Women and Resistance in the Maghreb

Remembering Kahina

Nabil Boudraa, Joseph Ohmann Krause, Nabil Boudraa, Joseph Ohmann Krause

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000418156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies women's resistance in the three countries of the Maghreb, concentrating on two questions: First, what has been the role of women artists since the 1960s in unlocking traditions and emancipating women on their own terms? Second, why have Maghrebi women rarely been given the right to be heard since Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia gained national independence?

Honouring the artistic voices of women that have been largely eclipsed from both popular culture and political discourse in the Maghreb, the work specifically examines resistance by women since 1960s in the Maghreb through cinema, politics, and the arts. In an ancillary way, the volume addresses a wide range of questions that are specific to Maghrebi women related to upbringing, sexuality, marriage, education, representation, exclusion, and historical memory. These issues, in their broadest dimensions, opened the gates to responses in different fields in both the humanities and the social sciences. The research presents scholarship by not only leading scholars in Francophone studies, cultural history, and specialists in women studies, but also some of the most important film critics and practicing feminist advocates.

The variety of periods and disciplines in this collection allow for a coherent and general understanding of Maghrebi societies since decolonization. The volume is a key resource to students and scholars interested in women's studies, the Maghreb, and Middle East studies.

Part I

Women and political transformations in the Maghreb

1 Tunisian women transform the public sphere: cultural identity and the state

Laura Rice and Karim Hamdy

Introduction: “you are sewing, while over here we are doing embroidery!”

In describing the genesis of her 2014 art project Tarz (طَرْز – embroidery), photographer and gender activist Hela Ammar explained:

As you know, Tunisia is in the middle of a transitional process. Throughout the drafting of the constitution, arguments have raged between the elected representatives of the different parties, each one trying to assert their idea of the common good. In the midst of all these discussions, a remark from one of the deputies attracted my attention. Responding to an accusation that had been thrown at him, he replied with this metaphor: “You are sewing, while over here we are doing embroidery!” (Ammar, “The Woven Archive”)

Ammar points out that the democratic outcomes of the present moment are the result of a political process that has taken place over the longue durée. The pattern for a modern state at the time of independence in 1956 in the areas of women’s rights, education, and public health came about largely through top-down, social engineering by Bourguiba. In this effort, Bourguiba’s party ideologues invoked a number of iconic women leaders such as Phoenician Queen Dido, Berber Warrior-Queen Kahina, and others. Kahina’s resistance to Muslim invasions did not deter the ruling party (Neo-Destour, after 1964 Parti socialiste destourien [PSD]) from using her name. Bourguiba’s effort, however, was akin to sewing in comparison to the complex threads of broad citizen participation to be brought together after January 14, 2011. With the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, the floodgates of freedom were flung wide open. Every segment of society felt entitled to actively pursue freedom, employment, and national dignity (وطنية حرّية ، شغل ، كرامة). Women were no exception. Grassroots feminist activism had a serious effect on the revolutionary government of the Troika, which included the traditionalist religious Nahdha Party.

To represent the complex genealogy of women’s relationship to state formation over time, Héla Ammar’s Tarz installation (2015) features red embroidery on both contemporary images and archival ones. The Arabic word “freedom” embroidered in red on white linen in a hoop scattered with jasmine flowers commemorates the revolution. Archival photographs embroidered with red thread remind us of the past: a French colonial poster for potential settlers to Tunisia advertises “terres à vendre” (land for sale) embroidered in red; a photograph of a women’s rights march in 1962 with the banner they carry now embroidered in red. “Embroidery,” Ammar explains, in commenting on Tunisia’s post-revolutionary political and social transitions, “brings to mind time, patience – self-sacrifice, even, and precision. It is laborious work and tiresome in the long run. The result is often as valuable as it is delicate. The materials involved are high-quality and fragile and to use them requires a lot of dexterity and care” (The Woven Archive). In Saadya (2014), her related video about the longue durée, Ammar features a woman embroidering on a hoop then picking out the stitches of red thread spelling out the four Arabic words – liberty, dignity, work, and justice – while political speeches and popular slogans play in the background. In her work Gorgaf (the job of embroidery), these four national values are pierced with needles and associated with barbed wire and faded jasmine (FOTOTA). Ammar, who holds a doctorate in law, served on one of four post-revolution special commissions, the Commission to Document the Abuses and Violations (against the population between December 17, 2010 and January 14, 2011). This commission handles human rights violations during the revolution, and was the only commission with a majority. Throughout the longue durée, from the post-colonial state under Bourguiba between the 1950s and the 1980s, to the neoliberal, authoritarian state under Ben Ali from 1987 to 2011, to the post-revolutionary state of 2011, women have been actively involved in the public sphere, but both the modes of their involvement and the definition of the public sphere have varied according to the social imperatives of their times.

