Tunisia Update

[the_future_modernes]

A Revolution of Equals

Women are very visible in Tunisian society. They mix freely with men, are highly educated and career-minded, and have enjoyed some of the most egalitarian legal rights in the Arab world, enshrined in the Personal Status Code (PSC) of 1957. The PSC was drawn up by Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first president, directly after independence from France and even before the national constitution was written. It improved women’s rights, particularly in family law, by removing some of the more patriarchal aspects of shari’a: polygamy was abolished, the consent of both parties was now required for marriage and judicial procedures for divorce were established. Bourguiba was ousted in 1987 by Ben Ali, who extended the pro-women policies. One of the most interesting aspects of the Tunisian Revolution from a feminist perspective is that many of the women who participated in the protests that brought down Ben Ali are now campaigning to defend the rights they’ve already been enjoying for some time, fearing that the post-revolutionary period might bring a surge in popularity for the Islamist party, Al Nahda (‘the Renaissance’), and a swing towards traditionalist ideas about women.

On 29 January, two independent women’s associations, together with the women’s commission of the national trade unions and the Tunisian League for Human Rights, planned a major demonstration. I went along to talk to some of them.

The demonstration began smoothly, as the women and their male supporters proceeded slowly down Habib Bourguiba Avenue, holding placards and chanting phrases in support both of the revolution and of the safeguarding of women’s rights. But this didn’t last. Quite suddenly, a rowdy group of young men appeared out of nowhere, headed directly at the procession of feminists. It looked like a counter-demonstration. Shouting and creating noisy confusion, the youths marched at the demonstrators head-on, in effect dispersing them. Jostled and almost toppling over, I lost track of the feminist group as they dissolved into the crowd. It was unclear who the invaders were and what they wanted, since they weren’t shouting coherent slogans.

Later, several well-placed sources told me that these were probably unemployed youths hired by members of the old ruling party in order to sabotage the revolution. Later, several well-placed sources told me that these were probably unemployed youths hired by members of the old ruling party in order to sabotage the revolution. But women had more than this to contend with – as I was about to find out. Behind me, angry voices were raised: a man was arguing with one of the women who had been demonstrating. He was criticizing feminists and associating them with Ben Ali’s hated wife Leila. She had been head of the Arab Women’s Organization, but like her husband, she was extremely corrupt, amassing a huge fortune and enjoying a lavish lifestyle while Tunisians suffered unemployment, low salaries and brutal political repression.

Feminism in Tunisia only began to gain widespread grassroots support in the late 1980s, partly as a result of improved education for women. Tunisia’s famously egalitarian gender policy in fact has had more to do with each government’s power struggles than with any real commitment to feminism. Following independence from France in the mid-1950s, Bourguiba prioritized women’s rights as a pragmatic policy designed to undermine his religious and traditionalist rivals. However, when he faced a threat from the left during the seventies and eighties, Bourguiba did not hesitate to make a strategic rapprochement with Islamists. When Ben Ali came to power, he aligned himself with the new, growing feminism and women’s rights advocates – and against an increasingly popular Islamic fundamentalismMORE

Tunisia: Will Democracy Be Good For Women's Rights?

Falling tyrants and rising freedoms have been a recurrent theme of the Arab Spring. Invariably, in every discussion of democratisation in the Middle East, the question of women crops up. The key conundrum: will democracy be good for women’s rights?

 

While the social and political movements gaining momentum in the Middle East and North Africa appear to be opening the door for democracy, initially progressive revolutions do not often result in sustained improvements for women’s rights. While Arab women have been crucial in the revolutions that have shattered the status quo, their role in the future development of their own countries remains unclear. In Tunisia, for example, the fear is that women will be sucked into an ideological and religious tug-of-war over their rights, reducing the complexities of democratisation into a binary secular/non-secular battle.

 

In contrast to vivifying images of flag-waving female protesters taking over Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Tahrir Square in January and February, women are barely present in the interim governments: two in Tunisia and one in Egypt. Valentine Moghadam, an expert in social change in the Middle East and North Africa, describes the first months of post-revolution Tunisia as a "democracy paradox" - a post-protest period of democratic freedom that simultaneously witnessed the disappearance of women’s representation. The lack of female voices in Tunisia’s transitional government seemed an early warning sign of such a trend of exclusion. “Unless women are visible during the negotiations,” Moghadam argues, “a nation's new sense of freedom may not be shared by all”. Many women involved with Ben Ali’s party, the Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD), were excluded from the transition processes, and massive structural impediments hindered the political mobilisation of others. In the first weeks of independence, despite the high hopes for nationwide democracy, optimism for women’s rights slipped away.MORE

 

 

via: Muslimah Media