In the Middle East: after the revolution, is the new boss the same as the old boss?

Lara Logan "moments before she was assaulted in Tahrir Square."

In considering what the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East might mean for women’s rights, Huffington Post blogger,  Dr. Peggy  Drexler, asks: “Is the new boss the same as the old boss?”

Just a little reminder: it was in Egypt’s Tahrir Square that CBS reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted by male rebels exulting in their new found freedom.

Drexler continues:

As protest rolls through the public squares of the Middle East one of more unusual sights is women standing shoulder to shoulder with men, risking their freedom and their lives.

They were there from Tunisia to Egypt to Iran to Libya. Said Egyptian author and activist Nawal El Saadaw of her days making history in Tahrir Square: "I felt for the first time that women were equal to men."

Somewhere between hope and belief, this season of freedom could also be a new day for the Middle East's women. There are good arguments that the revolutions would have never happened without women -- they were the slogan makers, the march organizers, the activists.

Revolutions, however, are unpredictable by nature -- especially when they collide with centuries of misogyny in a country that ranks 125th in the World Economic Forum's global gender gap rankings, where large majorities of women report being harassed and molested, where genital mutilation is still common, and where not one woman was named to the committee that is reforming the constitution. 

Will the women who risked all to bring down a government find that all they got for their bravery and sacrifice was a shuffling of oppressors? 

The early signs are not encouraging. 

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