Building on a review of the literature combined with ethnographic research, this chapter concentrates first on women’s participation in formal political institutions to show how they are underrepresented in decision-making and political leadership positions throughout the Middle East. In April 2019, a photograph of Alaa Salah, a Sudanese engineering and architecture student, filled the news. With a white cotton cloth wrapped around her body, she was standing on the roof of a car chanting revolutionary poems in front of a predominantly female crowd. Building on a review of the literature combined with ethnographic research, this chapter concentrates first on women’s participation in formal political institutions to show how they are underrepresented in decision-making and political leadership positions throughout the Middle East. Women’s political participation is one of the issues that best illustrate the multiple paradoxes that women in Middle Eastern countries face.