Code of Personal Status (Tunisia) - Pursuit of Reforms

Pursuit of Reforms

On August 10, 1956, Prime Minister Bourguiba devoted an entire speech to the Code which was to be promulgated three days later. He described to as a radical reform which would make marriage a "state matter, an act that must be supervised by public law and society in its entirety." Drafted by fifteen jurists, the majority Arabic speakers, under the supervision of the Justice Minister, Ahmad Mestiri, the Code was voted in the wake of independence and even before the drafting of the constitution. Assembled in twelve books, it gave to women a unique status in the Arab-Muslim world. Proclaimed on March 20, 1956, then promulgated on August 13 of the same year (Muharram 6, 1376) by Lamin Bey's beylical decree, the Code came into force on January 1, 1957. This act registered a series of reforms touching other aspects of the impact of religion on society. Thus, on May 31, public charitable foundations (wafqs) were suppressed, as private ones would be on July 1, 1957. On August 3, secular courts replaced religious courts as the high court for the application of Islamic law, while the law of September 27, 1957 closed the rabbinical court of Tunis. Their members were integrated into the body of common law magistrates.

On January 10, 1957, the wearing of the veil at school was forbidden. According to the decrees of March 29, 1956 and October 1, 1958, Zitouna University was closed as were the other madrasses, the official goal being "to progressively suppress all previous types of teaching, unadapted, hybrid or outdated." (speech delivered by Bourguiba at Tunis on October 15, 1959). However, more than this modernization concern, there existed as well the need to destabilize an importance source of political opposition based on religion.

In the years following independence, women obtained the right to work, to move, to open bank accounts and to establish businesses without the permission of their husbands being sought. July 1, 1965 saw a law allowing abortion as much for social as for therapeutic reasons. Women had been encouraged to limit the number of their children since the beginning of the 60s and the contraceptive pill was rendered freely accessible throughout the country, annulling thereby the French law that in 1920 outlawed all means of contraception. A law of March 1958 imposed civil marriage and on December 14, 1960, another law limited to four the number of children benefiting from family allowances. Bourguiba founded the Union of Tunisian Women in 1956 entrusting to it leadership in favourable publicity for his feminist policy. During a speech delivered on December 26, 1962, Bouguiba stated:

"Work contributes to the emancipation of women. By her work a woman or a girl assures her existence and becomes conscious of her dignity."

In practise, on September 14, 1965, Tunisia ratified the International Labour Organization's Convention number 111 concerning discrimination in the matter of employment and profession. Later, in 1968, ratification of the ILO's convention number 100 instituted equality of treatment in employment of men and women for work of equal value. These measures added to co-education in schools and as a consequence the entry of more and more young women into the workplace, involving the decline of marriage and of births of which the target was 46 per cent in 1966 and 30 per cent in 1971. Muhammad Baraket and Domenic Tabutin estimate that two-thirds of the reduction in births during the period 1966-1975 is the demographic consequences of these measures. In 1980, Tunisia's level of demographic growth was among the lowest in the Southern countries and is found to be the lowest of the Arab world. This rate was 2.2 children per woman in 1998 and 1.73 children in 2007. Radhia Haddad recognizes Bourguiba's merits in these transformations:

"If all countries have finished, one day or the other, in freeing themselves from foreign invaders, none, and surely no Arab Muslim country, has dared a social revolution to such an extent."