Judging Women’s Rights, Gender & Citizenship in Ben Ali’s Tunisia

Sarah Grosso, PhD (LSE, 2014), teaches at Webster University. A counsellor and consultant, she has worked for international organisations including UNICEF, UNESCO and the ICRC. Sarah has published articles and book chapters on Tunisia, women’s rights, gender and anthropology.

Acknowledgements



Part 1: Dark and Light

1 Prologue: Engendering Change

 1 La vie en mauve: Documenting Women’s Rights in the Time of Ben Ali



2 Encounters: Judging Citizenship

 Interlude: the Bourguiba Institute of Modern Languages, April 2007



3 Law Lessons: Judging the Law

 Interlude: Ministry of Statistics, May 2007

 Interlude: Before and After: Marriage and Divorce



4 Before and After

 1 Tradition or Innovation?

 Interlude: Judging Divorce



5 Gendered Judgement

 1 Ambiguous Spaces

 2 Extraordinary Ethics

 Interlude: Seeing beyond the Veil



6 Dislocation: Where Judging Begins

 1 Dislocated Selves

 2 Dislocated Places: Fields

 3 Dislocated Judgement

 4 Dislocated Morals



7 Listening to Silences

 1 Encounters

 2 Connections

 3 Listening to Silences

 4 Anthropologist or Spy?

 5 Encounters in the Fields

 6 Vulnerable Lives



Part 2: Family

 Interlude: Knowing Whom to Trust



8 Becoming

 1 The Safety Pin

 2 Seeing the Invisible

 3 Performing Identity



9 Creating Homes



10 Creating Friends

 1 No Return



11 Marriage Is like a Watermelon

 1 Consent



12 Creating Marriage

 1 Mother and Daughter: Marriage across Two Generations



13 Good Wife; Ideal Husband

 1 Good Wives

 2 Ideal Husbands

 Interlude: Finding the Ideal Husband?



14 Sex and the City



15 Making a Living

 1 Shrinking Families

 2 Increasing Living Costs

 Interlude: the Hunter and Rim (Part 1)



16 Woman’s Work

 1 Real v Ideal

 2 Dislocated Marriages

 Interlude: Reciprocity

 Interlude: the Unthinkable



17 Breaking Marriage: Those Who Can(not) Divorce

 1 Those Who Did Not Divorce

 2 The Stigma of Divorce



Part 3: Law

 Interlude: in Between



18 Court House

 1 Setting the Scene

 2 Outside In



19 Inside Out: the Court Office

 1 The Court Staff

 2 From Morouj to the Court: the Story of Karima

 3 On Marriage and Motherhood

 4 ‘Family Atmosphere’ and Neighbourhood Spirit

 5 Attitudes to Divorce

 Interlude: Judge and Justice



20 From Both Sides: Encountering the State

 1 Navigating Legal Territories

 2 Judging Ideal Husbands and Wives



21 Under the Spotlight: Public Hearings

 Interlude: the Hunter and Rim (Part 2)



22 Seeing Like a Court



23 Behind the Scenes

 1 Reconciliation?

 2 Reconciliation Sessions: the Legal Framework

 3 Defining ‘Harm’



24 Reconciliation as Theatre

 1 The Reconciliation Judge: ‘I Must Make Them Feel I Am Not Judging Them’

 2 Suspicion and Sympathy

 3 Deconstructing the Ideal Husband

 4 Deconstructing the Good Wife

 Interlude: Maktoub (1)



25 Stepping Out of the Page



26 A File Is Born

 1 Making Files

 2 Making Evidence

 3 Proof of ‘Harm’



27 Maktoub: Documenting Divorce for Harm

 1 Litigant Strategies

 2 Documenting Bad Husbands: Not Maintaining the Family

 3 Documenting Bad Wives: Leaving the Marital Home

 4 A Tale of Two Contrasting Cases

 5 Listening to Evidence



28 Maktoub: Poetic Justice in Divorce without Grounds

 1 Customized Arguments

 2 Writing Good Husbands and Wives



29 The Cost of Divorce

 1 Battles for Compensation

 2 Writing Morality and Legitimacy



30 Dislocated Families

 1 The Real Cost of Divorce

 2 Gendering Parental Duties: the Legal Framework



31 Making ‘Bad’ Mothers

 1 Absent Mothers

 2 Unfit Mothers

 3 (The Loss of) Custody as a Cost of Divorce

 4 Interest of the Child



32 Politics and Patriline

 1 Breaking Families



Part 4: Judging Women’s Rights

33 Towards a Relational Reading of Women’s Rights

 1 Women’s Rights; Men’s Wrongs

 2 Recreating Gender and Citizenship

 3 Relational Rights: Family Law Begins at Home

 4 Performing Citizenship

 5 Smoke and Mirrors: Judging Women’s Rights



Afterword: Available Light



34 Reflections on Women’s Rights in Post-revolutionary Tunisia and Beyond

 1 Safeguarding the PSC

 2 ‘Same, Same, but Different’: Defining Gender Equality

 3 Reforming Gender since the 2011 Revolution

 Interlude: The Two Hajj

 4 Seeking Authenticity: the ‘Real’ Tunisia?

 5 Inspiration: Transposing Women’s Rights

 6 Listening to Men

 7 Finding Light in Dark Places: Reading Women’s Rights

 8 Glimmers: the Joys of Fatherhood

Bibliography