ABSTRACT
For women, this meant that their male relatives, significant agents in protecting their matrimonial interests, were socially less reliable since they had shaken loose the bonds that tied them to their women and menfolk. Theoretically, this should have meant a greater "freedom" for women in relation to men. But the colonial framework within which these structural changes took place resulted in another apparent paradox. Women were compeHed to fight male relatives who violated their property rights , and the colonial legal order that changed property laws. Furthermore, the new French property laws reactivated the property rights given women under the shari'a, but generaHy left it to male relatives to manage. Women became "free ~ to fight to keep their right to property. At a time when men often fought for the right to own as little as three square centimeters (the actual share of a patrimony claimed by a large number of relatives) in order to keep themselves anchored, women's action could only acquire a great signilicance.3 Indeed, Chamay argues that "Women's influence was foremost among the reasons that caused the dismantling of family wealth from within."6 This is no doubt an exaggeration, since women did no more than defend their rights trampled by hath their male relatives and French courts.
