Between Silence and Solidarity

Co-Researchers: Aseel Hamad; Baraa Al Khaled; Ghinwa Melhem; Nadia Kattoub; Ola Maatouk; Reem Daher; Rita Hanna; Zaynab Nasereldine; Suraya Al Abdallah; Yolita Malaab

This report documents the findings and analyses from a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) project conducted with a collective of twelve researchers (ten community co-researchers and two lead researchers and accompaniers) between September 2025 and July 2026, commissioned by Oxfam in Lebanon under the Power to Choose project, and funded by Global Affairs Canada. Engaging 59 women from North Lebanon and the Bekaa, aged 18 to 35, through participatory group discussions, storytelling circles, and body-mapping sessions, the research explores how restricted and unjust access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) knowledge shapes young women’s relationships with their bodies, their self-perceptions, and their intimate relationships and decision-making.

Four interconnected findings emerged from the research. First, SRHR knowledge-seeking among young women is shaped by pervasive silence, stigma, and a fragmented ecosystem of sources, where women navigate structural and material barriers to construct hybrid and often precarious pathways to knowledge. Second, patriarchal control manifests as an everyday social practice, regulating women›s bodies, mobility, and decisions, while normalizing multiple interconnected forms of gender-based violence (GBV) across the life cycle. Third, consent, pleasure, and bodily autonomy are experienced unevenly and negotiated continuously within systems of unequal power, with many women entering intimacy without the language, knowledge, or social permission to name their needs and preferences, or recognize violations. Fourth, collective knowledge production functions as feminist resistance: through storytelling, sharing experiences, and collective reflection, women actively disrupt cycles of silence and isolation, reconstruct meaning around their bodies and relationships, and begin to reclaim epistemic authority over their lives. The report concludes with a set of recommendations and priority areas addressed to healthcare stakeholders, policymakers, community actors, educators, researchers, and donors, focused on the need for coordinated structural transformation that places women’s lived experiences, bodily autonomy, and collective power at its centre.