Tunisian women have received significant attention for their active participation in preserving and extending women’s rights since 2011. However, their activism and latest achievements should be considered not a recent phenomenon but rather part and parcel of a distinctive local history that has included women as agents of change. This book examines Tunisian women’s lived experiences, as individuals and as a group, within a sociohistorical framework that uncovers the enduring feminine footprint over centuries and eventually underpins and defines their most recent fight for gender equality in postrevolutionary Tunisia. The historic and current presentation of Tunisian women’s public and civic engagement distinguishes between different types of women’s objectives in order to examine women’s activism holistically as it evolved in the local context. The Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement will be of interest to students and scholars of Tunisia, North African, and Middle East Studies and gender in the Arab world.

Looking at women, politics, and culture in Tunisia from 1950s independence to the 1970s, highlighting the centrality of women to post-colonial state-building.

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Politics - Basics and General, grade: 1,7, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Political Science), course: Revolution und Entwicklung? Transformationen und Geschlecht in den arabischen Revolutionen, language: English, abstract: Tunisian women’s movements are anything but homogenous. Grassroots women’s movements and new forms of feminism have been competing against a top-down feminist project promoted by the state. Hence, tensions between the different understandings of a women’s rights agendas have clashed, making room for new conceptions of Tunisian womanhood, resistance, and empowerment. The dichotomy between “contemporality” and “tradition” might have hindered women’s collective empowerment and the formation of an all-encompassing movement. Nevertheless, Tunisian women are still capable and encouraged to build bridges between the diverse women’s projects and continue to demand tangible gender equality, especially concerning decision-making positions. This diversity in perceptions, as well as the enthusiasm to prove the compatibility between a women’s project seeking gender equality and Islamic tradition, constitute one of the most valuable potentials of Tunisian women’s movements. This might even result promising for the women’s cause in the first place, considering that there is sufficient common ground among the intrinsic principles and objectives of women’s movements around the world. Other women’s movements in the phase of consolidation can thus learn important lessons from the Tunisian example. The following segments will briefly recapitulate some of the most relevant historical milestones of Tunisian history while acknowledging their interconnection with the evolution of Tunisian women’s movements over the decades. Special attention will be drawn to the consolidation of grassroots, state-independent women’s movements in post-revolution Tunisia, and to the necessity of reconciling the heretofore contesting women’s projects. This, with the motivation to understand: what challenges have Tunisian women’s movements faced thus far and what perspectives do they have to build a more consolidated project?

Freedom HouseOs innovative publication WomenOs Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance analyzes the status of women in the region, with a special focus on the gains and setbacks for womenOs rights since the first edition was released in 2005. The study presents a comparative evaluation of conditions for women in 17 countries and one territory: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The publication identifies the causes and consequences of gender inequality in the Middle East, and provides concrete recommendations for national and international policymakers and implementers. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The project has been embraced as a resource not only by international players like the United Nations and the World Bank, but also by regional womenOs rights organizations, individual activists, scholars, and governments worldwide. WomenOs rights in each country are assessed in five key areas: (1) Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice; (2) Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person; (3) Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity; (4) Political Rights and Civic Voice; and (5) Social and Cultural Rights. The methodology is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the study results are presented through a set of numerical scores and analytical narrative reports.

This open access book takes a critical and international perspective to the mainstreaming of the Global Citizenship Concept and analyses the key issues regarding global citizenship education across the world. In that respect, it addresses a pressing need to provide further conceptual input and to open global citizenship agendas to diversity and indigeneity. Social and political changes brought by globalisation, migration and technological advances of the 21st century have generated a rise in the popularity of the utopian and philosophical idea of global citizenship. In response to the challenges of today’s globalised and interconnected world, such as inequality, human rights violations and poverty, global citizenship education has been invoked as a means of preparing youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. In recent years, the development of global citizenship education and the building of students’ global citizenship competencies have become a focal point in global agendas for education, international educational assessments and international organisations. However, the concept of global citizenship education still remains highly contested and subject to multiple interpretations, and its operationalisation in national educational policies proves to be challenging. This volume aims to contribute to the debate, question the relevancy of global citizenship education’s policy objectives and to enhance understanding of local perspectives, ideologies, conceptions and issues related to citizenship education on a local, national and global level. To this end, the book provides a comprehensive and geographically based overview of the challenges citizenship education faces in a rapidly changing global world through the lens of diversity and inclusiveness.

"This work takes a look at the effects of imposed State Feminism policies by the past two authoritative regimes on the Tunisian society, through an analysis of Tunisian women's associations, which existed during the repressive regimes, and those that emerged since democratization. It will take a retrospective look at the consequences of gender equality advancements made by the State, that monopolized the dialogue, marginalized the existing women's associations and excluded the population from inputting on the project to modernize women's status in society. This thesis will analyze how State Feminism has affected the way the society views gender issues. How have independent women's associations present during authoritative State Feminism policies adapted their advocacy to the new post-Revolution political context? And how new associations are changing the associative playing field. The methodology utilized for field research was face-to-face qualitative semi-directive expert interviews, to allow for a free flow of information. Both women closely and more distantly involved in the Tunisian feminism movement were interviewed in order to establish a wide spectrum of opinions and information on the subject of women's associations prior to and after the Revolution. The research and analysis proved that the monopolization of the feminist debate by the State through State Feminism led to the marginalization of independent women's associations and the exclusion of the population from the decision-making process on women's rights, which were imposed in a top down fashion. Presently this has had adverse effects on old and new women's associations and their relations with women and men in society".