By: Shilan Fuad Hussain | August 3, 2026
Assemblies of Freedom: How Women’s Institutions Produce Political Agency
The revolutionary project in North and East Syria has been examined extensively through debates on democratic confederalism, feminist governance, and the politics of institutional autonomy. Yet one question remains insufficiently explored: how do women come to inhabit political subjectivity within a revolutionary project that seeks simultaneously to dismantle patriarchy and reimagine governance? This paper addresses that question through qualitative interviews with seven former members of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). Rather than examining women’s autonomous organisations as administrative mechanisms operating alongside broader governing structures, it analyses them as the institutional spaces through which women were enabled to appear as political actors. In doing so, the paper shifts attention from the administrative functions of women’s organisations to their role in enabling women to emerge as political actors. It argues that women’s councils, academies, cooperatives, and civil organisations constituted a central infrastructure of democratic life, not because they represented women, but because they enabled new forms of political becoming.
Women’s Autonomous Institutions as Spaces of Political Subject Formation
Women’s councils, academies, cooperatives, women’s houses (Mala Jin), and civil organisations occupied a central place in participants’ accounts of political life. They did more than increase women’s visibility within public institutions. They created spaces where political responsibility was shared, participation in public affairs became part of everyday life, and women assumed roles that had previously remained beyond their reach. Decisions were reached collectively, responsibilities were distributed across the organisation, and public life became a shared rather than an individual responsibility. They were not merely administrative mechanisms operating alongside broader governing structures. Rather, they functioned as sites through which gendered subjects were reconstituted and enabled to appear as political actors.
Interviewees described these autonomous organisations as spaces that disrupted inherited patriarchal norms and generated new capacities for collective action. They contrasted these experiences with the patriarchal social relations that had shaped their lives before joining the movement, where authority was concentrated within the family and public decision making remained predominantly male. Women’s autonomous institutions altered this relationship by creating opportunities to deliberate, organise, and participate in decisions affecting both local communities and the wider administration. Political subjectivity emerged through sustained participation in these organisations rather than through ideological commitment alone. These autonomous organisations constituted a central infrastructure of democratic life, not because they represented women, but because they enabled new forms of political becoming.
Decentralisation as Lived Democratic Practice
Democratic confederalism organises political authority through a decentralised system of communes, neighbourhood assemblies, and local councils that places decision-making at the community level. Rather than concentrating public authority within central state institutions, it distributes responsibility across locally organised bodies where political decisions emerge through collective deliberation. Governance is therefore embedded within local communities rather than directed from distant centres of political power. This institutional design relocates political authority from centralised administration to local communities, making participation an ordinary feature of everyday governance. Participants did not experience decentralisation simply as the transfer of authority from central institutions to local bodies. They described a transformation in the conditions through which women could speak, organise, and exercise political agency. Political participation became embedded within everyday life rather than confined to formal institutions, while public affairs were increasingly understood as a shared responsibility rooted within local communities. Decentralisation therefore redefined political responsibility by bringing governance closer to the spaces where everyday life unfolded.
Participants also described decentralisation as expanding women’s opportunities to assume public responsibilities that had previously remained inaccessible. Rather than remaining confined to the private sphere, women became increasingly involved in community discussions, local organisation, and collective decision-making. At the same time, participants recognised that these transformations remained contingent upon the continued vitality of autonomous institutions and the uneven translation of revolutionary principles into everyday practice. Decentralisation created the institutional conditions for expanded participation, but its durability depended upon the continued vitality of local institutions.
The fragility of revolutionary transformation
The findings reveal that revolutionary transformation remained unfinished and contested. Women’s autonomous organisations and decentralised governance expanded opportunities for political participation, but they did not dismantle the social relations that sustained patriarchal authority. Participants described institutional change as an ongoing process rather than a completed achievement. Revolutionary principles continued to encounter resistance in everyday life, while inherited cultural norms continued to shape family relations, community expectations, and gender roles. New institutions did not automatically transform existing social relations. Older hierarchies persisted within the private sphere even as women assumed more visible roles in public life, exposing the distance between institutional reform and everyday social change.
Institutional sustainability emerged as a persistent challenge. Participants recognised that women’s councils, academies, cooperatives, and civil organisations required continuous participation to preserve their political character. Their survival depended not simply on their formal existence but on the continual reproduction of collective practices. Armed conflict, political uncertainty, and economic hardship placed additional pressure on these institutions by reducing the resources, stability, and participation required to sustain them. Autonomous institutions could not survive through ideological commitment alone. Their durability depended upon continuous political, social, and material investment.
Institutional change and social transformation therefore did not advance at the same pace. Decentralisation created new opportunities for women to participate in public life, yet the translation of revolutionary principles into everyday practice remained uneven. Participants described political change as a continual negotiation between revolutionary ideals and everyday realities. This unevenness became particularly visible across different social contexts, where urban centres advanced more rapidly while rural and more conservative communities continued to reproduce traditional forms of social organisation. Democratic confederalism should therefore be understood not as a finished political settlement but as an ongoing process of institutional and social reproduction. Its durability depended upon the continual renewal of autonomous institutions and the everyday practices through which women sustained their political participation. Rather than presenting revolution as a single historical event, the findings suggest that political transformation remained a continuous process of negotiation, adaptation, and collective commitment.
Conclusion
Women’s autonomous organisations constituted a central infrastructure of democratic life in North and East Syria, not because they represented women, but because they transformed the conditions through which women became political actors. Democratic confederalism was experienced not simply as a constitutional or administrative model, but through the everyday institutions in which women exercised political authority, assumed collective responsibility, and participated in public life. Political participation therefore emerged not as an abstract democratic principle but as an everyday practice rooted in autonomous organisation.
The findings also demonstrate that institutional transformation alone was insufficient to secure social transformation. Revolutionary institutions expanded new possibilities for political participation, yet they continued to operate alongside inherited patriarchal norms, social resistance, and the uneven translation of revolutionary principles into everyday life. Democratic transformation therefore remained an ongoing process rather than a completed achievement, requiring the continual renewal of autonomous institutions and the collective practices through which they were sustained.
More fundamentally, this study suggests that the central question is not simply whether women participate in political institutions, but how political institutions produce political agency. Political agency did not precede democratic participation. It emerged through it. Women’s autonomous organisations did not simply incorporate women into an existing political order. They reorganised the conditions through which authority could be exercised, negotiated, and reproduced. In this sense, the assemblies examined in this study were more than administrative forums. They became assemblies of freedom because they created the institutional conditions through which freedom could be practised collectively and political agency could emerge. Their significance therefore extends beyond North and East Syria, contributing to broader debates on feminist governance, decentralised democracy, and the institutional production of political agency.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here represent those of the author and not necessarily those of the WKI