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Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences
Laurie A. Brand
1998
Conclusion
MENA Women and Political Liberalizations: Years of Living Dangerously?
Women establish new organizations with political programs and seek legalization, but operate in the absence of formal licensing. Of various political stripes, they run for parliamentary and municipal election, often against daunting odds. They collect signatures demanding changes in personal status laws against the backdrop of charges of apostasy. Some open violence hotlines or dare for the first time to report domestic abuse. Islamist women insist upon their right to veil; secular women argue against programs aimed at sex segregation. There are those who become engaged in literacy, health awareness, and child-rearing programs, while others demand the release of political detainees and greater respect for human rights. Women are lauded by some for efforts to eliminate discriminatory elements in labor and pension laws; they are attacked, sometimes physically, by others who deplore their insistence upon greater visibility and power in the so-called public realm.
These are but a few of the images of MENA women during the periods of liberalization examined in this study. Their efforts range from the modest to the heroic. In political climates in part characterized by increased possibilities, the authors of these stories—whether Islamist or secularist, young or old, rich or poor—have been engaged in efforts aimed at laying the bases for improvements in their lives, as well as those of their families and their societies more broadly. At the same time, as the images recalled above make clear, the atmosphere of increased opening has also often meant that women have had to confront threats, some of them quite serious, to existing rights. Political liberalizations, like other forms of regime change, can be characterized by increased perils. The fact that in each of the three cases examined here women at the time of this writing appeared to have been spared or overcome challenges to their rights that emerged with the beginning of the liberalizations does not change the fact that at various points during the transitions—according to their own testimonies, which I have accepted—they felt or knew themselves to be under siege. 1
I undertook this study with the goals of determining and detailing the interaction of key factors that affected women’s fates during these periods. The three MENA cases examined in detail have underlined the importance of a number of the same elements first suggested by the brief examination of several Latin American and Eastern European cases:
In addition, for the MENA cases, I gave detailed consideration to the impact of external factors. The lessons or generalizations that emerge from these cases are presented below.
The Nature and Source of the Liberalization
One major distinction among liberalizations is whether they fall closer to the shock or the gradual end of the transition spectrum. Few liberalizations may be characterized as single shock, although several have been encountered in this study. Most are the result of more extended processes. Among the three cases considered in detail, Tunisia’s opening of the early 1980s, Jordan’s of the mid-1950s, and Morocco’s more recent liberalization are examples of gradual openings. In the case of Tunisia, although the liberalization unfolded against the backdrop of economic crisis, it nonetheless apparently owed more to jockeying for power position among Bourguiba’s potential successors. In Jordan, the country’s first democratic experiment owed to a combination of regional political ferment and the youth and inexperience of the monarch. Morocco’s liberalization since the second half of the 1980s has derived from Hassan’s desire to overcome malaise in both the economic and political systems. It has also been an attempt to reach out to constituencies that were perceived to be of growing importance domestically (particularly the urban middle classes) and internationally, given his desire for fuller membership in the European Union.
In contrast, both Jordan (1967 and 1989) and Tunisia (1987) experienced openings triggered by a single, identifiable event. In the case of Tunisia, Ben ‘Ali reportedly decided to retire the aging president on November 7, 1987 because of the imminent possibility of an Islamist move against the state. Whether the explanation is accurate or not is less important for our purposes than the fact of Bourguiba’s swift replacement. Although Ben ‘Ali had risen through the Bourguibist ranks and hence cannot be viewed as an outsider, once in charge he was forced to consolidate support for his rule against the backdrop of the formidable legacy of Tunisia’s leader since independence. In Jordan, in 1967 the opening resulted from the defeat in the June war, which discredited the regime and its security forces. In April 1989, on the other hand, economic riots triggered the decision to liberalize, although political and economic crisis or malaise constituted the broader backdrop. The prime minister was ousted, but as in 1967, the king remained, thus ensuring a certain continuity. Nonetheless, the fact that the riots had broken out among a sector of the population long assumed to be the bedrock of regime support called into question the stability or solidity of the ruling coalition and raised the possibility of reconsolidation along modified lines.
The evidence presented in these cases, as well as those from Latin America and Eastern Europe, suggests that a transition closer to the shock end of the spectrum poses more possibilities as well as threats to women. It is the uncertainty regarding the possibility for domestic coalitional alliance shifts during this period of (re)consolidation, that is the basic source of opportunities and perils. Gradual transitions may be less dramatic, but they may also be much safer, since the leadership is either not overthrown, or is removed from power through a progressive unfolding of events that lessen the uncertainty involved in the search for new allies. I will explore this point again below.
