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ABSTRACT
Generally seen as a pawn in the identity struggle between so-called secular and Islamist political actors, the women's question in Tunisia has received little attention from a class perspective since the 2010–11 uprising. Yet, over recent years, working-class women have been highly visible during protests, strikes and sit-ins of a socio-economic nature, implicitly illustrating how class and gender grievances intersect. Against the background of the global feminisation of poverty and a changing political economy of the North African region over recent decades, this article builds on Nancy Fraser's theory of (gender) justice to understand if and how women's informal and revolutionary demands have been included in more formal politics and civil society activism in Tunisia. The article finds that disassociated struggles against patriarchy (feminism) and neoliberal capitalism (unionism) fail to efficiently represent women workers’ own aspirations in Tunisia's nascent democracy.
RÉSUMÉ
Généralement vue comme un pion dans la bataille identitaire entre les laïques et les acteurs politiques islamistes, la question des femmes en Tunisie n’a reçu que très peu d’attention d’un point de vue des classes depuis le soulèvement de 2010–11. Cependant, ces dernières années, les femmes de la classe ouvrière ont été fortement visibles pendant les manifestations, grèves et sit-ins de nature socio-économique, illustrant implicitement le croisement des plaintes de classe et de genre. Avec la féminisation globale de la pauvreté et l’économie politique changeante comme toile de fond, cet article se construit sur la théorie de la justice (de genre) de Nancy Fraser pour comprendre si/comment les demandes informelles et révolutionnaires des femmes sont inclues dans des politiques plus formelles et un activisme de la société civile en Tunisie. L’article montre que les batailles séparées contre le patriarcat (féminisme) et contre le capitalisme néolibéral (syndicalisme) échouent à représenter efficacement les aspirations propres aux femmes travailleuses dans la démocratie naissante en Tunisie.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sami Zemni and other colleagues at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies for sharing their pearls of wisdom with me during the course of this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Loes Debuysere is a post-doctoral researcher at the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (MENARG) at Ghent University, working on gender politics in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Mediterranean Politics and Middle East Law and Governance.
Notes
1 Words spoken by a shopkeeper in rural Tbourba to the author, pointing towards some older rural women labourers on the side of the road who hope to be picked up for a day's work in the fields. This comment and all subsequent quotations in the article were translated by the author.
2 In the same year, 1982, a group of Democratic Women was formed in support of Palestinian and Lebanese women after Israel's invasion of Lebanon (the ‘Democratic Women’ were a predecessor of the ATFD – the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates, which was only officially formed and legalised in 1989). This group later defended the rights of 10 protesters who were condemned to death after they took part in the Bread Riots in 1984. The Democratic Women also launched and published the feminist magazine Nissa (‘Women’), while a women's committee was formed within the Tunisian Human Rights League under the Democratic Women's pressure.
3 It was not only ATFD's agenda that was influenced and altered by the neoliberal climate. The UGTT, for example, especially its national leadership and hierarchy, collaborated more and more with Ben Ali's highly neoliberal regime, leaving the local UGTT branches to themselves to engage in more radical politics (Yousfi Citation2015, 52).
4 Words spoken by an elderly female agricultural labourer in Tbourba, in an interview with the author (20 October 2016).
5 Tbourba is an interesting case whose rural conditions have been studied by scholars (Zussman Citation1992; King Citation2003) over recent decades. Moreover, the Tbourban context is similar to other rural contexts in Grand Tunis, Northwest Tunisia and Central Tunisia. In the south of the country, however, women are still confined to the home and rarely work outdoors.
6 Before Nidaa Tounes, i.e. the party that won the 2014 elections, fell apart in late 2016, there were several ATFD feminists that belonged to this party. The party has a straightforward neoliberal agenda and is only perceived as ‘leftist’ in cultural terms, in the sense that it is a so-called ‘modernist’ and ‘secular’ party.
7 Islamist-inspired women's associations have generally focused on the harsh living conditions of rural women in their work (see e.g. Debuysere Citation2016b). They are, however, equally restricted by the agenda and funding of international (Western) actors and therefore also principally focus on political topics (e.g. encouraging rural women to vote).