Progress Amid Resistance

30 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAuniversity professors, schoolteachers, medical doctors, and laborers. Theycame together to organize petitions and demonstrate against the proposedlegislation. Under this pressure, the government retracted the 1981 draft,but on June 9, 1984, a very similar code was passed without public debate. 1The 1984 family code established the concept of an agnatic familystructure characterized by patriarchal authority. Under this code, which wasdesigned to appeal to Islamic fundamentalists by meeting a few of their basicpriorities, women were primarily recognized as guardians of kin and traditionrather than as autonomous individuals. 2 In 2005, partly under thepressure of women’s organizations, the family code was finally amended bythe government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in powersince 1999.The new code has brought a number of positive changes. It grantswomen more rights in terms of divorce and housing, reduces the role ofa woman’s male guardian to a largely symbolic status, and ensures Algerianwomen’s right to transmit citizenship to their children. However, most women’srights groups continue to regard the amended code as far too hesitantto create true gender equality.While the 2005 revision of the family code represents the most importantchange for women’s rights over the last five years, there were severalother positive developments. The Algerian constitution, amended in 2008,now officially recognizes women’s political role (Article 31 bis). Since anew article was added to the penal code (Article 341 bis) in 2004 to penalizesexual harassment, some victims have stood up and decided to file suits.Women’s security in the public space has continued to improve, and eventhough the threat of attacks by radical groups remains real, the memoryof the “Black Decade” of political and civil violence is slowly fading away.The fighting, triggered by the cancellation of democratic election resultsin 1991, had pitted Islamist groups against the FLN and caused around100,000 deaths, with terrible consequences for women’s security.However, some existing freedoms for both men and women have beenrecently challenged, including religious freedom. The ordinance 06-03,passed in February 2006, criminalized attempts by groups or individualsto convert Muslims to another religion, intimidating a number ofMuslim women who had converted to Christianity. The broader politicalconditions have also helped to obstruct progress on women’s rights. A2008 constitutional amendment suppressing presidential term limits hasfurther reduced the chances of political change, and despite the repeated