Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

initiative (Brand 1998, 193). Both men saw any progress on the issue of women as the
prerogative of the state and no one else.
Meanwhile, most women’s groups have been part of the establishment or elite.
One of the oldest and most powerful women’s group, the Union Nationale des Femmes
Tunisiennes (UNFT), was owned and operated by the state, and its “monopoly on
women’s activity made it…difficult for independent women to organize anything but
study groups (Brand 1998, 225). Even those women’s groups that are independent, such
as the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), consist mostly of the
intellectual elite as opposed to a diverse array of women; thus, the average Tunisian
woman lacks formal representation. The history of women’s rights is a history of the
struggle between elite Islamists and secularists for institutional control.
There are a couple of consequences to this history. For one, in times of
transition—including the current revolution—women cannot help but become anxious
about the future of their rights because, as they were quickly and unilaterally given, so
they can be quickly and unilaterally taken away. Secular women and men are relatively
vocal about their lack of trust of Ennahdha, and rumors of Ghannouchi’s secret plans to
repeal women’s rights abound. Further, because women’s rights have always played a
central role in the debate between secular and Islamist parties, it can be expected that the
issue will continue to be a means through which each side affirms its power and appeals
to its base. In the past:
Islamic family law…is viewed as the last bastion of shari’a in the modern
Arab state…As a result, in Tunisia, when Islamist elements began to flex
their muscles, they aimed first at the CSP….[D]uring periods of
liberalization, when the Islamists enjoyed…greater freedom of expression,
issues related to women became the lightening rod in attacks against and
defenses of laicism 11 in general. This has made women the first natural
line of defense as well as the first likely victims in any challenge to the
state by the Islamists. (Brand 1998, 180-81)
11 In this case, the use of the term “laicism” is the author’s and I interpret it to mean a broader
secularism.
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