from Canterbury, United Kingdom
The women of the Arab Spring
Ten years ago, anti-government protests and uprisings that came to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’ started in Tunisia and then spread in much of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The Arab Spring was a cry for democracy, freedom and overall better economic and social conditions, in countries ruled by long-term authoritarian and corrupted regimes. Women largely participated in the 2010-2012 Arab Spring through protesting, organising, blogging and hunger-striking, emerging as key players and generating high hopes for the boost of women’s rights (Rice et al, 2011).
Despite women’s participation in the revolutions, changes in misogynist policies and laws encountered fierce resistance (Alvi, 2015). Throughout history, women have played an important role during initial phases of political transitions such as the Arab Spring, to then become marginalized as transitions progress, with men pushing them aside (Waylen, 1994; Baldez, 2010).
Nevertheless, feminist scholars have argued that women played an important role in the shaping of the Arab Spring, and that gender is an important variable to be taken into consideration in order to understand political and social outcomes of individual countries in the Arab Spring (Moghadam, 2016).
Egypt and Tunisia
This article focuses on the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, respectively a case of success and failure in terms of consolidating women’s rights post-Arab Spring. On this note, Tunisia is the only Arab Spring revolution that successfully ended in the consolidation of a democratic state upholding women’s rights. The article aims to explain why Egypt and Tunisia experienced such different gendered outcomes of the Arab Spring, despite their similarities at geographical, cultural and political level. In both Tunisia and Egypt, women participated in large numbers to the Arab Spring. In both countries, protesters successfully overthrew long-term authoritarian regimes, of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt.
Tunisia: a case of success for women’s rights
The secular party Nidaa Tounes with candidate Beji Caid Essebsi won the 2014 presidential elections in Tunisia, in what was considered as a major victory for Tunisia’s transition to democracy. Ultimately, Tunisia’s democratization has favoured the consolidation of women’s rights in society.
Today, Tunisia is at the forefront of upholding women’s rights in the region. In 2014, the country lifted all reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In 2017, Tunisia passed its first national law to combat violence against women (UN Women, 2017), which put an end to the so-called ‘marry your rapist’ laws that allowed rapists to escape punishment by marrying their victims (Elahawy, 2018). The next year, women made up 47% of the local government, as a result of the 2016 electoral law establishing the principle of parity and alternation between men and women on candidate lists (UN Women, 2018).
Tunisia is also the North African country that witnessed the greatest opening for civil society. The influential power of Tunisian civil society is evident in the work of women’s rights activists, who successfully pushed for the concept of gender equality to be included in the new 2014 Constitution.
Egypt: a case of failure for women’s rights
In Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Islamist party won the 2012 presidential election with candidate Mohamed Morsi. However, political turmoil exploded in July 2013, when a military coup overthrew Morsi’s government. Military General el-Sisi won the 2014 presidential elections, giving the Egyptian military unchecked power, with media reports labelling him a dictator (Cambanis. 2015). El-Sisi was then re-elected in 2018 elections, which were denounced by 14 human rights groups as farcical, neither free nor fair (Human Rights Watch, 2018).
While el-Sisi has extended women’s rights through the Constitution and the anti-sexual harassment law of 2014, he has also severely restricted freedom of expression and association (Pratt, 2016). Egyptian women today have to deal with a new patriarchal bargain, in which the regime ‘protects’ women’s rights in return for controlling women’s agenda, as women become depended on the regime, facing state co-optation and top-down impositions (Pratt, 2016).
Women have suffered serious setbacks post-Arab Spring especially in the public sphere, as Egypt’s civil society rights score deteriorated. The country also has reservations to CEDAW for Article 16, Article 29(2) and Article 2, on the grounds that it could violate Shari‘a (Freedom House, 2010). Moreover, violence against women is still a serious problem in Egypt.
Pre-existing gender relations
In order to understand the different gendered outcomes of the Arab Spring in the two countries, it is necessary to look at pre-existing gender roles. Tunisia has a history of upholding women’s rights and freedoms that goes back to Bourguiba’s presidency (1959-1987). Bourguiba –and after him Ben Ali– led strict secular regimes, Western leaning for the most part, which contributed to the advance of women’s rights. However, it is important to mention that the achievements of these regimes in terms of women’s rights have been criticized as ‘state feminism’, since women’s rights were used by the state to project a progressive and liberal image to the outside, for the international system to see.
In 1956, Bourguiba passed the Personal Status Code, introducing dramatic changes in the law for women, banning polygyny, setting minimum ages for marriage, and enabling women to initiate divorce proceedings. Personal status codes and family law –consisting of rules, norms and decisions over kinship and reproduction– embody the ‘woman question’ in the MENA region (Charrad, 2001).
In Egypt, personal status laws are widely seen as one of the primary sources of discrimination against women in legislation and practice (Freedom House, 2010). Indeed, Egypt has a more conservative pre-existing society and culture than Tunisia, as well as a strong military masculine presence, which help us understanding its failure in terms of consolidating women’s rights post-Arab Spring (Moghadam, 2013).
Democracy & women’s rights
While women were the vanguard of the Arab Spring revolutions, they have been pushed aside, their rights and freedom curtailed by new and old oppressors. In Egypt, as well as in the other countries of the Arab Spring, women went from being key agents of revolutions to victims of counter-revolutions. Tunisia is the exception, as it transitioned to democracy and it consolidated women’s rights in its post-Arab Spring society, acting as an example for the region and for Muslim women worldwide.
History has proven that we cannot talk about women’s rights without talking about human rights, and that only in democratic states guaranteeing human rights, women will be recognized as equal and their rights will be protected and promoted (Karman, 2016). Therefore, the battle that the women of the Arab Spring must continue to wage today should be aimed at the promotion and protection of human rights, freedom and democracy.
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Autore dell’articolo*: Laura Mariani, BA Student. at the University of Kent.
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