Gender Equality in Tunisia: Between Law and Society
I may be living in one of
the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality. As far as I am
concerned, this “honorary” label only concerns legislation and has nothing to
do with real life.
I don’t deny the fact
that in Tunisia we share almost equally, as males and females, many basic
rights. But the question is: do we really have total equality?
Today, I’ll not talk
about law because apart of some exceptions, it isn’t the biggest challenge. The
real gender equality needs enforcement starting from society. The Tunisian
society, with some slight differences up to every region, educates children unequally.
There are exclusive rights for males and especially a bizarre perspective of
how to raise a “man”.
Those same rights are
legally equal for both genders. But the family doesn’t allow females to practice
them. To be more specific, let me tell you about some imperfections in the
Tunisian education:
Activism and Gender Inequality:
Activism needs time,
effort and availability. Going out is one of the biggest problems for females.
Most of the Tunisian families limit their daughters’ activities to their
studies. The Tunisian woman is rarely present in the political life. Women have
to go through the famous “war of the sexes” to take real places in the
political parties or the syndical organization (UGTT) and unfortunately confront
harassment daily once they’re in. The current conception about raising females,
which is very traditionalist, considers women as a subject of protection. The
Tunisian family, even though it provides to females the right to education and
having a career, still priors family duties (taking care of the husband,
children and the house) to the associative or political life. The Tunisian
women are considered inferior, incomplete and incapable of dealing with
pressure in politics. Thus, in the Tunisian modern history, there is almost
only one female minister in the Tunisian government and most critics believe
that this minister has rather a decorative role not a functional one.
Family Duties and Gender Inequality:
Most of the family duties
as I mentioned before are attributed to women. Husbands and Wives rarely share
the function of raising children. Plus, even though women work outside and make
the same efforts as men, they have to do lonely most of the house chores. The
Café is a specific tradition for Tunisian men. Almost every man in Tunisia
after leaving duty, in both city and countryside, spend hours in Cafés smoking,
playing cards and chitchatting while women are obliged to go back home right
after finishing work to clean the house and take care of the children. The
absurd phenomenon in Tunisia is that women who suffer from inequality raise
their children the same way their parents did. She allows her son/s to go play
outside playing football and so on or even to spend time in Cafés but forces
her daughter/s to help her with the house shores and to stay at home. So there
is no wonder that in many houses, the sister cleans after her brother or the
daughter after her father.
The Tunisian family members rarely share
equally the house shores. Consequently, the male is dependent to the female and
the female is overtired.
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