Since independence in 1956, Tunisian women’s emancipation and empowerment have passed through a number of stages of development, affected by several country-specific peculiarities. Although the purpose of this chapter is not to narrate a detailed history of this process, a clear outline of the stages is crucial to the understanding of women’s activism in Tunisia (up to 2020). The focus is on the post-2011 period and on the transformation of the public sphere by women using the arts, civic activism, and entrepreneurship, and the valorization of traditional knowledge. In this context, we consider the public sphere as extending far beyond women’s participation in formal politics or the labor force to include their visibility in public spaces, their participation in voluntary associations, and their centrality to traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) linked intimately with the understandings of what it means to be Tunisian.

Bourguiba (1956–1987): state feminism

Before 2011, the condition of women in Tunisia went through two phases – the state-building phase spearheaded by the founding president Bourguiba, then a hardened autocratic phase after the Ben Ali coup of November 1987. The main peculiarity that stands out in this process is the foresight and charisma of Sorbonne-educated Bourguiba. With clever negotiating skills and persistent lobbying, he succeeded, step by step, in rallying a great number of religious scholars, the Ulema, to his call for the emancipation of women and the institution of public health policies that included gradually expanding planned parenthood options starting in the mid-1960s (Hamdy and Rice 2018, 343, 345). Most historians credit Bourguiba for the approval of the Code for Personal Status (CPS), Tunisia’s Equal Rights Amendment, in August 1956. These rights were promulgated before the declaration of the republic in 1957 and before the drafting and approval of the constitution in 1959. He was careful to ensure buy-in from key Tunisian power sectors and to avoid pitfalls that could undermine his effort to create a modern state. For example, his stepwise method included having the CPS promulgated as a Beylical decree on August 13, 1956, before he took office as president of the new republic. Bourguiba also omitted equality of inheritance in the 1956 CPS Law. This omission was both a form of concession to reluctant religious leaders and an astute reading of what society could “take,” a society impoverished and left illiterate by colonial policies. Bourguiba’s characterization of the veil is evidence of his savvy gradualism. In 1929, he spoke against unveiling, claiming the veil protected “Tunisian Selfhood,” but after independence in 1956, he condemned the veil as ce misérable chiffon, “this miserable rag” (Vince 2018, 212). The 1956 CPS granting women expanded rights in the areas of marriage, divorce, and custody succeeded because the state under Bourguiba was strong enough to enforce a new pattern: “the purpose was to reshuffle society, organize a modern state, and create a new form of citizenship in which Tunisians would be loyal to the state, rather than to their extended family, kin group, clan, or tribe” (Charrad 2016, 356–57). In order to centralize power, Bourguiba undermined traditional social networks in the rebellious south and center, a long-term disenfranchisement that would periodically give rise to revolts against economic deprivation and political repression. Another special circumstance that helped the CPS and the larger effort at modernization was the relative homogeneity of Tunisian society – ethnic, religious, and otherwise – as well as the great capital of popular acceptance, accumulated by the nationalist movement that transformed itself into the dominant governing party at independence. All these circumstances made the top-down process of women’s empowerment possible, a process often referred to as state-sponsored feminism.