Women and the State Prior to Liberalization
The Tunisian case underscores the importance of evaluating the legal and social status of women prior to the liberalization in order to understand the outcome. While improving social welfare indicators was certainly an important part of Jordanian domestic policy, Tunisia is the only one of the three cases in which the regime had made support for improvement in women’s status (if within certain limits) a central part of its program. In Tunisia, the stress on education and the availability of contraceptives from the early 1960s meant that women were not only trained to participate in the labor force, they also had a certain degree of reproductive choice. While their participation in the political life of the country was not extensive, some did join the PSD, and several women reached positions of prominence. Although not initially conceived of in this way, Bourguiba’s CSP became one of the defining features of his regime. Over the years he counted upon women—to whom he had granted the right to education, contraception, and freedom from the fear of polygamy—as a reliable base of regime support.
The situations in Jordan and Morocco were somewhat different. In the case of Jordan, while there have been notable efforts to expand social and educational infrastructure, the higher levels of literacy and education among Jordanian (both Palestinian and Transjordanian) women, did not translate into a noticeable increase in women’s participation in either the formal sector workforce or in other aspects of public life. Education of women continued (and continues to this day, if to a decreasing extent) to be viewed as a means of preparing a woman to be a more attractive marriage partner to someone who would be able to ensure that she need not work outside the home. Moreover, the conservative nature of the society, the underindustrialized nature of the economy, and the suppression of civil society activity in general combined to lead to a limited presence of women in the so-called public sphere.
Unlike Jordan, in which the state has directly reached the most remote corners of the kingdom through, most notably, recruitment into the army, the state in Morocco has continued to rely on a much more indirect form of control, ruling through rural notables. 2 As a result of its less than benign neglect of rural areas combined with deteriorating economic conditions since the mid-1980s, literacy levels are relatively low, and some argue that they are dropping under the weight of various structural adjustment policies. The importance of women’s labor in the agricultural sector as well as their role in the informal sector (as economic conditions have worsened) has meant that despite their inferior legal status and educational levels, women’s labor force participation rate in Morocco is similar to that of Tunisia. Nonetheless, it is largely the women of the post-independence urban middle class, with their access to state schooling and fellowships, who have entered the higher profile public arena.
The strength of the women’s movement or of women’s organizations and their relationship to the state prior to the political transition are two additional factors of crucial importance under this general rubric. In the cases of Jordan and Morocco, while women’s groups had long been active in a range of charitable and other efforts, the number of women involved in groups that sought serious change in women’s status was small, and some groups were neither formally licensed nor recognized. They were, therefore, not in a position to be involved in the push for liberalization. In Jordan, women’s organizations had suffered a fate similar to that of other civil society organizations: anything that smacked of politics or of a challenge to the system was generally swiftly shut down. The one clear attempt by the state to establish a women’s union (the GFJW) was apparently undertaken with the aim of controlling women’s organizational activity. In the case of Morocco, Hassan did establish the UNFM as a national women’s organization, but its activities have been largely limited to charitable activities and sending congratulatory cables on the occasion of national holidays. While it has offices across the kingdom, they have never had a mobilizational function. In contrast, in Tunisia, Bourguiba’s single-party state established the UNFT, which extended its branches and activities throughout the country. However, like the PSD of which it was an extension, it had grown sclerotic long before the 1987 coup and had never had a mandate to mobilize women to express grassroots demands.
The Role of Women in Forcing the Transition
While women in all three countries have played roles in opposition groups or parties, none of these groups can be credited with “forcing the opening.” Instead, despite differences in numbers and previous experience, in all three cases, there were women who had been champing at the bit to exploit a greater organizational opening, as well as women who, once the opening appeared, eagerly took advantage of it. Indeed, one of the notable characteristics of the liberalizations in all three countries has been the attempts by a variety of organizations to seek formal recognition (the UAF and ADFM in Morocco, the ATFD in Tunisia), or to revive repressed or frozen organizations (the JWU in Jordan).
The MENA women’s experiences contrast sharply with the Latin American cases, in which women actually put themselves on the front lines of the battle against the authoritarian regimes, even if in some cases it was in their roles as wives and mothers. While women’s active involvement in political movements has not necessarily meant special consideration in the aftermath of the struggle, in the case of the women in Latin America, the fact that they were an important and visible part of the grassroots movement that helped topple the dictators seems to have been an important factor in investing them with power during the transition. The transitional regimes appear to have recognized not only the women’s role, but also their continuing importance as a political constituency. Similarly, the absence of prominent women’s organizations in the transitions in the Eastern European cases (and the association of the existing ones with the former communist regimes) seems to account in part for the treatment women’s concerns received from the successor governments. The three MENA cases resemble the Eastern European experience on this point.
