Women’s Movements and the Recognition of Gender Equality in the Constitution-Making Process in Morocco and Tunisia (2011-2014)

Equality between women and men has been the objective of women’s movements in post-colonial Morocco and Tunisia and it turned out to be one of the emancipatory priorities in the Moroccan and Tunisian uprisings in 2010-2011. Today, the principle of gender equality is explicitly recognized in the Moroccan Constitution of 2011 (article 19) and in the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 (article 21). Through what compromises, confrontations and resistances between central power, transitional institutions and the different forces of civil society did this come about? To answer this question, this chapter addresses two main dimensions of analysis. In the first part, at a theoretical level, it problematizes the centrality of the connection between Islam, patriarchy and citizenship in the systems of power and in the normativity of both countries. Also, in a historical perspective, it traces the main steps of women’s struggles for gender equality which depend by the deconstruction of this strict relation. In the second and most empirical part, the chapter analyzes the ways in which the constitution-making process has been carried on in Morocco and Tunisia. Thanks to a set of in-depth interviews conducted during multiple fieldworks in Rabat and Tunis, carried out in 2011, 2014 and 2016, it observes the different stages and approaches in which the contents of the constitutions were written, exploring if - and how - they were imposed by the central power or negotiated with the most representative actors of civil society. It also explores the different strategies and political praxis of women’s movements in achieving gender equality, as well as the obstacles and resistances vis à vis the Islamist forces and vis à vis the central power. Despite the differences between the two cases, women’s movements have proved their importance as social actors in the post-uprising political scenario and in the bottom-up definition of gender policies that affects the entire society from a political, juridical, economic and social perspective. In both countries, the central power uses the narrative of the gender equality for political objectives: not only to show its democratic facade but also to strengthen the secular block against the Islamist one. This is particularly true in Tunisia. Women’s rights and gender equality remain, indeed, a contested societal pattern, at the core of the process of building a collective egalitarian consciousness and of a new citizenship based on a truly egalitarian paradigm.