In the 1967 film, Bahia ou … ces femmes de Tunisie (Bahia or … These Women of Tunisia), French filmmaker Eliane Victor opens with archival footage of Bourguiba celebrating National Women’s Day on August 13, 1966. The iconography of the film displays the contours of Bourguiba’s state feminism. With women ululating in the background, we see him first in the countryside surrounded by peasant women wearing traditional houlis (pieces of cloth held by shoulder broaches), headscarves, and sefsaris (white pieces of cloth used as an overall covering). Bourguiba, welcomed as a paternal figure, is kissed on the cheeks by women old and young; he kisses babies, pats cheeks, and begins unveiling women by lifting off their sefsaris. Underneath the sefsaris, some of the women are wearing traditional dresses, and others are wearing sleeveless sheath dresses. Most are hesitant to allow the lifting of the sefsaris, but all end up acquiescing out of respect for their beloved leader. Later that same day, with women chanting and clapping in the background, we see Bourguiba and his wife Wassila arriving at the palace and welcoming the women of the state-sponsored National Union of Tunisian Women (UNFT in French) to a celebration of Women’s Day in Carthage. The women are dressed to the nines in fancy sleeveless sheath dresses. Bourguiba shakes the hands of the women, pinches the chin of an especially beautiful young one, and then blows kisses to the crowd of ululating women, waving them on, clasping his sunglasses, and a meshmoum (jasmine bouquet symbolic of Tunisia). Part of the palace celebration also includes young women on display dressed in fancy traditional costumes, headdresses, and jewelry associated with wedding ceremonies. This scene cuts to a shot of women in sefsaris in a classroom, watching Bourguiba on TV speaking to them about their rights and their roles as citizens (Victor).

UNFT, founded by women militants of PSD who had expressed publicly their opposition to repressive French colonial policy as early as the 1930s (Vince 210), included women from powerful families such as Saida and Chedlia Bouzgarrou (Bourguiba’s nieces), Fethia Mzali, Radhia Haddad, Safia Farhat, and Wassila Ben Ammar (Bourguiba’s wife). These women represented the cosmopolitan, professional elite associated with the new nation. However, Bourguiba’s gradualism was also in evidence in the way he wanted UNFT to help Tunisian women modernize. Working outside the home should not lead to family neglect. Women’s rights should not, as Radhia Haddad, the president of UNFT saw it, bring disruption into the nuclear home: a modern “Muslim woman,” a modern “Tunisian woman” is a “nationalist subject,” who is “responsible” rather than “liberated.” Rejecting “the Western model” of female emancipation, Haddad observes that “the modern woman who wakes up after midday after the tumultuous evenings she spent in salons, joking, smoking cigarettes, and playing cards to kill boredom” has no place “in our country.” Similarly, the modern “Tunisian woman” must discard the “backward religious practices” such as visiting saints and keep only the norms of Islamic “morality” and “rationality” (Zayzafoon 124). In state feminism, women citizens occupied an ambivalent position between authenticity (the symbol of the nation) and modernity (the subject of the state).

As a government-organized nongovernmental organization (GONGO), UNFT enjoyed government financial support between 1956 and 2011. With offices on the government square in Tunis, UNFT had an outreach that included 28 regional delegations devoted to the economic and social integration of women into the modern state. In “Les Missions des Femmes,” a speech delivered in Tunis on December 26, 1962, Bourguiba explained that UNFT’s purpose was to help the women of the masses know what their new rights were, how they should be exercised, and what limits they should not trespass (Zayzafoon 123).

Bourguiba appreciated the extraordinary talents of women such as Dr. Tewhida Ben Sheikh, the first Arab woman physician in the modern era, who was the éminence grise behind family planning in Tunisia, and artist Safia Farhat, the only woman in the “Tunis School” art movement. An expert in the fine arts and an innovative modernizer of ceramic and woven arts, Farhat was a professor and later director of the National School of Fine Arts (Institut Technique d’Art, d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Tunis) as well as serving on the board of the National Office of Artisanat [Office National de l’Artisanat Tunisien (ONAT)], where she participated in projects aimed at transforming the arts and education such that they “dovetailed into the ideologies of social engineering implemented by President Habib Bourguiba” (Gerschultz 31):

As director of the Beaux-Arts, Farhat fused the new emphasis on women’s education and literacy with governmental ambitions to propel the economy through growth in the industrial, artisanal, and tourist sectors. It is into these various sectors that art students were channeled according to their social standing and level of educational attainment. For example, more affluent, literate young women attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and were trained to become fine artists, designers, teachers, and arts administrators … .

At the same time, poorer, illiterate women (who were past conventional primary school age in 1958) were conscripted for adult literacy classes and other professionalization workshops sponsored by UNFT. In addition, many were solicited for artistic training in the workshops of ONAT. These women were classified ...