Tunisian women are stuck between freedom and inequality

18-year-old student Farah Mkaouar writes about the frustrating plight of Tunisian women in the 21st century. (Courtesy of Farah Mkaouar).

18-year-old student Farah Mkaouar writes about the frustrating plight of Tunisian women in the 21st century.

On paper, it seems Tunisia has made great progress towards gender equality.

The 1956 Personal Status Code guarantees Tunisian girls and women the right to study and work. There are laws against marriage under the age of 18 and marriage against consent. Free, quality health care means women can access the services they need. There are female leaders in male-dominated fields like politics and aerospace engineering.

But the reality is that Tunisian girls and women face many issues preventing them from realizing their rights on the same terms as men and boys. 

According to UNICEF, each year 100,000 Tunisian children drop out of school. Some Tunisian parents don’t realize the significance of school for their daughters. They encourage their sons to study and get good, stable jobs because they think men must be able to provide for their future family’s needs, but they don’t do the same for their daughters. They think men are responsible for managing all the family’s finances, and women are supposed to be kept in the dark. When the family is poor, daughters are supposed to sacrifice their education to help their parents deal with financial issues. I know one woman who told me that she was sent to work for another family when she was 7, enduring physical abuse when she didn’t do what she was told.

“Tunisian girls and women are the most hardworking, inspiring people I know. Yet our society has turned a blind eye to their plight.”

— Farah Mkaouar

These outdated notions and coping mechanisms are creating big problems for Tunisia’s girls and women. In 2018, former Tunisian minister of social affairs Mohammad al-Traboulsi said illiteracy in Tunisia had risen from 18.2% in 2017 to 19.1% that year. He noted that 41% of rural women were illiterate. Women’s illiteracy makes it harder for us to achieve the same social and financial positions as men. While men get to deepen their knowledge, women aren’t afforded the same opportunities. In rural communities, women take on a lot of the work, mainly in the agriculture industry. Almost every working rural woman is a farmer. She labors all year long from dawn to dusk, usually under poor working conditions. In recent years, more than 40 women working in agriculture died and 492 were injured in road accidents.

The horrific realities do not stop there. According to one study conducted by the National Office for Family and Human Urbanization, more than half of Tunisian women have experienced violence of some kind ⁠— sexual, psychological or physical ⁠— within the home or even in public spaces. The research institute CREDIF says 53.5% of women have been victims of violence in the public areas between 2011 and 2015. Though the parliament passed legislation in 2017 aimed at eliminating violence against women, failures in its implementation have let many assailants and perpetrators off the hook. 

Making matters even worse, survivors of violence often lack psychological support to heal from their trauma because Tunsian authorities fail to provide it. The atmosphere in Tunisian health care facilities is especially bleak — one CREDIF report indicated that doctors in Tunisia sometimes do not express urgency in providing care for abused women.

The Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi once said: “Women are half the society.” I interpret that quote to mean that Tunisia is supposed to respect women, because they are just as important to our country as men. Tunisian girls and women are the most hardworking, inspiring people I know. Yet our society has turned a blind eye to their plight.

“As a young Tunisian woman, I often fear for my future,” writes Farah. (Courtesy of Farah Mkaouar)

 As a young Tunisian woman, I often fear for my future. What if one day when I apply for a job, a man with fewer capabilities gets it instead of me simply because he’s a man? I fear the way people will underestimate me and prohibit me from positions of power. I fear how misogyny has become normalized, yet fighting for women’s futures is considered a malicious cause.

Let’s change our lives for the better and act now. I invite social associations in Tunisia to organize campaigns to educate people about the importance of gender equality and the role it plays in building a stable society. I invite medical organizations to provide women and girls in Tunisia with concrete information about sexual health and consent — especially in schools — so that sexual assault and rape cases in Tunisia are reduced. I invite the Tunisian authorities to actually enforce the laws they’ve passed protecting girls’ and women’s right to live freely and safely. 

 No matter who you are and where you’re from, you can make small changes that will have a lasting effect on the lives of Tunisia’s women and girls. If you have an idea that might impact women’s lives positively, believe in it, work hard on it and look for inspiring people around you. Find your community who will help you achieve your dreams. Use your voice on social media by sharing articles, videos and other content that matters to you. Stay committed to your cause and invest in it — it will be real one day.