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Women's status in Tunisia is determined by both the judicial system in Tunisia (notably in the Code of Personal Status (Tunisia), which is one of the most modern in the Arab world, and by habits and customs.

Current situation

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In regard to matters related to motherhood, Tunisia is often considered as a country open to changes coming from the modern world[1][2].

Tunisia observes several national holidays dedicated to women: International Women's Day (March 8)[3] and August 13, the anniversary date of the implementation of the Code of Personal Status (Tunisia), which has become a public holiday called National Women's Day.[4]

Reforms

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To mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the Code of Personal Status (Tunisia), president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali announced two Bills that were adopted by the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia on May 8, 2007. The first reinforces the legal housing rights of mothers having custody of children, and the second establishes a minimum age for marriage, at 18 years, for both sexes despite the fact that the actual average age at marriage had already surpassed 25 years for women and 30 years for men.[5].

UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

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As for the reservations shown by Tunisia at the signing of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979, they show that those in power have not yet decided to take the step of equality.[4] The agreement was signed on {July 24, 1980]], but with reservations, like other Muslim countries, concerning a few paragraphs of sections 15, 16 and 29 on the grounds of their contradictions with the provisions of the Code of Personal Status and the Quran.[6] · [7]

However, after the Association des femmes tunisiennes pour la recherche et le développement and the Association tunisienne des femmes démocrates (ATFD) presented a document in which they demanded the full implementation of the agreement, the Tunisian government ratified the agreement on September 20, 1985.[6].

On the occasion of the announcement on March 8, 2008 that the government would adhere to an addition protocol of the Convention, coinciding with the International Women's Day, the president of the ATFD, Khadija Cherif, described the process as "positive but insufficient" and said it would continue "to advocate for the lifting of reservations that emptied the Convention of its meaning"[7].

Statistics concerning the role of women

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Women constitute 26.6 % of the workforce of Tunisia in 2004, an increase from 20.9 % in 1989 and only 5.5 % in 1966[8].

Work

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Women working at a factory in Tunisia

They work in all areas of business, as well as the Army, the Civil Aviation or Military and police [5] and represent 72% of pharmacists, 42% of the medical profession, 27% of judges, 31% of lawyers and 40% of university instructors.[5] In addition, between 10,000 and 15,000 of them are entrepreneurs.[5]. However, unemployment affects women more than men since 16.7% of women work in private employment rather than the 12.9% rate of men as of 2004.[9]

From 1999 to 2004, job creation for women grew at a rate of 3.21 %, to produce an average of 19,800 jobs per year.[8]

Education

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Young women represent 59.5 % of students enrolled in higher education in Tunisia.[10].

In addition, the level of illiteracy for girls and women ages 10 ten years and over dropped from 96% in 1956 to 58.1% in 1984, 42.3% in 1994 then 31% in 2004 (the level among men was 14.8 % in 2004).[11] The main reason behind this change has been the number of girls enrolled in primary education: 52 female students for every 100 male students in 1965; as well as the number of female students enrolled in secondary schools: 83 female students for every 100 male students in 1989, an increase from the level of 37 in 1965.[12]

Equality

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Women represent 14.89% of the government, 27.57% (59 of 214) of the elected members of the Chamber of Deputies elected on October 25, 2009,[13], 27.06% of municipal councillors and 18% of the members of the Economic and Social Council. [5][8]

Moreover, in the absence of a law on equality (after the Tunisian revolution of 2011), the principle of parity was adopted in April 2011 for the election of the Tunisian Constituent Assembly pf 2011.[14]).

A desire for modernization or a political necessity?

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In Tunisia, the pursuit of feminist politics is all the more necessary since it is the main support to the good image of the country in Europe.[15] In effect, even though the Economic growth is not negligible, it does not stand out from other countries in North Africa such as Morocco; as well, the suppression of the free speech and the political opposition in Tunisia have long tarnished the country's reputation abroad.[4]. The status of women remains a domain in which Tunisia, while under Bourguiba as under Ben Ali, could vindicate its uniqueness.[4]

Colette Juillard-Beaudan believes that Tunisian women,

left to choose a form of democracy, "they" prefer it to be secular.[16]

And this type of propaganda bore fruit as the country enjoyed, during the reign of Bourguiba, a solid reputation of national and civil secular in a region that more often consists of military dictatorships or monarchies connected to religion,[17] as the CSP was itself declared in an authoritarian manner, since it was not been debated publicly or in the Tunisian Constituent Assembly.[18].

On February 9, 1994, a Tunisian Women's Day was organized by the Senate of France under the slogan "Une modernité assumée, la Tunisie" (in English: Tunisia: Embracing Modernity)[4]. Shortly after a debate organized in June 1997 in the European Parliament on the situation of human rights in Tunisia, Tunisians were dispatched to Strasbourg to give Europe another image of their country.[4]

A series of laudatory articles followed in the French press on the condition of women in Tunisia.[4] In October 1997, during Ben Ali's official visit to France, the Tunisian regime's defenders also cited the status of women, while ignoring the criticisms of the organizations defending human rights:

Is the Tunisian regime feminist through political necessity and to mask the democratic deficit that it seems happy to entrench, or through its modernizing conviction?[4]

In August 1994, during a conference devoted to women and the family, the Association tunisienne des femmes démocrates (ATFD) denounced the ambiguity of the forces in power and the use of religion to control the status of women in the country, criticizing foremost "the patriarchal oppression of women".[4] Moreover, women attempted to rebel against the official discourse were quickly called to order, notably through the bias of a Tunisian press rigorously controlled by the authorities.[4]. The president of the ATFD, the lawyer Sana Ben Achour, explained on March 9, 2010 that her organization was living in a

situation of being clamped down upon and strangled that means a breakdown of any possibility of dialogue with the public authorities.[19]

