Women in Tunisia

Habib Bourguiba began instituting secular freedoms for women in 1956, such as access to higher education, the right to file for divorce, and certain job opportunities.

[citation needed][5] The Constitution of Tunisia promulgates "the principle of equality" which has been applied favorably for women within the judiciary system, enabling them to enter untraditional job sectors (for example medicine with Habiba Djilani the first female surgeon, the army and engineering) as well as open bank accounts and establish businesses.

This clause makes it difficult for women to assert their independence (and thus ability to contribute to her family's financial burden) because 'tradition' and 'custom' are often used to reinforce a woman's subservience.

[9] 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.

[10] 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.

[10] Since September 2017, Tunisian Muslim women are allowed to marry non-Muslims, that would scrap the old decree which requires the husbands to convert to Islam in order to complete an inter-faith marriage.

[18] 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,[19] as the CSP was itself declared in an authoritarian manner, since it was not debated publicly or in the Tunisian Constituent Assembly.

[20] 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).

[10] 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.

[10] 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.

[10] The president of the ATFD, the lawyer Sana Ben Achour, explained in March 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.

[21] In this context, filmmaker Moufida Tlatli — made famous by her film The Silences of the Palace (1994) — was heavily criticized[22] 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.

[23] 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.

[28] The report goes further stating that scarfed women were denied entry to the Tunis International Book Fair and at times were taken to police stations and made to sign a written commitment to stop wearing the hijab.

Tunisia's enrollment rates for girls are higher than its surrounding neighbors, including Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, and even Lebanon and Jordan.

[36] Within the MENA region, the Tunisian government offers the shortest amount of time for paid maternal leave for women (30 days).

[39] They work in all areas of business, as well as the Army, the Civil Aviation or Military and police[12] and represent 72% of pharmacists, 42% of the medical profession, 27% of judges, 31% of lawyers and 40% of university instructors.

[45] Currently many Tunisian feminists are worried that the rights they enjoyed before the revolution may disappear as the power vacuum is infiltrated with religiously zealous ex-pats returning to the country.

However, due to its foundation on Islamic thought, the party has gained the largest number of critics nationally and internationally, and specifically regarding women's rights.

Opponents of Article 227 in Tunisia criticise the "second assault on a rape survivor’s rights" that the law supports by trapping the victim in a marriage to her rapist.

[58] Frequently, fault is focused on the victim's actions to bring about the rape, thus creating a sense of responsibility for the cultural dishonour brought upon the family.

[62] The day following the Court's decision, politicians, legal experts and members of the public were involved in a protest demonstration outside the Tunisian Parliament building.

[62] In response to this political demonstration, the Tunisian Justice Minister, Ghazi Al-Jeribi, announced the Prosecutor General would file an objection to the Court's decision as Tunisia was in the process of developing changes to article 227.

[62] Amnesty International raised concern that the law contravenes Tunisia's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide particular protection for children from sexual coercion and violence.

[61] The Tunisian Ministry for Women, Family and Children also called for the order to be nullified as a violation of article 20 of the Child Protection Code aimed at safeguarding interests of a minor.

[60] However, countries such as Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Palestine and Syria currently retain provisions providing perpetrators impunity from rape prosecution.

[66] The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has appealed to Tunisian Parliament to amend article 227 since 2010, voicing concern about the impunity provided to perpetrators to allow them to benefit from their own violence.

[55] Due to the cultural stigma attached to rape in Tunisia, families may still view an arrangement of marriage as the favoured, more private solution.

[58] Therefore, some commentators on the abolition of marry-your-rapist laws in Tunisia consider there needs to be a conjunctive improvement to protective services for child victims of sexual violence in addition to the repeal of article 227.