Code of Personal Status in Tunisia
The Code of Personal Status (CPS) (Arabic: مجلة الأحوال الشخصية) is a series of progressive Tunisian laws aiming at the institution of equality between women and men in a number of areas.
It seems to affirm a distinctiveness which it has followed since the beylical period which, "on the eve of the institution of the French protectorate was going to engage in a process of reforms establishing its connection to society in a modern national perspective."
Fifteen years later, Abdelaziz Thaalbi, Cesar Ben Attar and Haydi Sabai published "The Koran's Liberal Spirit" which urges the education of girls and the removal of the veil.
In the same period Shayk Mohamed Fadhel Ben Achour, who was mufti of Tunisia and rector of the University of Ez-Zitouna, issued a fatwa, result of a personal ijtihad.
In 1947, Muhammad Abdu'l Aziz Jait, former justice minister who was later opposed to the Code and author of a majallah codifying personal status and estate law, undertook an initial and timid effort to harmonize the doctrines of the Maliki and the Hanafi, majority in Tunisia, that ultimately had no result.
Polygamy, although rather marginal in the period, is likewise forbidden, even if the second union is not "formal:" "Whosoever being engaged in the bonds of matrimony shall contract another before the dissolution of the preceding shall be liable to a year's imprisonment and to a fine."
The Code also prescribes that: "Each of the two spouses must treat the partner with kindness, live in good rapport and avoid all prejudice," thus abolishing the wife's obligation of obedience to her husband.
Taking the lead in Tunisia's modernization campaign, Habib Bourguiba in each of his speeches found occasion to criticize sexist attitudes, opposing the hijab and appealing to science on the issue of virginity at marriage.
In several of his speeches, memory of her returned and the exhaustion born of the double function of the spouse and the mother contributed to his denunciation of the feminine condition in traditional Tunisian society.
Although his declaration can be considered sincere—other expositions indeed demonstrate a certain hostility to the period's domestic tradition—it is to be recalled that his mother's memory played no fundamental role in his political positions concerning the feminine condition during the French protectorate.
According to the decrees of March 29, 1956 and October 1, 1958, Zitouna University was closed as were the other madrasahs, the official goal being "to progressively suppress all previous types of teaching, unadapted, hybrid or outdated."
In the years following independence, women obtained the right to work, to move, to open bank accounts and to establish businesses without the permission of their husbands being sought.
In this context, presidential feminism remains ambiguous, as is illustrated by the speech delivered during the UNFT's third congress, held between December 20–29, 1962, in which he declared that he had to protect the family and guarantee to man the faculty of being its head.
This absence of new reforms can be explained in different ways: the deterioration of the president's health, the delayed reaction of conservatives remaining reserved in the course of preceding decades and the resistance of society shaken to its foundations.
At the same time, power desired the destabilization of the Marxist left and encouraged the founding of the Association for the Preservation of the Koran in January 1968 which contributed to the birth of the Islamist party Ennahda.
At the end of 1987, Zine el Abidine inherited a society shared between conservatives, who urged modification of the Code in a regressive sense, and modernists who wished its continuance to symbolize Tunisia's anchorage in modernity.
Women were then called upon to characterize this change: official receptions have been mixed since 1992 and ministers and senior civil servants were encouraged to attend accompanied by their spouses.
the new First Lady, Leïla Ben Ali, made more and more public appearances, and, as a spokesperson for her husband, gave regular speeches on the role of women in the country.
The reference to Islam, become almost ritual, even if there was also added the memory of the ancient Carthaginian past of the country in insisting on its cultural diversity, becomes more subdued by referring to speeches given between 1987 and 1989. returning to this speech, three major ideas dominate: praise of achieved and irreversible modernity, recognition of known societal advances, such as the passing of the extended family for the nuclear family, and the necessity to put into practice the advances in legal texts.
93-74 of July 12, 1993 modified the Code giving wives the right to transfer her patrimony and nationality to children to the same extent as husbands, even if she was married to a foreigner, on the sole condition that the father has given his approval.
Later, a second series of provisions reinforced the protection of women in regard to men in repressing spousal violence more rigorously and in instituting alimony payments and in enforcing this from divorced husbands seeking to shirk this responsibility.
And this kind of propaganda succeeds in the West because the country under Bourguiba's administration profited from a solid reputation as a civil and secular republic in a region more often composed of military dictatorships and religiously dependent monarchies, although the Code itself was promulgated in an authoritarian manner, as it wasn't the object of public debate or of consideration in a constituent assembly.
In October, 1997, during Ben Ali's official visit to France, defenders of the Tunisian regime produced the status of women in dismissing criticism from organizations promoting human rights.
However, in perusing "the ways and means of permitting the promotion and strengthening the achievements of women without altering our Arab Muslim identity," Ben Ali on August 13, 1993, fixed the limits he considered impassable: The Tunisian minister in charge of women and the family on February 9, 1994, affirmed for her part in the French senate and taking some liberties with history: "When Bourguiba promulgated the Code, he did so in the name of Sharia and Islam."
He managed not to attack equality of the sexes concerning inheritance directly, the Code continuing to consider man the head of the family and expressing the fact that spouses must fulfil their conjugal duties "conforming to usage and custom" which were systematically to the advantage of the masculine interests.
On September 14, thirteen members of the higher court published a fatwa, in which they affirmed that the Code contained elements judged opposed to the Koran, to the Sunna and to the Ijma.
This forced the religious authorities likewise to interpret the Koran in a way that accepted the fact that women could receive an education and participate in the social life of the country.
The issue of virginity at marriage and the influence of religious preachers castigating on Middle Eastern television networks the Western way of life played an important role in this debate.
The hijab, little in use, made its appearance in the 2000s as a return to a mythical Arab Islamic authenticity, the influence of foreign television networks and the context following the attacks on September 11, 2001 could constitute a complementary explanation.
The Code formed the theme of an Arabic language documentary "Fatma 75" (1975) by Salma Baccar and produced by the anonymous Tunisian Society for the Production and Distribution of Films.