She denounced among other things, the "police inclosure" of the ATFD headquarters and its women's university, and the fact that the association was prevented from staging a theatre production that was supposed to mark the March 8 International Women's Day.[19] In this context, filmmaker Moufida Tlatli — made famous by her film The Silences of the Palace (1994) — was heavily criticized[20] in the Tunisian magazine Réalités for having shown her scepticism towards the supposed feminism of Islam during a television program broadcast in France in October 1994:

When I was a child, explains Moufida Tlatli, Tunisian women were called 'the colonization of the colonized.' It was in thinking about my mother (to whom The Silences of the Palace is dedicated) and the taboos that prevailed throughout her life that I wrote the screenplay (...) it was understood: behind this denunciation of the lives of her ancestors, Moufida Tlatli is in fact speaking of the present. And what this calls into question, is the silence that, still today, stifles Tunisian women.[21]

On August 13, 2003, the 47th anniversary of the enactment of the CSP, the Ligue tunisienne des droits de l'homme (in English: Tunisian League of Human Rights) declared :

We believe that total equality between men and women remains a fundamental claim.[22]

References

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  1. ^ Samir Amin, L’économie du Maghreb, éd. de Minuit, Paris, 1966
  2. ^ Ridha Boukraa, « Notes sur le planning familial et pouvoir politique au Maghreb », Revue tunisienne de sciences sociales, n°46, 1976
  3. ^ Monique Pontault [sous la dir. de], Femmes en francophonie, coll. Les Cahiers de la Francophonie, n°8, éd. L’Harmattan, Paris, 2000, p. 207 ISBN 2738487890
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Sophie Bessis, « Le féminisme institutionnel en Tunisie : Ben Ali et la question féminine », CLIO HFS, n°9/1999, 22 mai 2006
  5. ^ a b c d e Olivia Marsaud, « Cinquante ans d’indépendance féminine », Radio France internationale, August 13, 2006
  6. ^ a b Organisation des Nations unies, Traités multilatéraux déposés auprès du Secrétaire général, éd. United Nations Publications, New York, 2004, p. 246 ISBN 9212333907
  7. ^ a b « La Tunisie va adhérer au protocole additionnel de la convention de l’ONU », Agence France-Presse, 8 mars 2008
  8. ^ a b c Renforcement des acquis de la femme (50 anniversaire de l’indépendance)
  9. ^ Tunisie on the Website of the International Labour Organization
  10. ^ "« L'enseignement supérieur et la recherche scientifique en chiffres. Année universitaire 2008/2009 », éd. Bureau des études de la planification et de la programmation, Tunis, p. 4" (PDF).
  11. ^ Caractéristiques éducationnelles de la population (Institut national de la statistique)
  12. ^ Stephen Ellis, L’Afrique maintenant, éd. Karthala, Paris, 1995, p. 154 ISBN 2865376028
  13. ^ Report on the 2009 parliamentary elections (IPU)
  14. ^ Caroline Fourest, parity-tunisienne_1511532_3232.html "Gender Tunisian",the World , April 22, 2011
  15. ^ Michel Camau et Vincent Geisser, Habib Bourguiba. La trace et l’héritage, éd. Karthala, Paris, 2004, p. 108 ISBN 2845865066
  16. ^ Colette Juillard-Beaudan, « La Tunisie : le voile ou le fusil ? », Les Cahiers de l'Orient, avril-juin 2002, n°66, pp. 113-120
  17. ^ Franck Frégosi et Malika Zeghal, Religion et politique au Maghreb : les exemples tunisien et marocain, éd. Institut français de relations internationales, Paris, mars 2005, p. 7
  18. ^ Paola Gandolfi et Moncef Djaziri, Libia oggi, éd. Casa editrice il Ponte, Bologne, 2005, p. 37 ISBN 8889465026
  19. ^ a b « Tunisie : une ONG féminine dénonce des « entraves asphyxiantes » », Le Nouvel Observateur, 9 mars 2010
  20. ^ « Traînée dans la boue » selon les propos de Sophie Bessis, « Le féminisme institutionnel en Tunisie », CLIO HFS, n°9/1999, 22 mai 2006
  21. ^ Bernard Génin, Télérama, 1995
  22. ^ Françoise Lorcerie, La politisation du voile. L’affaire en France, en Europe et dans le monde arabe, éd. L’Harmattan, Paris, 2005, p. 181 ISBN 2747578879

See also

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Bibliography

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  • (in English) Mounira Charrad, "States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco" University of California Press, 2001 ISBN 978-0520225763
  • (in English) Paula Holmes-Eber, "Daughters of Tunis: Women, Family, and Networks in a Muslim City", Westview Press, 2001 ISBN 0813339443 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum
  • (in French) Sophie Bessis et Souhayr Belhassen, Femmes du Maghreb. L’enjeu, éd. Jean-Claude Lattès, Paris, 1992 ISBN 270961121X
  • (in French) Aziza Darghouth Medimegh, Droits et vécu de la femme en Tunisie, éd. L’Hermès, Lyon, 1992 ISBN 2859343393
  • (in French) Pierre-Noël Denieuil, Femmes et entreprises en Tunisie. Essai sur les cultures du travail féminin, éd. L’Harmattan, coll. Socio-anthropologie, Paris, 2005 ISBN 2747582841
  • (in French) Andrée Doré-Audibert et Sophie Bessis, Femmes de Méditerranée, éd. Karthala, Paris, 1995 ISBN 2865375978

Filmography

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  • (in French) Tunisie. Histoire de femmes, film de Feriel Ben Mahmoud, Alif Productions, Paris, 2005

Articles

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