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

Mr. Ghannouchi is equally surprised at claims that his party has reacted slowly and
ambiguously to the issue of the niqab. His comment was simply, “Ennahdha is not proniqab
and not against it…We support the right to wear whatever….The salafists have the
right to express themselves” (SAIS Group Meeting, 24 January 2012). While Mr.
Ghannouchi is attempting to assume a tolerant stance, his answers reveal an attitude
towards women’s rights that relies more on superficial indicators than on the reality of
the situation. That being said, Ghannouchi is somewhat correct in the claim that
Ennahdha has won over most women’s votes (though women, along with youth, were the
largest category of non-voters). Many of the interviewees attribute this to the fact that the
social left is out of touch with the average Tunisian woman.
While the majority of those we interviewed were most critical of Ennahdha’s
stance on women’s rights, they acknowledged that leftist parties fail to meet women’s
needs as well. Recent polls indicate that, when asked which party the respondents felt
was “closest” to them, 55% of women throughout the country chose Ennahdha. When the
data are broken down by region, Ennahdha won out in even the liberal urban centers like
Manouba (46%) and Tunis (45%), though secular parties Ettakatol, CPR and PDP
together formed a plurality, winning 48% in Manouba and 52% in Tunis (Geopoll/NDI,
January 2012). As Ms. Arfaoui stated,
The political parties don’t mention women’s rights enough. There are only
three women in government, and women are not visible in the liberal
parties….The other example is Algeria: there were so many political
parties that the Islamists won. There was the same problem as in Tunisia:
lack of cohesion and collaboration between the social democratic parties.
(SAIS Group Meeting, 23 January 2012)
Others pointed to the general inability of secular parties to connect with the common man
or woman and their appeal to only the intellectual elite. Masmoudi noted, “Tunisia is the
only place where the leftist parties are bourgeois and the conservative parties are
proletarian” (SAIS Group Meeting, 26 January 2012). Many remark that even if the
representation of Ennahdha women is not proof that the party is pro-women, it is still a
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