ABSTRACT
Three major antithetical events have marked women's lives since the 1980s: the rise of women as a subject of study in academic institutions; the creation of women's associations; and the emergence of political parties based either on religious platforms, or espousing gender norms grounded in religion. Women as a field of study emerged before the women's movement, in the late 1970s in universities, among female students writing theses and dissertations, often chaired by male faculty members. The emergence of academic feminism and the women's movement helped to kindle interest in the rediscovery of past feminine expressions and the analysis of mounting literary voices. Working in relative isolation from academic feminist trends in other parts of the world, Algerian academic feminists have laid the foundations of their own theory to account for gender inequality and its reproduction in contemporary Algeria.