The State and Conservative Forces
The relationship between women and the state/regime prior to the liberalization is clearly connected with another, extremely important, factor: the relationship between the regime and conservative forces. In the MENA context of the 1980s and 1990s, the most important oppositional forces have been Islamist, of various stripes. It must be stressed, however, that there is nothing to suggest that across time and space this is the only possible expression of conservatism, nor that such groups should constitute the most important opposition. Indeed, if one looks at the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the relative weight of groups along the political spectrum in the MENA region was quite different than it is today.
In any case, the weight and composition of conservative forces is critical for this analysis. Unlike Bourguiba’s republican regime, which preached a not-so-veiled secularism and which had fired its opening shot in its quest to consolidate power at the religious elite, the monarchies of both Jordan and Morocco are dependent to one degree or another for their legitimacy on their relationship to Islam and to the religious establishment. In the case of Morocco, Hassan claims descendance from the Prophet Muhammad, and the ulama have long been a key source of regime support. Given that issues related to women and the family are viewed by such forces as falling within the purview of Islamic law, any attempt at reinterpretation that appears to challenge Islamic teachings may be expected to be fought vigorously by the ulama and certainly be viewed warily by the king. Viewing the field of potential allies as the liberalization unfolded, Hassan, who is neither democrat nor liberal, would have found few incentives to risk alienating a long-standing source of support for the sake of a sector of the population (women) that had yet to demonstrate much power or coherence.
In the case of Jordan, Husayn also claims descendance from the Prophet, although, unlike Hassan, he has never asserted a right to rule on matters related to religion. The relationship between the regime and conservative religious elements is best exemplified by the generally cooperative ties the leadership had with the Muslim Brotherhood over the years. Husayn has long presented Jordan as a forward-looking country and has promoted education and interaction with the West, yet he has never challenged the complex of societal and religious structures and practices that underpin the second-class status of Jordanian women. He has no doubt been aided by the fact that most of the country’s politically aware population has been preoccupied with the Arab-Israeli conflict over the years. Since the liberalization, the king’s sister, Princess Basma, has assumed the women’s portfolio. In so doing, however, she has been careful to place any suggestions for change within the framework of the country’s Islamic heritage and traditions.
To sum up, in the case of both Jordan and Morocco, the relationship between the regime and religious or socially conservative forces in the country has generally been quite good, while in Tunisia, despite an apparent courting by Mzali of the MTI in the early 1980s, relations have been tense. This was certainly the case at the time Ben ‘Ali made his decision to retire Bourguiba. The question then arises as to the salience of the nature of such relations for women and the state in the framework of political liberalization. To address this issue, however, a presentation of the political landscape at the time of the initiation of the change is needed.
The Political Landscape at the Time of Liberalization/Reconsolidation
In the case of Morocco, in which there has been a very gradual transition, the regime has remained largely unchanged. Although Hassan has instituted political reforms intended ultimately to lead to an alternance (a rotation of power in parliament between the royalist and so-called opposition parties), the bases of the regime have remained their conservative selves. The role of Islamist groups continues to be of some concern to the regime, but they appear to be either coopted or largely in tow, and the secular or leftist “opposition” is fully implicated in the system. As a result, in the Moroccan case there has been no attempt by conservative forces as the liberalization unfolded to use the relatively greater freedom to push for a retreat in women’s position or rights.
In the case of Jordan, the fact that it was the solidly Transjordanian south—areas and towns from which much of the Jordanian army is recruited—that rioted in 1989 clearly called into question one of the traditional bases of the regime’s support. The story of the forces and coalitions at work in the 1989 and 1993 parliaments will not be repeated here. What is important to remember is that the Brotherhood and its allies clearly emerged as the force to be dealt with in the immediate aftermath of the 1989 elections: the regime’s traditional opponents, the leftists and Arab nationalists, had not won enough seats to pose a threat. While the Brotherhood was hardly an unknown quantity, one thing had changed: it was now in a position to push for parts of its program through legislation. Given the Islamists’ numbers in parliament and the clear support they enjoyed among the population, the regime was in effect forced to negotiate over Ikhwan demands. Like their counterparts elsewhere, the Jordanian Ikhwan had a program that included women and the family, but it was a program that non-Islamist women (as well as many men) saw as inimical to their (or society’s) interests. As a result, prior to the appointment of Tahir al-Masri as prime minister in June 1991, the possibility of a rollback or restricting of rights in a number of areas of concern to women seemed quite real.
In the case of Tunisia, the shock transition combined with the previous regime’s long-standing support for women’s rights was the most threatening situation of all. Ben ‘Ali needed to consolidate support; he also needed to reinvigorate a fossilized political and party system. Just as there were those who were relieved to see that the succession issue had finally been solved peacefully, there were those who were opposed to a change in PSD structure and style. The pluralism proposed by the new president simply did not sit well with many of the party faithful. Ben ‘Ali had to confront and defeat these cadres at the same time that he had to address the existing crisis between the state and the Islamists.
