States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (review)

BOOK REVIEWS States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco Mounira M. Charrad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xviii + 341 pp. Bibliography, index. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-520-07323-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 0-520-22576-7. Reviewed by I. Okwuje, Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. In parts of the Islamic world, fundamental in discussions of women's rights are personal status codes or family law (concerning marital duties and responsibilities , divorce and repudiation, inheritance, child custody, amongst others). At stake is the very vision of kinship and family, of community and society on the whole. In preserving or reforming family law, a state maintains or redefines rights and obligations pertaining to men and women in the family , the community, and the society. The puzzle posed in States and Women's Rights is explaining how the three Maghrib countries—Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco—geographically contiguous, comprising predominantly Arab-Islamic societies, with French colonial histories and emergence as independent nation-states within the same historical period, could yet follow different paths with respect to family law and women's rights in the aftermath ofindependence. The main question is one of how structural and historical forces in the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras contributed to processes of state formation that witnessed significant reforms in family law and an expansion of women's rights in Tunisia, and a preference for maintaining the social and political status quo within which JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST WOMEN'S STUDIES Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 2005). C 2005 BOOK REVIEW œ Hl women experienced subordinate legal status in Algeria and Morocco. Charrad argues that in spite of similarities, these three countries differ on "the extent to which the newly formed national state built its authority in alliance with kin groupings or, on the contrary, on bases independent ofthem" (2). At the heart of these kin-based groupings is a family model within which extended malecentered patrilineage, legitimized in Islamic law, serves as the very foundation of asabtya, clan solidarity or "unifying structural cohesion." While the prevailing model relates expansions or Limitations ofwomen's opportunities and rights to pressure "from above" and "from below" by social and political movements, Charrad posits a slightly altered framework to approach state policies and gender in the Maghrib region. "When dealing with the development of the state in the Maghrib and in other parts of the Middle East," she notes, "we must confront the central importance ofkin-based tribal groupings" (8). Particularly as pressure from social, political, and women's movements have been non-existent or very limited in the region, reforms have come almost exclusively from the ruling elite in power after independence . It is worth noting that although a women's resistance did emerge in 1981 in Algeria in opposition to proposed conservative family law legislation, a conservative Family Code was ultimately adopted in 1984. Conversely, in Tunisia, the country exhibiting the most radical and progressive reforms, there was no grassroots pressure from below by an organized women's movement. Charrad argues that state-tribe relations are a critical variable in shaping state policies on women's rights and family law. Tied to the issue of state-tribe relations, or the extent of social segmentation versus state bureaucratization after independence, are three historical dimensions of each country: 1) precolonial strength of tribal groups, 2) the form of French colonial rule, and 3) the characteristics and strategies of the national state that emerged from the nationalist struggle. Long-term structural forces and short-term political strategies combined to make reform unlikely in Morocco, improbable in Algeria, and possible in Tunisia. Unlike Morocco or Algeria, Tunisia entered the colonial period with a semblance of bureaucratic centralization. French colonial rule furthered this centralization, further weakened tribal-based power bases, and left Islamic family law essentially as it had been upon their arrival. As Tunisia emerged as an independent nation-state, the extent of centralization was greater than that of its neighbors. A mostly urban-based political elite developed in relative autonomy to tribal kin groupings and strategized to marginalize and eradicate any remaining political, cultural, and economic tribal...