African region under consideration; however, thanks
to mass education and access to wage labor, women
(either as active agents or as agents unconsciously
drawn into this overwhelming current) contributed
to the erosion of the traditional cultural definition
that they were only relational beings. All three
countries adopted an open and free-of-charge
schooling system, a democratic institution par ex-
cellence, that offered the same education to girls
and boys alike. Although the number of illiterate
women is still relatively high in all three countries,
especially in rural, southern, or mountainous areas,
an important number of women who studied in
schools, universities, and institutes were able to
change the professional profile of their countries
and, therefore, be defined by their professions and
their individual achievements. Though this route of
education was first paved, and often appropriated,
by elite urban women, women of migrant origin or
of “lower” social status were later able to reap the
benefits of education. This effect is seen especially
in the case of Algeria during its heyday of socialism
and state services.
A notably more important number of women
have had access to wage labor which has turned
them into productive agents within their immediate
environments. By contributing to and benefiting
from this market economy, women today are able
to accumulate and consume goods, activities that
have ostensibly altered their ascribed status as pri-
marily consumers (though they were always also
producers, but in ways society considered natural).
The values and characteristics attributed to women
have therefore changed. When entering into mari-
tal alliances, for instance, in all three urban cultures
attention was given not only to the women’s
cultural capital but also to their financial con-
tributions and the commodities they were able
to harness.
Although women’s rank and standings have
changed from a relational and largely passive role
definition to a more active model in economic and
sociopolitical terms, such a transformation does
north africa 751not mean that the entire structure of cultural mean-
ing has changed. This quasi-autonomy of women,
the spread of consumer culture, and the more
recent revisions of family laws (in Morocco and
those proposed for Algeria) have had the ill-fated
effect of whetting the conservative, if not rigid,
societal patterns that embrace the idea of male
supremacy under the pretense of religious authen-
ticity. What started as a political contestation by
the Islamist movement during the early 1980s in
North Africa has practically permeated all social
segments and realities. Women’s access to public
space, to salaried labor, and to political representa-
tion, all of which were instrumental in opening a
new era for women in the aftermath of independ-
ence, are nowadays in dispute.
As often illustrated in the case of Tunisia, where
women have more legal rights even while they are
socially and culturally disfavored, the same pattern
of two divergent perspectives prevails in North
Africa: that is, a discursive and official one that
sees women’s contribution to society as a motor
of development and equity, and a more reality-
oriented view that is increasingly pulled toward a
conservative trend that imprisons women in their
biological role. This reigning mentality, which the
women themselves uphold, and the effects of
the immediate history of women’s contribution to
the public space, reflect the beleaguered values that
define North African social spaces today.Bibliography
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postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Berkeley
2001.
J. Clancy-Smith (ed.), North Africa, Islam and the Medi-
terranean world. From the Almoravids to the Algerian
war, Portland, Oreg. 2001.
S. Ferchiou (ed.), Hasab wa nasab. Parenté, alliance et
patrimoine en Tunisie, pref. F. Héritier-Augé, Paris
1992.
P. Knauss, The persistence of patriarchy. Class, gender,
ideology in twentieth-century Algeria, New York 1987.
V. Maher, Women and property in Morocco, New York
1974.Jamila Bargach