From his assumption of power in November 1987 until his speech in March 1988 committing himself to the CSP, Ben ‘Ali may have toyed with the idea of turning back parts of the Code. He certainly made numerous gestures to court the more conservative segments of the population, many of whom had been alienated by what they saw as Bourguiba’s excessively secularist program. For a leader seeking to distinguish himself from a predecessor who was known as the Liberator of Tunisian Women, what better way in a time of religious resurgence than to overturn parts of the CSP? Indeed, for a number of months it appeared that the long years of support offered women by Bourguiba would end in a backlash against women’s rights.
In both Tunisia and Jordan, other factors intervened to deprive the Islamists of the role they sought to play and to avoid the full realization of the threats that many women feared. In Jordan, one factor may have been the Ikhwan’s legislative and ministerial behavior. More important, the imperative to enter peace talks with Israel following the debacle of the Gulf War meant that the king had to have a government that would accept such a move. This required the Ikhwan’s departure from the cabinet. In the case of Tunisia, women responded to the regime’s overtures to the Islamists and the Islamists’ challenges to the CSP by vocally insisting upon its preservation. It is unclear to what extent their early mobilization against the Islamists may have influenced Ben ‘Ali, but it seems likely that the percentage of votes the RCD received from women in the April 1989 elections made an impression on the president, particularly given how well the Islamists did. Al-Nahdah’s unexpected electoral successes led the regime to decide that it was time to replace the carrot with the stick. The rise of the FIS in neighboring Algeria may have sealed the regime’s decision that Islamists were not to be trusted, but it appears that the election results, not external forces, were the primary reason behind the initial crackdown. Overtures continued to be made to coopt religious elements, but the policy of treating with al-Nahdah in such a way as to allow it an independent and oppositional position was abandoned. Of course, the corollary to the repression of Islamists has been the gradual increase in repression against any even marginally independent civil society groups with a political agenda.
The Role of External Actors
Given the common complaints by Middle Easterners and North Africans that their domestic affairs are highly penetrated or influenced by outside actors, it seemed critical to consider this factor in the in-depth case studies. All of these liberalizations have unfolded in an environment in which a variety of multilateral institutions have been preaching the gospel of economic liberalization, human rights, and democratization (loosely defined). In the case of Morocco, there is no question that the European view of the kingdom’s human rights record has become a major concern, primarily because of Hassan’s ambitions to make his realm a fuller economic member in the European Union. For Jordan, the holding of free elections in 1989 was certainly a feather in the king’s cap in the eyes of the West. After the Gulf War deprived Amman of its traditional donors, the imperative to find new aid sources from the industrialized states no doubt encouraged Husayn and his government to emphasize the democratization angle, along with the kingdom’s adherence to a program of IMF-scripted domestic economic reforms.
Tunisia is interesting in this regard because external actors have seemed willing to overlook in Ben ‘Ali’s realm the very human rights abuses they decry in Morocco. Tunisia’s record in this regard owes to two primary factors. First, the country has been dutiful in following prescriptions for economic reforms in a region where there are more recalcitrants than faithful implementers. Second, and probably more important for Tunisia’s European audience, has been the fact that the human rights abuses have been largely committed in the quest to conquer “the forces of intolerance and obscurantism,” i.e. the Islamists. No one in Europe is anxious to have another Algeria on the Mediterranean’s southern littoral. At the same time, while perfecting his police state, Ben ‘Ali has continued to speak the language of pluralism, and the proliferation of “civil society” organizations appears to bear witness to the state’s commitment to letting a thousand flowers bloom.
Within this broader context, of course, there has been an international focus on promoting women’s rights, which received even greater attention as preparations were undertaken for the Beijing conference. The availability of funds from foreign donors, both official and NGO, for projects related to improving women’s status was a hallmark of this period. While it would be difficult to argue that foreign donors have forced the local governments to modify their policies to be more supportive of women, there are clear examples of these governments’ taking steps in the prelude to Beijing which must have been directed at least in part at making a positive impression on the international conference and international donors.
However, with the exception of Morocco, these benefits were realized largely after the transitions had ended. It would be difficult to point to an example of an external organization that truly made a difference, swaying the regime on issues related to women. In Jordan, the major defeat of the Islamists’ 1991 efforts came, it appears, thanks to the combination of an ad hoc lobby composed of vocal and relatively elite Ammanites and the approach of the peace process. In Tunisia, it was the regime itself that changed its tune regarding al-Nahdah, while in Morocco the issue never came to a head. In the Moroccan case, the majority of funds for activist (as opposed to research and publishing) activities has been contributed or put into projects since the impressive mudawwanah campaign, which was the effort of a single women’s group, the UAF.
