Tunisia after the Uprising: Islamist and Secular Quests for Women's Rights

Abstract

In the wake of the popular uprising in Tunisia, secular women's rights activists and Islamists have to come to terms with past privileges and injustices. Despite individual persecution, secular groups generally benefited from state support for women's rights, while most Islamists were jailed, went underground or were in exile abroad for decades. This paper is based on personal interviews conducted in the summer of 2011 with representatives of various women's and human rights organizations and Islamists from the An-Nahda party. As post-revolution events are still unfolding, the paper offers insights into the current state of gender discourse.

Notes

¹ Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë – born in Tunisia – inaugurated a Mohammed Bouazizi square in the 14th arrondissement of the French capital in the presence of the young man's mother.

² The term popular uprising best describes the events in Tunisia as it was strictly speaking not a revolution in that the people who overthrew the government are not the ones to hold power today. Most Tunisian do not like the term ‘Jasmine revolution’ as they feel this does not adequately describe their quest for dignity and democracy.

³ The Personal Status was amended several times in the 1990s to include more rights for women.

⁴ As he has done occasionally in the past, Abdel Fatah Mourou has again separated officially from Nahda and started his own group, Al Aman.

⁵ Article 1 of the Constitution reads: “Tunisia is a free, independent and sovereign state. Its religion is Islam, its language is Arabic and its type of government is the Republic.”

⁶ Interview in Tunisian weekly journal Réalités, No. 1311, 10–16 February 2011, p. 12. Title: La stratégie des Islamistes' (The strategy of Islamists). Translation by author.

⁷ Jeune Afrique, No. 2625, 1–7 May 2011, p 46 . Title: ‘Nous ne prétendons pas detenir la vérité’ (We do not pretend to hold the truth). Translation from French by author.

⁸ Recounting prison- and prison-related circumstances to a foreign researcher was still uncomfortable and required a leap of trust in the summer of 2011 when such accounts only began to emerge. Only names of women who explicitly agreed to have their identities made public are be mentioned, in all other cases a common first name will be used. The identities of all women are known to the author and their stories have been verified to the extent that this was possible in the still somewhat chaotic aftermath of the uprising.

⁹ According to the World Bank Country Reports, Tunisia's literacy rate stands at 78 per cent compared to Morocco's 58 per cent and Algeria 73 per cent.

¹⁰ Though prostitution is illegal in Tunisia, authorities generally turn a blind eye to brothels.

¹¹ As in other Muslim-majority countries, Tunisian women who are victims of rape often face the double jeopardy of being subsequently rejected by their husbands and families.

¹² According to ancient Greek and Roman sources, Dido is the founder and first Queen Carthage (today a suburb of Tunis). She is best known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid. Dido is also known as Elissa.