Some people think that having food, lodging and relatively good economic conditions - which is the case with most Internet users- is the peak of human development and signals that nations are fulfilling all their duties towards their citizens. This belief influences the way many individuals exercise their right of self-expression as they simply give in to the collective outlook. Consequently, they start a chain of repression and suppression passing it on horizontally to families, circles of friends and acquaintances; and vertically to next generations. Unfortunately, the situation gets worse if this individual is a female because it entails silence in the face of unfair practices directed against her in our Arab world.

This was how "We Are All Laila" was initiated 4 years ago. It has aimed at opening a window for self-expression to female bloggers by specifying one day - a whole week this year- for discussing and writing about women's issues. Thanks to "We Are All Laila", these bloggers found some kind of psychological support that enabled them to speak up and talk about their daily problems as women. It provided a kind of protection against fear of the usual accusations of threatening the values of society or -worse- believing these accusations and feeling guilty about them. "We Are All Laila" aims at highlighting women's problems and prompting them to draw real images of their own experiences in order to open a dialogue that can lead to changing the ideas of a whole society. Therefore, "We Are All Laila" is an independent and non-profit initiative.

Since all the countries of the Arab world share the same legacy of women's issues with relative differences, the number of Arab countries participating in Laila's 4th year increased impressively. Bloggers of more than 10 countries including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have joined us. The credit of this enriching extension goes to a number of bloggers and correspondents who worked on spreading the idea and inviting people to participate. The most important result of this organizational structure was allowing a more democratic experience, which increased the potential of "We Are All Laila" as a progressive, democratic initiative .

We call upon you to fill in our survey. Our survey team has been working on it since January, and will analyze its results to measure how gender stereotypes influence the roles and choices of individuals of both sexes.

This year we are also networking with distinguished organizations such as the New Woman Foundation (Egypt) and Syrian Women Observatory. This is to extend the range of participation and exchange experience, and the door is open to new partnerships. New Woman Foundation suggested three topics this year:

1- Renewing religious and historical discourses concerning women by encouraging new interpretations of different religious texts and increasing awareness of the stereotypical images of females embedded in the historical discourses.

2- I Want a Right Not a Solution: an attempt to highlight kinds of discrimination exercised against women in order to encourage them to resist and ask for their rights.

3- Women Who We Don't Know: using blogging and other media to bring to light women role models besides underprivileged, marginalized women; choosing examples that are usually ignored by mainstream media.

The group working on this year's "We Are All Laila" consists of seven teams: the correspondents' team, the newsletter team, the media team: responsible for propagating the idea in mainstream media and recording voice interviews, the technical support team, the translation team, the survey team and the management team. All those people volunteered to help because they believe in the improvement of women's status as a main route to changing the conditions of our Arab countries....Join us