Zawaya

Maghreb women: between liberation promoters and seclusion advocates

By: Mohamed Yehdih Ould Baba Ahmed

Gender inequality is a thorny dilemma in the Arab world in general, and in the Maghreb countries in particular. Unfortunately, there are still a number of restrictions and constraints that prevent women from full participation in political life.

There are different religious interpretations and diverse cultural and intellectual opinions in this area. However, we will try -through this modest approach – to discuss what hinders Maghreb women from full participation in political life. We may also project the same issue – with some reservation – on women in other Arab countries.

The most important constraints, in my view, are:

1- Cultural constraints: They can be described as the cornerstone, since what’s right is what the group agrees on, while it’s society that accepts or rejects the phenomenon. We can distinguish between two trends in our Maghreb society, each having their own arguments and justifications:

- A trend that can be described as liberal, or the promoters of women’s liberation: The lack of full participation of women in political life is due to intellectual stagnancy, cultural backwardness, and discrimination between men and women. This trend considers Arab women to be full-fledged to exercise all tasks, including political ones. Its promoters think that there should be a revolution against legacies which are not consistent with the modern view, like customs and traditions that are contrary to religions and laws.

- A trend that advocates the incapacity of women, which we can call the advocates of seclusion: They think that women are not good for some political positions because of many factors, mainly their biological characteristics that do not meet the needs of these jobs. They also believe that women are limited politically, given the fact that they always take decisions based on feelings rather than reason.

2- Social constraints: They consist in the prevalence of illiteracy among Maghreb women, exposure to harassment and violence by men, remnants of divorce, and responsibilities of a divorced woman towards her family.

3- Economic constraints: They focus mainly on the principle of reliance on the person who generates an income or the man, because of the spread of unemployment among women, and the nonexistence of income for them.

In general, we can say that what hinders women in some Maghreb countries from participating fully in political life is taking action to ensure their mandatory participation in it, as is the case in Mauritania whose government had obliged political parties to dedicate 20% of their chairs to women. Notwithstanding this low ratio, Mauritanian women acquired 17% of Mauritania’s parliament, and nearly 20% in the rest of the administration, despite the presence of a conservative party that is trying to seclude Mauritanian women and marginalize them in political activities.

As a conclusion, Maghreb women are still straining under seclusion advocates on one side, and activists who aspire to liberate them on the other side.