ABSTRACT
In Tunisia, as elsewhere in the Islamic Middle East, women’s rights have been grounded primarily in family law. These laws have undergone dramatic reform, and even reversal, during key periods of Tunisian history. In 1929, the prominent nationalist leader Habib Bourguiba urged Tunisian women to wear a veil. In 1957, Bourguiba, then President of Tunisia, called the veil “an odious rag” and asked Tunisian women to drop it. His government also promulgated radical family-law reforms that abolished some extreme aspects of women’s subordination and promoted new legal rights for women. The Tunisian government throughout the 1970s and 1980s, however, retrenched on gender issues by reminding women that their proper place was in the home. In still another shift, in 1993, a new government promulgated laws that expanded women’s rights in family matters beyond those of the 1950s. Thus, the Tunisian political leadership since around 1930 has fluctuated between promoting policies expanding women’s rights and others emphasizing a more “traditional” ideal of gender roles in the family.
