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Introduction and overview
The role of Arab-Muslim women in public and private life is a subject that has long captivated the interest of feminist activists and scholars from the Global North (formerly the West) and South. In the 1960s and 1970s, when international governments launched development programs to support nascent economies emerging from colonial rule, the way of life of women of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) came under study. In an attempt to seek a deeper understanding of the socioeconomic processes at work, researchers were also exposed to the way of life of the individual populations that were the intended beneficiaries of such programs. In particular, the female populations in the region displayed lived experiences that differed by class, economic status, and legal rights within and across countries. The sources of these varied, country-specific lived experiences were attributed to local traditions, family law, and complex and nuanced value systems. Upon further investigation, we see that the variations can also be framed by an individual country’s past and the way in which it situated women’s lived experiences in its own history.
The purpose of our book is to examine Tunisian women’s lived experiences, as individuals and as a group, within an historical framework in order to expose, connect, and analyze the present-day actions and reactions to the challenges that contemporary Tunisian women faced and continue to face following the 2011 Revolution of Freedom and Dignity (also known as the Jasmine Revolution).1 The women of Tunisia are an especially interesting group in this regard because, as one begins to trace their role through Tunisia’s rich history, from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era, from the early years of the Nationalist Movement to independence from France in 1956 and thereafter, we come to understand how Tunisian women today have been able to imagine and occupy a prominent position in their country’s 2011 revolution and the subsequent transitional years when efforts to ensure democratic processes and goals have assumed center stage in the region.
In our presentation of the historiography of Tunisian women’s active engagement in the public arena over time, we have had to pay careful attention to the way in which we have chosen to define and name women’s activism as movements. It is this retracing of women’s history that has allowed us to bring such a clarification. Tunisian women, who earned public recognition from Antiquity through the Early Modern Era, were women who most often distinguished themselves individually for their bravery, their unexpected and innovative acts of generosity, and, in some cases, for their forward thinking during periods when men were most prominently mentioned and their deeds exalted or disparaged. During the first years of the Late Modern Era, we see a shift in focus initiated through the works of renowned male thinkers and theologians; the customary mention of a woman’s extraordinary acts gave way to a more extensive acknowledgement that women were a separate and distinctive group, a perspective that prompted extended discussion of what their role should be in Tunisian society. The notion of a Tunisian women’s movement led by women and whose members included both men and women actively pursuing women’s issues from a legal standpoint began to appear at the turn of the 20th century. So, it is important to note that history has enabled us to distinguish between different formulations of women’s activism – individual and group – over time and to distinguish women’s groups per se from what some Tunisian activists have identified as their feminist movement.
The pathway towards a vibrant Tunisian women’s rights movement gained momentum during the second half of the 20th century and signaled a conceptual transformation. By the mid-1980s, the pre-independent women’s movement eventually had become a formidable Tunisian feminist movement. Myra Marx Ferree delineates the difference between the two types of movements, explaining that a women’s movement is a form of organizing and represents a form of mobilization that may not start out as directly addressing gender relations. Rather, it can focus on “non-gender related goals, such as peace or social justice, and only later develops an interest in changing gender relations.”2 She explains that the principal goal of a feminist movement, in contrast, is not to mobilize. First and foremost, it is to identify societal constructs of female subordination and gender discrimination and certain oppressive manipulations inherent in patriarchal systems that serve to inform activism and advocate for change thereafter.
In the case of Tunisia, women’s activism developed into a loosely formed women’s movement prior to Tunisian independence through the efforts of a select group of women who founded several different women-oriented organizations – the Society of Muslim Women (1932), the Muslim Union of Tunisian Women, the Society of Muslim Women (1936), and the Union of Tunisian Women (1938). These organizations advocated for literacy projects, raised funds for the underserved population, and supported the national call for independence, which seems to match Ferree’s definitional goals of a women’s movement. Their activities and national exposure are important in the history of Tunisian women’s activism because they would eventually lay the cornerstone for future Tunisian women to enter public life at the moment of independence and be acknowledged by the State as full citizens.
