Assad came to power, Syria had roughly 10,000 religious institutions. By the late 2000s, under Bashar’s supposedly secular leadership, that number had surged to nearly 30,000. The state also established the Ma‘āhid al-Assad (Assad Institutes) for Quranic memorization, which by 2006 were educating 75,000 students and promoting a socially conservative—but politically passive—religiosity. To reshape the religious landscape even further, Bashar al-Assad introduced Twelver Shia Islam into public school curricula in 2014, part of a broader “Shiification” project before and during the war, which produced at least 70 new Shia religious and cultural centers across the country.

The legal sphere tells a similar story. For decades, the regime upheld Article 548 of the Penal Code, granting men “mitigating circumstances” for killing a female relative for “illegitimate sexual acts.” Article 548 was halted and repealed through amendments only in 2011 following significant activism. In effect, the regime sanctioned femicide to maintain its alliances with a select group of power brokers for 60 years. Equally revealing was its embrace of the Qubaysiat in the 2000s—an influential, conservative female religious movement permitted to operate openly and expand its reach precisely because its leaders preached absolute loyalty to Assad. By controlling private schools and influencing thousands of educated, middle-class women, the Qubaysiat helped neutralize a powerful demographic (Syrian women) that would hav become a force for independent political organization and reform.

The myth that the Assad regime was ever a feminist or secular project must be put to rest. It was a repressive, survival-driven system that weaponized social regression for political control. Women’s rights were never a principle to be protected; they were a threat to be neutralized. By deliberately empowering patriarchal actors and suppressing independent female agency, the regime produced a Syria that was legally more regressive, socially more conservative, and economically less accessible to women than the country that existed before the Assads came to power.

The road for Syrians, women and men, is long and arduous, yet their strength and resilience are truly equal to the challenge.

By Line Khatib