is also in the Arab world and is home to about 11.5 million people, women
have long played a major role in politics and civil society, dating to the
1950s under President Habib Bourguiba—but not all Tunisian women.
In 1981 Bourguiba, a staunch secularist, banned women and girls from
wearing the hijab in public institutions, effectively shutting out veiled
women from state schools, civil service jobs, and other public spaces.
The Tunisian revolution in 2011, the first of the Arab Spring uprisings,
unseated dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and opened the political arena
to new faces, including veiled women. The streets of the capital, Tunis,
visibly changed after his departure, with more women donning head
scarves, perhaps out of defiance as much as religious belief. I covered the
Tunisian revolution and was struck by the sudden change. It reminded me
of an old Arabic proverb that says, “That which is forbidden is desired.”
Tunisia’s Personal Status Code, enacted in 1956, was among the most
progressive in the region, banning polygamy, granting equality in divorce,
and establishing a minimum marrying age and mutual consent in mar-
riage. Abortion was legalized in 1965 for women with five or more children
and with their husband’s consent and for all women in 1973. In the decades
that followed, Tunisian women have held on to their gains, largely because
their country was spared the state-destroying wars, sanctions, and militia
violence that savaged Iraq and other countries.
Bochra Belhaj Hamida, the parliamentarian and human rights law-
yer, initially was worried about what could happen. “We women activists
feared that the revolution would take women backward, but the exact
opposite happened.” Her concerns were fueled in part because the Islamist
Ennahdha Party led Tunisia’s first post-revolution government.
“If it weren’t for the revolution, the reforms may have happened but
much slower,” she says. “They were catalyzed by the revolution and the
fear of women that they would lose their place and rights.”
The changes were swift and sweeping. In 2014 a new constitution safe-
guarded the rights detailed in the Personal Status Code and decreed that
men and women were equal. In 2017, despite strong opposition, Tunisian
women were given the right to marry outside the Muslim faith, shattering
a regionwide taboo. Previously, a new domestic violence law had been
passed, while another had ensured that mothers no longer needed a
father’s permission to travel abroad alone with their children. A “hori-
zontal and vertical gender parity” law made it mandatory for all polit-
ical parties to have an equal number of male and female candidates in
local elections. Aimed at increasing female representation, it resulted in
women winning 48 percent of municipal council seats in the 2018 elec-
tions. Women hold 79 of Tunisia’s 217 parliamentary seats, the highest
percentage (36.4) in the Arab world.
Administrative positions traditionally filled by political appointment,
like the powerful head of the Tunis Municipal Council, were opened to
elections. In the first vote last year, Souad Abderrahim was elected council
when asked about the last time she saved a girl from an early marriage.
“And the day before that there was another issue around child marriage,
so it’s still happening.”
In Tunisia, a North
African state that
SHAPING THE FUTURE 67