Although the promulgation of a new, ground-breaking family law in 1956, the Code of Personal Status (CSP), opened the door for young Tunisian girls and women to freely enter public space as students and workers, the motivation behind the legislation has since encountered criticism from contemporary feminist scholars.3 They have argued that such social restructuring favoring women was neither representative of selfless actions by the State nor strictly enacted to benefit women. The State, which was then inherently patriarchal, sanctioned these reforms for two reasons: to promote nation building after years of colonial rule and to heighten its international reputation as a modern republic. That is, Tunisian women had simply become pawns in a much larger political game and were, in fact, staged-managed by a form of state feminism. Many beneficiaries of this State-driven, women-friendly restructuration, particularly Tunisian women who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, have disagreed with this characterization. No matter how one may perceive the motivation behind these social reforms, what these women accomplished through their newly acquired entry into public space later on is the key to unlocking the story of the Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement.
By the mid-1970s, Tunisian women began to form clubs of special interests where discussions on women’s issues became popular. By the late 1980s, several autonomous women’s organizations had formed: the Tunisian Association of Women Democrats (ATFD) and the Tunisian Women’s Association for Research and Development (AFTURD), whose respective missions echoed a feminist call to action. Each organization had undertaken the task of identifying domains where gender-specific inequalities and gender discrimination existed in Tunisian society and proceeded to advocate for appropriate and impactful institutional and structural change. Their efforts and those of individual activists to raise awareness and work towards eliminating gender discrimination at the local, regional, and national levels during this period form the basis of our positioning the Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement as a feminist movement.
While our work is not intended to argue the degree to which the Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement reflects any one feminist movement given the array of feminisms that have taken shape since the 1960s, we have been able to identify some noticeable links to and characteristics of various contemporary feminisms, specifically global, transnational, and intersectional feminisms.
Global feminism is frequently conceptualized as the means to link the “major commonalities” underpinning feminist advocacy work across the world despite cultural variations by place (geography) and differing gender priorities (domains targeted for change). The quest for equality, dignity, social justice, and human rights for all citizens has formed those abstract linkages. Most recently, the international campaigns to eradicate violence against women, promote women’s access to decent healthcare, alleviate poverty among women and families, and guarantee freedom of conscience offer concrete examples of putting such abstract linkages to work globally.
British sociologist Sylvia Walby problematizes global feminism by underscoring the impact that local and national structures and traditions can have on undermining these global campaigns because people perceive “global” goals differently.4 For some feminist scholars,5 global feminism should therefore be viewed as having less to do with trying to define a singular view of gender rights and having more to do with enabling global gender dynamics to flourish. Organizations within the United Nations, such as the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM); the World Social Forum (WSF); and the many UN-sponsored World Conferences on Women6 have all helped to locate gender dynamics and cultivate networks of activism that cut across national boundaries. These organizations have also been instrumental in positioning gender on the compass of universal human rights and social justice by introducing international conventions and declarations, most notably the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Platform, and the Millennium Goals of 2000. At the same time, these international meetings have brought women face to face with one another in discussions that were at times contentious because of differing local challenges and regional or national constraints. Nonetheless, cross-border networks have formed with women activists and women’s organizations that are facing similar challenges and are seeking to share effective strategies and solutions. This new paradigm of women’s activism has become known as transnational feminism.
Unlike global feminism, which relies on the initiatives and programs sponsored by large international organizations that construct a global repository of universally accepted gender-specific goals, transnational feminism promotes cross-border collaborations that enable local and regional women’s groups to share knowledge and exchange effective strategies on gender issues relative to their cultures and localities. In some cases, as Valentine Moghadam has pointed out,7 while these transnational networks tend to engage in local and regional mobilization, they may also work on legal and policy issues at the international level.
