Abstract

The electoral success of Islamic parties in Arab countries of recent transition has raised questions about policy and legislation on women and family. Pragmatic leaders make reassuring noises, which are challenged by vocal constituencies proclaiming the reinstatement of Sharia provisions and the moralisation of public space. The history of policy on women and families since the early twentieth century indicates that it was dictators, such as Ataturk, Reza Shah and later Nasser and Saddam, who took partial steps for family reforms and female emancipation, often against opposition from religious and patriarchal authorities supported by popular constituencies. Dictatorial and dynastic regimes had largely suppressed the citizen politics of civil society and associational life, benefitting religious and communal networks, which, though politically suppressed, maintained their socio-economic powers as survival units for the popular classes. The emergence of electoral democracy and free elections in the absence or weakness of political institutions and organisations had favoured the populist religious parties. Iraq was the prime and extreme example, where elections brought in fragmented sectarian parties, giving free reign to religious authority over personal-status issues and exposing women to coercion and intimidation. The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and of Ennahda in Tunisia has so far maintained ambiguity on these issues, caught between the pragmatic exigencies for a liberal and inclusive appearance and the clamour of popular conservative and salafist constituencies for Islamic law and morality. The more robust civil society in Tunisia, including women’s organisations, is better placed to resist the religious pressures than their Egyptian counterparts faced with a more thoroughly Islamised society.