Summary
To sum up the broad conclusions, most basically, shock transitions appear to offer the greatest opportunities and the most serious challenges to women. They are initiated either as the result of a trauma, such as massive rioting, or are the product of a coup d’état, or a related system breakdown. In such situations, the leadership as well perhaps as certain aspects of the political system may be challenged or overturned. In the period of (re)consolidation that follows, the source of the trauma must be addressed, and the (new) leadership may well be forced to seek new allies and strike new political bargains. Weakened central states have traditionally allowed for increased political possibilities; yet, as preexisting relationships and structures are called into question, those that may have traditionally protected some segments of the population may also be up for discussion.
We have seen that in the case of a shock transition that sets aside a leadership or a regime that was viewed as women-friendly and in which the most powerful opposition forces in the new system are conservative/religious, women are set up for a backlash of potentially dangerous proportions. This is the situation that best characterizes the Tunisian case. (It also has parallels with Eastern Europe even though in Poland and Russia the transitions were gradual.) A slight contrast is that of the case of Jordan, which witnessed a shock transition, and in which the most powerful opposition forces were conservative/religious ones but in which the previous regime, itself conservative, had had a good relationship of long standing with these forces.
In none of these cases was there a women’s movement or a mobilizing women’s organization that either participated in the transition or was in a position to impose its will on the new regime. This situation resembles that of a number of Eastern European countries, in which the preexisting women’s organizations were discredited through their association with the communists. Only in the case of Tunisia do we see some role for women’s groups after the November 7 coup, but their successes must be put in the context of the new leadership’s failure to coopt Islamists to its satisfaction and its subsequent decision that women, even if not mobilized in politically powerful organizations, could, as they had under Bourguiba, serve as a bulwark of the regime.
Gradual transitions are another major category, the only example of which examined in detail in this study is the continuing liberalization in Morocco. Hassan has not had to operate in a crisis mode characterized by a search for new allies to shore up a faltering system. As a result, the opening has offered increasing organizational and expressional possibilities to a growing range of civil society actors, many of them women. In my opinion, the most remarkable of the critical junctures explored in this work was the mudawwanah campaign: a grassroots effort of unprecedented scope and nontraditional nature that forced itself into the king’s considerations and calculations. While its results were disappointing to many, the victory it represented should not be underestimated. At the same time, while the women involved were harassed by non-Islamist politicians and charged with apostasy by Islamists, neither Islamist nor other groups made any attempt to promote more conservative policies and discourse as a result of the liberalization. Again, this owes largely to the preexisting conservative set of laws governing Moroccan women’s status and to the close ties between the regime and religious and other conservative forces.
The Latin American cases, although in a number of respects quite different, help underline some of these points. The transitions were generally gradual, but the new regimes had markedly different programs from their authoritarian predecessors. In Latin America, it was rightist regimes that were brought down. Hence the primary opposition was not, as we found in the MENA region or Eastern Europe, from the religious/conservative right, but rather from the center or left of the spectrum. The discrediting of the previous regimes (whose programs promoted conservative notions of women’s role and place) opened up the space to push for progressive changes in women’s status. What also sets the Latin American cases apart is the fact that women’s organizations had played a role in pushing for regime change. Their past and potential mobilizational role was clearly understood by the leaders of the successor regimes. Women had made themselves political players of consequence in a way that MENA and Eastern European women’s groups have yet to match.
Taking Advantage of the Opening
This study would not be complete without an examination of what women have been able to accomplish during or as a result of political liberalization. As we saw in the introduction, the Latin American experiences were very rich in producing new organizations, promoting elements of a women’s agenda, and increasing the state’s attention to women’s concerns, even if not to the extent that was initially hoped.
A variety of factors shape women’s ability to take advantage of an opening. The first is its length and fate. The MENA cases are perhaps the most limited in accomplishments in part because the political transformations in the region have stalled or been reversed. For example, in the case of Tunisia, the opening of the early 1980s was of sufficient duration that the first non-state affiliated women’s group was allowed to emerge, if not be licensed. During the short opening following Ben ‘Ali’s assumption of power, a group of women was able to obtain a license, but has had great difficulty expanding activities or even maintaining its independence as the liberalization has been reversed. On the other hand, in Morocco, the continuing margin of freedom of organizing and expression has opened up many possibilities for women’s organizations.
A second element concerns the degree of women’s mobilization before the opening. While in the Eastern European cases, as well as those of Chile and Tunisia, state-sponsored women’s organizations were in place prior to the transformation, the discrediting of the previous regime or the malaise in the organizations themselves deprived them of the legitimacy to play a mobilizational role in the new period. Hence, new or previously illegal organizations have had to emerge to constitute a legitimate voice for women. In the MENA region, these organizations have been relatively weak, with members recruited from an educated, urban elite, although generally not from the wealthiest sectors of society.
