Tunisian Women Mobilizing for Equality between National Identity and Beliefs: An Unfinished Revolution?

After twelve years of Arab revolts, Tunisia is going through a decade of profound political, economic and social change, with the main challenges being the establishement of democracy, social justice and the fight against exlusion and gender inequality. However, desipite significant advances in women's rights, Tunisian women are inable to inherit on the same basis as men. A feminist mouvement for equal inheritance was therefore created in 2018, bringing together more than 60 secular feminist associations. They are mobilizing against the Islamic mouvement in order to put pressure on the government to adopt a law for equality in inheritance, proposed in 2018. However, the Tunisian parliament rejected the bill introducing equal inheritance rights for men and women. This is due to the patriarchal societal culture, religion and 'national identity', which is defined in Article 1 of the Tunisian Constitution of 1 june 1959 ans reiterated in 2014. This rejection provoked the anger of some women who mobilized for the adoption of this text.

This paper answers the folowing question: How do national identity and relgion influence the right of tunisian women?

This research is a cross between the sociology of gender, mobilizations, law and Islamic studies. I will opt for qualitative research and an analysis of the archives of feminist associations, in order to understand the influence of national identity, religion, societal culture and law in the creation of inheritance inequalities for women but also in the establishement of effective equality in all areas in post-revolutionary Tunisia.