From the Sétif Massacre to the November insurrection

Abstract

The centre of gravity of this study lies in the French emancipation campaign from 1956 to 1962, but to understand the extent to which this was innovative or marked a break with the past requires some idea of that which preceded it. This chapter explores a number of issues: fi rst, it provides a brief background sketch of the overall social, economic and political situation of Algerian women during the postwar decade. The triple colonial oppression of women by ethnic or racial discrimination, class and gender goes far to explain why it was so diffi cult for them to become politically conscious or to engage in any kind of emancipation movement. Secondly, despite these impediments various factors contributed to the emergence of the fi rst signifi cant women's organisations in the main urban centres. Despite the marginalisation of women, the modernisation of large colonial cities like Algiers, Oran and Constantine inevitably led to the appearance of a small, but highly signifi cant strata of young, educated women, mainly students, teachers, secretaries and health workers, who were drawn into the nationalist struggle and provided the backbone of the new women's organisations. During the decade activism was inspired by the close collaboration between European women, many of them left-wing, communist or Christian militants from metropolitan France, and Algerian women. The former, who had made signifi cant political and social gains after the Liberation, including the vote, now campaigned to extend these rights to Algerian women. Thirdly, the colonial General Government 1 responded to this challenge by close police surveillance of the new women's organisations, and by careful structuring of the Algerian electoral system and 'representative' institutions so as to totally exclude Muslim women. This containment, which was symptomatic of the overall blockage of reform by settler interests intent on preserving their domination, helped drive the nationalists from a reformist towards a revolutionary solution. The failure of reform through the decade 1944-54 enables us to see how the military-led programme of emancipation after 1954, examined in