Women’s and society’s own view of such organizations must also be considered. If they are associated in any way with the previous, discredited regime, there is likely to be little interest. Even if they are new, a great deal of skepticism remains about possible ties to the state, influence from outside (if there is any hint of feminism to them), or effectiveness. One hears frequently in Jordan and Morocco that there are too many women’s organizations, that the movement is too fractured and plagued by rivalries and infighting. It is interesting that while such a characterization is also quite appropriate for the broader political scene, that is, the male-dominated parliaments and political parties, the criticism is most often directed against women. One can certainly make the case that for women, as an underempowered group, the inability to work together is particularly harmful. However, part of the problem is the image that society (including women) constructs and perpetuates regarding women: that their primary responsibilities continue to be in the home and that they are not as capable as men in the political arena.
Indeed, a number of factors that helped to discourage women’s activism under the (more) authoritarian predecessor regimes continue to play a role. Primary among these is the issue of time. To combine a job with family is no small undertaking. To add to that a commitment to another organization is something that many women simply cannot manage. In addition, however, are societal pressures regarding a woman’s activity in the public sphere beyond her job. For many MENA women, mobility outside the home continues to be restricted, especially when the movement is for meetings in the evening or when the issue is politics, since the long experiences with authoritarianism have led people to associate political activity with jail, and jail with loss of a woman’s honor. There is an economic angle as well: not only the opportunity cost of the time spent at or going to and from the meetings, but also the cost of transportation. For many women, spending on such “luxuries” is out of the question.
Also of critical importance are the goals that women seek to achieve. While the right to an education and to enter the workforce are demands of many women, they are by no means the demands of all. As was discussed in the introduction, while “it is true that at a certain level of abstraction women can be said to have some interests in common, there is no consensus over what these interests are or how they are to be formulated.” 3 This study has concentrated on issues dealt with at the national level, and even here one finds divergent opinions among women regarding focus and priorities. The picture becomes even more complex when one tries to factor in more carefully elements such as region, class, ethnicity, and so on. Kandiyoti’s point on women’s conservatism regarding policies or developments that might challenge the family structure is also relevant here: “Women often resist the process of transition because they see the old order slipping away from them without any empowering alternatives.” 4 Having played within the patriarchal rules for so long, they are loathe to challenge the system in ways that might deprive them of the benefits they have earned, particularly as they age and their authority in the family increases. Women in effect become active collaborators in their own oppression and in reproducing the oppressive system. All these points need to be borne in mind as we seek to evaluate the changes since the beginnings of the liberalizations.
If we examine the actual achievements during the liberalizations in the three countries examined here, the greatest amount of activity of a non-top-down nature—it is difficult to call it purely grassroots, since it still generally involves an urban, middle to upper-middle class elite—has been in Morocco, the only case in which a gradual liberalization continues. Here a number of women’s organizations have become involved, largely since the mudawwanah campaign of 1992, in raising awareness regarding the continuing discrimination against women in Moroccan law. They have also taken the initiative in addressing the issue of violence and sexual harassment against women at home, in the street, and in the workplace. They have emphasized the need for women to become involved more actively in the political process whether as informed voters or as candidates on the municipal or national level. Their activity remains limited largely to Rabat and Casablanca, but the liberalization has provided small groups of activist women opportunities to begin to work for a reduction in the glaring difference between Moroccan women’s social reality and their legal status.
In Jordan, the attempts to revitalize the GFJW and the JWU were both products of the new possibilities offered by the liberalization. While the GFJW languished, mired in a power struggle between Islamist and non-Islamist women, the JWU took advantage of the opening to address many of the same kinds of issues being worked on in Morocco: changing laws that discriminate against women, making women aware of their rights, providing counseling and legal services, and breaking the taboo against discussing the issue of violence against women. However, one of the most important parts of the story in Jordan concerns the reassertion of the state’s role in women’s activity through Princess Basma. While the profile she brings to her efforts is unmatched by any other woman in the kingdom, her association with the regime draws boundaries around the kinds of activities her National Forum is likely to undertake, just as it can potentially be used as a means of harnessing women’s support for the regime. There is no denying that her efforts, in combination with some high-level appointments of women made by the king, have helped to eliminate the novelty of seeing a Jordanian woman involved in politics. It remains to be seen whether such efforts can ultimately help other women, not affiliated with the princess’ efforts, play a more effective role.
