Femmes tunisiennes dévoilées
This report was first aired on Les Femmes Aussi ("Women Also") a television programme, on 1 January 1968. ORTF, the French national agency in charge of radio and television, broadcast that monthly programme from 1964 to 1973. The idea came from the fact that "in 1964, no television programme spoke to women with interest and respect. It was important to show different women in every circumstance of their life, and to try to get that mass of viewers to take them seriously, even though programmes until then had only shown a partial angle on women around the stereotype that boiled down to sewing, cooking and making up." (1)
These images of Women's Day on 13 August 1966 illustrate the emancipation of Tunisian women. Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000), who had been Tunisia's President since 1957, walked towards the crowd and removed the women's sefsaris (2). Bourguiba had crafted Tunisia's independence and instated the Code of Personal Status (3). He had the popular support he needed to break the rules. His reforms for women earned him a death sentence from the Great Mufti of Saudi Arabia.
Bourguiba's constant self glorification for his efforts to emancipate women never stopped: he had a mausoleum built in his honour, extolling himself as the "Liberator of Woman". This unveiling for the media, which was no doubt planned, stages Bourguiba as the man who has wrought women's emancipation alone. He "forged his own legend" (4). The emancipation was controlled (in the presence of colonial troops and the military), almost forced (some women felt embarrassed and clutched their veils) and a touch paternalistic (his pat on the cheek).
A more serious stance on wearing veils resurfaced in Tunisia a few years back. In October 2006, the regime indeed ordered police forces to randomly pull off women's veils in the street. There was more than one side to Bourguiba's gesture but it unquestionably spurred progress. Sophie Bessis, a historian, still remembers the women's retorts to their authoritarian husbands, which she had heard as a child: "Just one more word and I'm off to see Bourguiba!" (5)
(1) Eliane Victor, Les Femmes Aussi (Paris: Mercure de France, 1973), p. 8.
(2) The traditional Tunisian veil, also spelt safsari or sefseri. It is a white sheet covering women's bodies and faces worn out of decency to avoid men's gazes.
(3) Instated by Bourguiba on 13 August 1956, only a few months before the declaration of independence. It abolished polygamy and improved the status of women in society and in their families. It enshrined legal divorce proceedings and banned marriage for girls under 17.
(4) Tahar Belkhodja, Les Trois décennies Bourguiba. Témoignage (Paris, Publisud, 1998), pp. 19 and 191.
(5) Sophie Bessis, Les Arabes, les femmes, la liberté (Paris, Albin Michel, 2007).
