Code of Personal Status (Tunisia) - Modernist Will or Political Necessity

Modernist Will or Political Necessity

In Tunisia, the pursuit of political feminism is so very necessary as it constitutes a main argument in the country's favourable image in the West. Indeed although economic growth was not negligible, it did not match other North African countries like Morocco. The suppression of free expression and of political opposition tarnishes the country's reputation abroad. The feminine condition is an area in which Tunisia under Bourguiba, as under Ben Ali, can claim its distinctiveness. Collette Juilliard-Beaudan thinks that Tunisian women "cease to choose a democratic form, (they) prefer secularism." And this kind of propaganda succeeds in the West because the country under Bourguiba's administration profited from a solid reputation as a civil and secular republic in a region more often composed of military dictatorships and religiously dependent monarchies, although the Code itself was promulgated in an authoritarian manner, as it wasn't the object of public debate or of consideration in a constituent assembly.

On February 9, 1994, "Tunisian Women's Day" was organized by the French senate under the title "Tunisia, an Assumed Modernity." Soon after a debate held in June 1997 at the European Parliament on the situation of the rights of Tunisian women, some Tunisian women were sent to Strasbourg to give Europe another view of their country. There followed then a series of favourable articles in the French press on the situation of women in Tunisia. In October, 1997, during Ben Ali's official visit to France, defenders of the Tunisian regime produced the status of women in dismissing criticism from organizations promoting human rights.

"Is the Tunisian regime feminist from political necessity and pleaded seemingly hollowly to mask its democratic deficit, or from modernist conviction?"