Finally, in Tunisia, despite the liberalization’s initial component of energizing the RCD and promoting pluralism, an expansion of women’s groups (or any group for that matter) involved in politics and espousing other than a 100 percent RCD line is clearly not something in which the regime is interested. Indeed, the majority of women’s organizations are involved in activities related to reinforcing the role of motherhood and the family, developmentalist work in rural areas, or encouraging women entrepreneurs. One cannot meaningfully talk about women’s having taken advantage of the liberalization, because it was of too short a duration, and has been followed by a serious retreat into authoritarianism. Instead, frightened by the prospects of an Islamist surge that might have deprived them of their rights and lacking meaningful alternative allies, the women, whether RCD or not, were in effect forced into an alliance with the regime.
In this context it is also important to note that while the liberalization in Jordan has stalled, and that in Tunisia has been turned back with a vengeance, this has not meant that on the surface, women’s rights or status as defined by the regime has suffered the same fate. In Tunisia, Ben ‘Ali further amended the CSP, has made additional high-level appointments of women, and put state money into developing women’s institutes such as CREDIF. In Jordan, getting women involved in the political process and working to end discrimination against women in certain laws continues to attract high-level attention and efforts, most notably those of the princess. Yet it would be difficult to classify these developments as constituting meaningful empowerment, at least in the near to medium term. The degree of progress is more apparent than real, and the benefits are likely to redound most immediately to the leadership rather than to women. If anything, such high-profile efforts resemble those of earlier periods of state feminism, and once again place women in a position of being beholden to the state for their position. This raises anew the specter of backlash in the event of a future regime change.
Finally, all of these cases raise serious questions about the suggestion in the civil society literature, noted in the introduction that women’s organizations may play a vanguard role in pushing for greater democratization. The lessons from the MENA and the other regional cases appear to be that until women’s organizations impose themselves on the political scene as capable of mobilizing to achieve what may be oppositional demands (and not just as capable of channeling women’s energies into activities blessed by the state), the state and other political actors will not feel obliged to respond to their demands (although they may choose to do so as part of a larger political bargain with other actors). Also crucial is the fact that despite the discourse, with only a few exceptions, MENA women’s organizations do not seem to have overcome the problems of internal authoritarianism or what one might call the za‘im (political boss) syndrome. Women’s groups appear to be no more democratic in internal practices and structures than many other “civil” society organizations. The most frank admission and open attempts to deal with these problems came in Tunisia, from women in the various precursors to the ATFD, who were brave and honest enough to engage in a serious autocritique. Such efforts remain the exception rather than the rule.
Benefits Accruing to the Regime or State
The most obvious benefit to the state in the cases of managed liberalizations has been the revival or salvation of the existing regimes, with only minor changes. However, beyond this factor, there are several less obvious developments of which one should take note. The first concerns the benefits that accrue from the expansion of so-called civil society. Here, we have focused specifically on the women’s sector, although examples affecting other sectors abound. The expansion of interest on the part of international aid agencies and other funders has meant that a variety of projects that would otherwise not have been undertaken have been embarked upon. While not all such projects can be described as in line with state priorities, they are also not projects that contradict state interests, and the outside funding enables the civil society organizations to provide a variety of services that they could not have otherwise. As a result, some have charged that the international focus on encouraging NGO development has in fact facilitated the state’s abdicating responsibility for providing critical services.
What appeared more salient in the course of this research was the degree to which the state had succeeded in reconstructing parts of itself as NGOs so as to please international patrons and benefit from the available funding, and yet at the same time maintain control over certain sectors or activities. 5 This problem was obvious in the case of the JNWF, the Noor al-Hussein Foundation, and the Queen Alia Fund for Social Development in Jordan. More problematic was donor support for Tunisia’s UNFT following the changement, after a bitter debate left the union—organizationally and in terms of personnel—still firmly within the control of the RCD. These organizations may well have a greater absorptive capacity and broader reach, but they also threaten to strangle or severely limit the development of genuine civil society activity.
This last point underscores a theme that has run throughout this study, the complex nature of the state. Depending upon time and context, one may find the state promoting women’s rights (e.g. the CSP in Tunisia) or thwarting attempts at reform (e.g., the Jordanian experience regarding the Personal Status Code). There are also examples of apparently contradictory policies at work at the same time in the same country. The explanation is rather simple. States are sets of relations and institutions upon which competing demands are made and through which conflicting interests are contested. Only in the most rudimentary and simple of states might one expect all policies on a given issue—women or otherwise—to be internally coherent and consistent. The state can be a primary instrument in improving women’s status—as the policies of state feminism of a variety of regimes have shown—within certain boundaries. At the same time, it may also be the most formidable obstacle to women’s achieving rights of which the leadership or society is skeptical. Classifying states or regimes as women-friendly (or not) oversimplifies the issues involved just as it obscures what is a continuing political process of defining and redefining state/regime policy and interests on these and other issues.
