quote Zakya Daoud. In Morocco, the rapid degra-
dation of the relationship between the monarchy
and the political parties born out of the national
movement meant that the demands for female par-
ticipation were relegated to the back burner, and
the initiative by women militants to have those
demands integrated into the platform of the parties
they belonged to was deliberately stalled in the
name of partisan discipline. As for Tunisia, which
had the most advanced legal status for womenuntil
the revision of the Moroccan Mudawwana in
October 2003, it is without a doubt the country in
the Maghrib where the political participation of
women is most problematic, as if the “state-backed
feminism” instituted by President Bourguiba’s
regime had rendered ineffective or neutralized the
purely political dimension of women’s participa-
tion in the public sphere – that participation being
strictly regimented by the Union nationale des
femmes tunisiennes, whose mission is blurred with
that of the ministries in charge of social affairs. In
the early 1990s, Zinelabidine Ben Ali, Bourguiba’s
successor, sought to remobilize women and ask for
their support in his repression of Islamist move-
ments, only to realize that there were only 7 female
members of parliament, that women accounted for
only 11 of the 200 members of the RCD (Rassem-
blement constitutionnel démocratique, the new
name for the PSD), and above all that women’s –
not to mention feminist – magazines had all ceased
to exist and that all major newspapers had elimi-
nated their women’s sections. Additionally, it must
be noted that in all three countries, the political
socialization of the feminine vanguard, largely left-
ist in the 1960s and 1970s, and Islamist since the
beginning of the 1980s, contributed to the exacer-
bation of the political marginalization of those mil-
itants, both as women and as sympathizers of
political movements that were the constant targets
of state repression.
A crucial point to be made here is that the politi-
cal formula – single party system, as in Tunisia until
1981 or Algeria until 1989, or multiparty system,
as in Morocco – does not seem to have any signifi-
cant influence on the capacity of women to make
their presence felt on the political scene, except per-
haps in Algeria where, starting in 1989, the prolif-
eration of political parties came with an increase in
the number of women in positions of leadership
within those parties: 5 women out of 30 members
in the political bureau of the Front des forces socia-
listes (FFS); 10 women among the 42 founding
members of the Parti de l’avant-garde socialiste
(PAGS); 4 women out of 18 members in the exe-
cutive bureau of the Rassemblement pour la culture558 political parties and participation
et le développement (RCD); and, with Louisa
Hanoune as the secretary general of the Parti des
travailleurs, the only women head of a political
party in the Arab world. However, what this
activism by female militants has shown first and
foremost is the limited ability of those organiza-
tions to mobilize women, especially when one com-
pares it with the mobilizing power of the Front
islamique du salut (FIS), which claimed a million
women as members – of a total of three million
members – at the time of the legislative elections of
December 1991. Moreover, in Algeria as well as in
Tunisia, women’s rights militants, for whom the
state party (the RCD in both cases) is the only vehi-
cle for political participation, run the risk of being
perceived as condoning the repressive actions of the
two regimes, particularly against Islamist move-
ments, and agreeing with the premise that advances
in women’s rights might have to be secured to the
detriment of human rights. In Morocco, where it
was not until 1993 that two women became mem-
bers of parliament, and until 1998 that a woman
was appointed to the position of “minister dele-
gate,” the election of 35 women in parliament in the
fall of 2002, following the implementation of a gen-
der-based quota system, could primarily be attrib-
uted to the king’s will – not to the political parties’
activism or to women’s abilities to have those par-
ties endorse their call for greater female participa-
tion in politics.
Looking past the difficulties and obstacles women
have to face before they can accede to positions of
power within political organizations, be elected as
members of parliament, or become ministers, the
most insidious form of political marginalization
for women continues to be their confinement to
women’s issues. While no one will dispute the value
of having women voice their own concerns and
defend their own interests, a female exclusivity on
female matters is no more justified than the exclusion
of equally competent women from consideration
for “general interest” positions of authority, as is al-
most systematically the case in Algeria and Morocco.
In that regard, with three women serving respec-
tively as minister for employment and professional
training, minister for the promotion of women and
families, and vice-president of the National Assem-
bly; and with women accounting for 21.6 percent
of all municipal councils’ membership, 24 percent
of magistrate positions, and 13 percent of the seats
in the Conseil supérieur de la magistrature, Tunisia
remains an exception in the Maghrib.Translation from the French by Matthieu Dalle,
University of Louisville