The InterDependent

Part 2 in a 3-part series on the elections in Tunisia.
Part 1: The Unlikely Soundtrack to a Revolution in the Birthplace of the Arab Spring
Part 3: Tunisia's Politics: Finally Free to Chat

TUNIS--When Khadija Cherif thinks back on the revolution that rocked her country—sparking the Arab Spring in January—one image stands out: women at the forefront. “Women’s participation was very important to the revolution [in Tunisia],” says the current secretary general of the International Federation for Human Rights. “Women were there, on the street, in the blogosphere, in the social conversation—the youngest most of all.”

Now ten months after the ousting of former President Zide El-Abidine Ben Ali, women are at it again. In the country’s first democratic elections in its independent history, half the candidates were women; election rules required that parties alternate men-and-women candidates. In all, more than 4,000 female politicians ran for office. And when the results were tallied, 24 percent of the seats went to women. It was far from an equal share, to be sure, but it was also far better than the international average; a mere 17 percent of seats in the U.S. Congress are held by women, for example.

This has long been the story of Tunisia—one of the friendliest countries for women’s rights in the region and beyond. Yet over the last several months, the mood among many women here has been less triumphant than fearful. After Ben Ali fell, the dominant political party that has emerged in Tunisia is the formerly banned al-Nahda, a moderate Islamist movement. The party itself has promised repeatedly to keep—and even enhance—women’s rights. But many of its grassroots supporters are more severe in their demands to enforce such things as a female dress code. It’s not yet clear how al-Nahda will balance its rhetoric with its constituent’s demands. Added to this has been a backlash against all things ancien regime—and unfortunately, one of the things that characterized that regime was the equal rights of women.

“Things have started to change,” worries Malek Baklouti, a lawyer at the U.N.-funded Center for Arab Women Training and Research. “The rights of women are threatened. And what is even more alarming is that certain women are themselves questioning the legitimacy of their rights.”

Yet if fear is one narrative in this country of just 10 million people, so too is the story of how millions of Tunisian women are standing defiantly against any repression—and demanding that their rights only expand. They are entering politics, forming their own civic groups and organizations, and speaking powerfully about their hopes for the new Tunisia. Cherif argues that her fellow female citizens will never stand for their rights being rolled back. “The only fear I have,” she explain, “is not to move forward.”

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Sometime early in the grilling heat of the Tunisian summer, Soulef Quessoum began making phone calls to the plethora of political parties who would be fielding candidates in Tunisia’s first democratic election. As a project manager at the U.N. Development Program in Tunis, She was reaching out to ask a simple favor: let us help train and equip your female candidates for the upcoming campaign. Ninety-five percent of those women would be running for the first time, she recalls. “Many of the women were activists were from civil society but it’s different. [As a candidate,] you go to the people and ask for their vote—it’s different.”

Not long later, Quessoum and her colleagues welcome 162 women on board a crash course in elections. They held trainings across the country, in Tunis to the North, Sous to the East, and Gafsa in the South. They walked through the host of challenges that would confront the candidates: Funding was difficult to mobilize; campaigns had to be organized with haste since the election rules allowed only three weeks for candidates to reach out to the voters. “The obstacles for the women in the interior of the country was very hard, because the headquarters didn’t provide support, it’s was really very difficult for them.”

Many of these challenges weren’t unique to women; no political party had ever run a free campaign in Tunisia. But there were certainly issues that female candidates uniquely battled. “Something that hasn’t helped women is the game that the previous government played,” says Baklouti, explaining how the former president positioned himself as a key defender of women. “There was always talk of women’s rights. And now after the revolution, the public is questioning that story of women’s rights because of its immediate association with the ancient regime.”

That association, however, was a misunderstanding, says Cherif, who argues that the rights that women supposedly enjoyed under Ben Ali were a mere facade. “The only women who had a voice were the women who agreed to participate in the propaganda of the regime,” she explains, noting that women’s rights organizations suffered the most under dictatorship.

If the past was an obstacle, so too was the new political rhetoric that suddenly entered the conversation in free Tunisia. In the quiet of private conversation, women here speak of their concerns that the al-Nahda party is engaging in a sort of “double-speak,” promising to uphold equal rights in public and yet telling their followers a different story in private. One feminist blogger who writes anonymously under the alias My Destiny, after receiving numerous threats, were devastated when al-Nahda claimed 41 percent of the seats in a new Constituent Assembly meant to draft the country’s next Constitution for this very reason. “[What I feel] is the grief of a realizing a great dream is shattered,” she said from her Tunis-based office.

Yet activists such as this female blogger aren’t wasting their time in lamentations. Nor did the thousands of female candidates who sought to enter political office this month. Instead, they’re taking notes about how to do better next time.

“A lot of women created their own political lists, because when the parties created their own candidate lists, they didn’t put the women at the top. Realizing this, [the women] left. They decided to run individually,” explains Quessoum. The result was a split vote; there were often as many as 95 candidates contesting just one seat and independents had little chance of winning. “They were so excited and they wanted to enter the experience. But now they have to think [strategically] about it now for the upcoming elections”—to take place in just a year—“which [they] should start [preparing for] now.”

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If women’s rights expand in the newly free Tunisia, women will have themselves to thank. Female voters have stood firmly for that—and will accept nothing else. “It would be impossible to change the code of personal liberty,” argues Iman Issawi, a young voter who recently returned from studying in France. “Women here are incredibly free.”

By now, women are also far too important—in the society and the economy—to be hidden away. Many wives and mothers here are the main breadwinners for their families. On average, they’re also more educated, says Cherif.

And there’s good reason to think that the scares of the early revolutionary days were merely that—fears that will fade when normalcy returns to a country experiencing freedom for the first time. Al-Nahda has been adamant about its support for women’s rights, and many of its female candidates will now sit in the Constituent Assembly. “Will the role of women continue to be as dominant? I think it will be,” argues Adel Dajani, a founder of the first investment bank in the region. “I don’t buy all this Western fear about Islamist. …People are going to be extremely pragmatic of how they judge political parties: how is it going to affect me.”

By that rubric, women will likely do well in the coming months. And Quessoum might expect to train even more candidates before next election time.