Reforming the Family Code in Tunisia and Morocco – the Struggle between Religion, Globalisation and Democracy

Comparative Analysis of Educational Systems of Tunisia and Egypt and the Implications to the USA Educational System

“…Compared to Egypt, women in Tunisia have enjoyed greater equality in political, social, and economic roles after the Progressive Code of personal status introduced in 1956 was amended (Charrad, 2012;Dalmasso & Cavatorta, 2010;Grami, 2008;Coleman, 2004;Murphy, 2003). In Egypt, despite the progress in the past gender inequality exists, women social and economic roles are lacking behind and sometimes silenced (Benjamin, 2013;Littrell & Bertsch, 2013;She, 2012;Loveluck, 2012;Staudt, 2010;Yount, 2005;Shabaya & Konadu-Agyemang, 2004;Murphy, 2003;Goodwin, 2002;Al-Ali, Ali, & Nadje, 2000;Murphy, 1996).…”

Gendering the Arab Spring? Rights and (in)security of Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan women

“…After independence in 1956, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba saw women’s advancement as a part of the country’s pursuit of modernization and a quick route to economic growth (Goulding, 2011; Grami, 2008). Bourguiba’s state-promoted feminism was in this way ‘instrumental to the project of Tunisian national development that the ruling elites had in mind’ (Dalmasso and Cavatorta, 2010: 221). As a consequence, Tunisian women acquired some of the most advanced legal rights in the Arab world.…”

“…With the rise of Islamist parties and their electoral successes at the ballot boxes, the most intense hegemonic-masculinity discourses have so far emanated from these corners. The different contenders for hegemonic masculinities in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya appear at the moment very much engaged in the task of discursively marking their difference from the prior hegemonic masculinity – that is, depicting the ideologies of Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi as ‘alien’ and as ‘imported from the West’ (Dalmasso and Cavatorta, 2010). In the three countries under study here, we argue that the former emphasized woman has suffered a fate similar to that of the former hegemonic masculinity, as a part of the emergent hegemonic masculinities’ efforts to distance themselves from the old regimes.…”

“…This has invited some observers to draw pessimistic parallels between the Arab Spring and the setbacks in women’s rights in the aftermath of other regime overthrows, such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (Ebadi, 2012), the 1919 Egyptian anti-colonialist struggle or the case of the Algerian war of independence in 1962. In all these struggles against a sitting regime, women fought and died beside men, only to find that afterwards their ‘revolutionary brothers’ dismissively sent them back to the kitchens without any relevant improvements on women’s rights or conditions (Dalmasso and Cavatorta, 2010; Moghadam, 2008).…”