Lebanon Support launched its Gender Equity and Information Network, part of the Civil Society Knowledge Center, in 2013. The main purpose of this knowledge production and sharing initiative is to bring together civil society organizations, researchers, practitioners and experts working together to enhance the development of, and access to knowledge and evidence-based research, information and literature on gender issues and concerns. Research findings as well as roundtable discussions all seemed to converge on an important knowledge gap in gender literature in Lebanon: a reflection and knowledge production on concepts and terms related to gender in Arabic was quasi non-existent. Practitioner’s initiatives do exist, but seem to either cover specific areas of focus often limited to gender based violence, or - if conceptualized more broadly - are displayed as glossaries.

This dictionary, that we have envisioned as a practical bilingual tool based on theoretical debates and empirical findings, aims to achieve at least the following objectives: to gather, in Arabic and English, original multidisciplinary research on gender and sexuality concepts and terms, from a feminist perspective and in a user and reader friendly format. Our aim is to look at the localized usages of the terms and concepts, examining their history and the contexts in which they have emerged, and how these concepts have “traveled”, transnationally, but also between the different spheres of activism, expertise or academia.

The bilingual dictionary is constituted of 25 entries, organized in alphabetical order with their equivalent and definitions in both Arabic and English. The terms and concepts have been selected based on a series of consultations with gender academics, experts and practitioners as well as activists in Lebanon. They cover established terms and concepts along with emerging ones, in an attempt to highlight the diversity of schools of thought, of paradigms and practices.

Each entry or definition proposes a general presentation of the term, a synthetic overview of its inherent debates with a focus on its local usages and understandings. This bilingual dictionay is the result of a long and intense journey for the Lebanon Support team; we thank all experts, activists, and academics who have contributed at all stages of its inception and production and hope it contributes to creating a space and opportunity for discussions among all actors in Lebanon and the region.