Resource: Women’s Activism in the Maghreb
Hello once again delegates!
The entire dais of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been busy grading your papers this past week and putting the final touches on committee planning and we are honestly so thrilled with all of your work and can’t wait till conference-time to see you guys in action!
The Maghreb exists in an extremely unique position geographically and culturally; many of the Muslim-majority members of the Maghreb - Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in particular - form a unique bloc due to relative proximities of Europe and the Middle East, with consequent impacts best observed in French colonialism and shared values of Islam respectively. It’s the relationship with France and Europe that affords larger nations in the Maghreb more political and systemic structure than even some countries in the Middle East, through the creation of trade unions, established judiciaries, and developed educational systems.
In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, prominent feminist scholar and activist Dr. Valentine M. Moghadam wrote a fascinating research piece (linked below) on the effect of geographical proximity on the efficacy of women’s rights and empowerment in the Maghreb. Throughout the article, Dr. Moghadam stresses how the post-colonial period in the Maghreb essentially established the framework for greater democracy in Northern Africa, with judiciaries promoting greater governmental accountability and unions/educational programs promoting individual participation in their societies. This advent of participatory democracy sets the stage for female activism, with women’s rights groups, who had long been downtrodden by remnants of quasi-Islamist ideals, embracing this new autonomy and potential social standing.
When reading this article, I want you to think about the following questions: How have the post-colonial democratic and Middle-Eastern Islamist influences clashed in the Maghreb? What has the effect been on sociopolitical stability? How does the position of women in North African society differ than contemporary positions in Middle-Eastern states? Between Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, what elements of domestic women’s activism strike you as similar? Different? How could developments in women’s empowerment in the Maghreb be expanded to benefit similar causes in contemporary states in the OIC?
I cannot wait to meet you delegates - see you at conference this Friday!
Best,
Dhruv Mandal
From the time of French imperialism to present day, Islamic fundamentalism and the French-influenced policies regarding gender have been at war and can now be seen through the form of “Islamic fundamentalist” and “modern” feminists. Formerly, women were utilized by both the French and the Arabs as a politicized tool to promote their own political agendas. Now, paradoxically, the impact of French colonialism in the Maghreb has fostered the mobilization of women in the public sphere, especially in Tunisia. This novel advocacy of women’s rights marks the ever-solidifying discrepancy between the advancing Maghreb and the Middle East as well as other African countries. For example, Tunisia has listened to the protest of the myriad of feminists and reestablished the status of women as “equal” rather than “complementary”. On the other hand, a number of other countries have yet to change women’s “soft” and complementary role in their respective governments. To globalize and further expand the advancements of the Maghreb, Egypt stresses the need for having political dialogue among the Maghreb, Middle East as well as other African countries. These summits should follow the example of the Women and Democratic Transitions convention held right after the Arab Spring. The attendees of this trip, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, showed that political dialogue is possible and demands increased efforts.
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