P RO F E S S O R S A LWA Z A RG O U N I S O U I S S I
Professor of Sociology at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis
Keynote address:
Berbers, the Arab- muslims and
the Ottomans that occupied
our land enriched our culture
and most importantly made of
Tunisians today a tolerant and
open-minded people.
I
t is just great to take part in this
amazing conference to tell you
in a very informal way about
my country, Tunisia and more
precisely about women in Tunisia.
It gives me great pleasure to tell
you the story of an exceptional
small and tiny country that is
squeezed between two big
neighbors, Algeria from the west
and Libya from the east. Tunisia
opens on the Mediterranean sea.
It owes its rich and varied history
to its strategic geographical
position in North Africa. Indeed,
all past civilizations came and
established themselves in Tunisia
leaving us with a long history of
three thousand years. The result
of the different experiences we
inherited from our ancestors,
going from the Vandals, the
Phoenicians, the Romans, the
18 I
Women played an
exceptional role
during the pre and
post-revolutionary
period.
A R A M F O E D U C AT I O N A L F O U N DAT I O N
In more recent history, Tunisia was a
French colony until 1956. In fact, we
became an independent republic
following a popular national
movement led by Habib Bourguiba,
our first Tunisian president, often
referred to as the father of the
nation. Very soon a new modern
constitution was written, new laws
were adopted by a new parliament
to make education compulsory
for both boys and girls and to
provide people with public health
services. But most importantly, a
revolutionary family code known
as The Code of Personal Status
was passed to provide women with
equal rights with men.
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2016
However, a dictatorship established
itself since 1987 when Zine el
Abidine Ben Ali, who was a general
in the army, became president. A
new era was launched characterized
by power abuse, lack of freedom,
and corruption. High rates of
unemployment and economic
hardships led to a popular revolt
in January 2011. On the 14th of
January 2011, people everywhere in
the country headed to the streets
and by the end of the day, our
dictator left and sought refuge in
Saudi Arabia. On that day we felt
free again. That was the beginning
of what came to be called ‘The
Arab Spring.’ At that time nobody
thought that it would soon cross
the borders and encourage other
people in the rest of the Arab world
to follow the same path and try to
overthrow their respective dictators.
We were imitated in Egypt, Libya,
Yemen and Syria. Though about
340 innocent people lost their
lives during the different events
that swept through the country,
compared to what happened
in the other Arab countries, our
revolution was relatively quite
peaceful. In fact, Tunisia has a
number of characteristics that
protected its people from sliding
into violence, namely a powerful
civil society with a high percentage
of literacy among men and women.
After the revolution, everybody
understood that our country could
only be run through consensus.
Islamists and modernists had to
sit together, negotiate and then
agree on a number of issues to
avoid antagonism and ideological
conflicts. Consensus has become
a magic word during this decisive
stage of our history. This approach
enabled us to practice democracy
for the first time of our life. In
January 2014, we succeeded
in writing a quite progressive
constitution providing for a secular
http://www.aramfo.org/