The Tunisian women’s rights movement has exhibited features of both global and transnational feminist activism through the years. Tunisian women have actively participated in the UN International Women’s Conferences and their many gender-focused, global campaigns. In 1991, autonomous Tunisian women’s organizations joined forces with other similar women’s organizations in Morocco and Algeria to form the Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité (Collective 95 – For Equality in the Maghreb). Having a common history, language, and civilization, the new trans-national network was able to situate its activist agenda and women-centered campaigns within a framework that addressed the shared social, economic, and political realities of their region.
In the three years following the 2011 Revolution of Freedom and Dignity, many of the earlier calls for change, which sought greater freedoms for Tunisian citizens and guarantees of gender equality, came under fire from an increasingly conservative segment of society. Even though Tunisian women had long been recognized as having a privileged status in Tunisian society compared to that of their female counterparts in other Arab-Muslim countries, Tunisian women’s rights organizations and activists feared that their freedoms would soon come under siege. Once again, Tunisian women reacted and acted by playing a very prominent role in securing a democratic transition that promised the inclusion of human rights, as well as women’s rights, in the future Constitution. Unlike the earlier feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, these activist women encompassed different sectors of the female population – old and young, rural and urban, elitist and populist. Their successful campaign is exemplified by the inclusion of the women-friendly articles of the new Constitution adopted on January 2014. Nonetheless, many feminists in Tunisia would agree that the battle is not yet over; that is, more work needs to be accomplished on behalf of Tunisian women’s rights and human rights generally. That work has already begun.
A new government and a new vision for the Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement
Today, we see the interests and actions of Tunisian women feminists targeting a broad range of issues that cross over social and political domains: sexual rights, poverty, political representation, racism, and religious choice. They recognize and advocate for nuanced interconnectedness in which gender discrimination permeates sexual rights and poverty simultaneously, as well as gender discrimination political representation and religious tolerance. This broadening focus on how gender discrimination crosses over and permeates so many other sociopolitical and socioeconomic domains also reflects that the Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement has matured further by adopting one of the newest approaches to gender analysis: intersectionality. No longer does the movement isolate gender from other societal and human characteristics such as race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality. Not only does this new approach place a greater emphasis on the complexities of social domination within society, it also helps to prevent gender issues from being overshadowed from any one dominant societal issue.8
Significance and timeliness of the subject
Why is it of particular importance to write a book about Tunisian women now? Heretofore, most books about Arab-Muslim women,9 a demographic to which Tunisian women belong, have highlighted the lives and achievements of individual women leaders or presented comparative analyses of women’s activism across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This book, in contrast, has a singular focus on Tunisian activist women who, as individuals and as a group, have proven themselves as exceptional agents of change. Through a retracing of historic milestones and achievements of Tunisian women, coupled with a thorough examination of the changing dynamics of women’s status, the book draws critical attention to the evolutionary nature of women’s rights in a region where so many women continue to seek such recognition. In turn, it serves to dismiss the more current Western perception that Arab-Muslim women lack agency to participate in their own destiny.
To date, book-length histories of Tunisian women’s movements are written in French or Arabic and may provide only limited accessibility on this topic for an English readership. Additionally, this book offers an in-depth study of important local events across time and includes field research, in the form of participant observation and personal interviews with women activists who have lived the experience. Our investigative approach, therefore, engages two research methodologies: (1) historiography (a critical examination of archival sources, both primary and secondary, pertaining to the origins of women’s activism in Tunisia); and (2) qualitative analyses of the authors’ semistructured interviews with women activists and nonactivists talking about the challenges, the milestones, and the resulting sociopolitical outcomes pre- and postrevolution. Our interdisciplinary investigation has allowed us to ground and verify our analyses and conclusions about Tunisian women’s activism by using these research tools common to sociology, history, and political science. By combining the findings gleaned from these approaches, we have been able to chronicle women’s activism and offer an explanation of Tunisian women’s important contributions to building a new government infrastructure that is seeking to support and extend women’s rights and human rig...