The Role of Culture
This study has shown that a range of shared political factors has served to form the broad outlines of the possibilities and perils women may encounter during periods of political liberalization: the nature of the transition and the reasons behind it, women’s place in the political system and the public sphere, the role of religious or other conservative groups, and so on. The similarities across regions are striking. During such periods, political and social conservatives of various stripes—and in some cases even so-called progressives—whether of Hispanic, Slavic, or Arab background, and whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim, construct similar programs for women when given free rein and voice: glorification of motherhood, promotion of women as repositories of family honor and societal values, the retreat of women from the work place, restriction of access to various forms of public space, and the like.
Having said that, there is no question that emphases differ. In the Latin American cases, women had to fight for respect for human rights as well as more meaningful state consideration of labor and child care concerns. In Eastern Europe, the record was mixed, and the greatest concern was with economic issues, but the question of abortion seemed to be a unifying theme. In the MENA region, it is the personal status laws, especially those elements relating to marriage, divorce and inheritance, which are the most oppressive and which are the most intractable in the current period because of the prevailing literalist interpretations of the Quran.
One important difference in the role of organized religion relates to the emergence within the Catholic Church of liberation theology. Although clergy and nuns generally did not support a more liberal approach to the questions of birth control and abortion, in some countries they did break with the stance of the church to advocate forms of empowerment that involved both sexes and a right to resist repressive regimes. Indeed, they became a critical part of the support structure for those who opposed authoritarianism as well as, in some countries, a moral conscience, calling for respect for human rights. In the case of Islam, despite the existence of an official religious establishment in most countries, Islamist groups either in legal opposition or completely outside the state have for some time constituted the only significant and broadly recognized oppositional voice in MENA countries. A number of these groups claim to subscribe to pluralistic principles, and given the fact that they have never been put to the test, it would be unfair to dismiss them. The experiences of the Sudan and Algeria (prior to the 1992 coup) certainly give reason for pause, although MENA’s secular “republican” regimes over the years have hardly been paragons of pluralism. Moreover, the surprise outcome of the 1997 presidential elections in Iran shows clearly that Islamic regimes or governance defy simplistic categorizations. The absence of a reformist Islam with a program of public-sphere empowerment of the average citizen (or subject), male or female, is a major difference between the Latin American and MENA cases. Some would argue that Islam is inherently inimical to such a variation. In its current forms, that may appear to be the case, but Catholicism and various forms of Protestantism could easily have been similarly charged in the past. The essentializing of Islam and Islamist societies is as misleading in the MENA region as would be the case for other religions in their home societies.
One could continue to elaborate the particular influence that different cultures have had in further refining the boundaries of the outcomes of the liberalization processes. Suffice it here to end with two points. The first is that while culture clearly does matter, the empirical material does not indicate that it is a variable with exceptional explanatory power, and we delude ourselves if we continue to use it to proclaim broad bases of MENA regional particularism. Second, and more basic, despite the variations in history, culture, religion, and experience, all these cases make quite clear that until women constitute a political force capable of imposing themselves and their program(s) on the national or local stage, they will continue to be in the unenviable position of being bargained above and over by those actors who can and do impose themselves. For women to be full beneficiaries of liberalization, they must be full players in the game. Conversely, for true political liberalization to be achieved, it must meaningfully include women’s movement toward the citizen end of the subject-citizen spectrum. Otherwise, the transitions will remain incomplete, deficient, and unjust. That said, the cases examined here suggest that for many women—in the MENA region and beyond—future periods of political transition will continue to constitute years of living dangerously.
Endnotes
Note 1: Determining what constitutes a threat and who defines it is not a simple matter. It is certainly the case that states can construct a threat where none exists, or exaggerate the dangers involved in a situation in order to justify state policy or distract public attention from other, possibly more substantial, problems. One could argue, quite plausibly, that since its crackdown on the Islamists in 1991&-;1992, that is exactly what the Tunisian state has done. However, I have also felt obliged to report the feelings and perceptions of the many women whose works I read or whom I interviewed in Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco during the course of my research. (See list in bibliography.) If they expressed the sentiment that at a particular point they felt threatened or under siege, I certainly did not feel in a position to dispute the veracity or authenticity of their testimony: they lived through these periods, not I. Again, the fact that some women’s worst fears were not realized does not mean there was no threat. It means that certain factors or elements have intervened to remove the threat. Back.
Note 2: For a thorough discussion of the relationship between the state and rural notables in Morocco see Remy Leveau, Le Fellah Marocain: Défenseur du Trône (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1985). Back.
Note 3: Maxine Molyneux, “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State and Revolution in Nicaragua,” Feminist Studies 11 (2) (Summer 1995): 231. Back.
Note 4: Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2 (3) (September 1988): 279 and 282. Back.
Note 5: I am grateful to Roula Majdalani, ESCWA Amman, for a series of discussions in July 1996 regarding NGOs and the state which helped to shape my thinking. Back.
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