Tunisia is regressive in many field - human rights, political freedom, ect.. - but it does excel regionally in one arena: women’s rights.

Tunisian independence leader and first president Habib Bourguiba was a secular, Arab nationalist who was married for a while to a French woman whom embedded him with a feminist zeal. In the Personal Statues Code of 1956, Bourguiba established rights for women that remained unparalleled in the rest of the world.

Women were given the right to divorce, child custody, abortion and polygamy was outlawed. Til this day, Tunisia remains the only Arab country to ban polygamy. But women still lack one fundamental right: inheritance.

It is not that women cannot inherit, they can. But there inheritance is legally less than that of a man. Tunisian lawyer and feminist activist Bochra Bel Haj Hmida has dedicated her life to the cause of Tunisian women. She even once lobbied Tunisian President [tyrant] Bourguiba to spare lives of Tunisians held captive.

Tunisian women are the envy of the Arab world [in terms of rights obtained], but work still needs to done. Not only with regards to the matter of inheritance, but general attitude toward women. As Hmida states women are often made to suffer at the hands of a chauvinistic patriotism:

Western policies versus the Arab region, the oppression sustained by the Palestinian people at the hands of the occupation, the US invasion of Iraq, the Western stance toward democratisation, are all factors that breed closed-mindedness among Tunisian men and women, and their chauvinist national sense of belonging at the expense of human values. Women’s rights are used as a tool of political and national conflict, as well as a tool to impose identity and disseminate backward thinking within society. Women are always first to pay the price.

This is quite astute. It is quite true - though in inexcusable - that when all societies, not just Arabs, feel under attack, a rally-round-the-flag effect takes places and the matter of human rights is brushed aside.

But women in Tunisia face more than that. There is also the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. Although, such views a minority in Tunisia, if not properly checked than at least in some Tunisian regions women will come under stronger pressure to wear the hijab; something that is not wrong, but should be a personal choice.

But in this worthy interview, I believe Hmida’s best point is that while the Tunisian government has strict rules against the hijab in public buildings, those who advocate on behalf of the hijab are often not supporters of women’s rights. Instead they’re often Islamic fundamentalists who wrap their language in rhetoric of “a women’s freedom to where hijab,” if they believed that women should also be free not to wear hijab then they would be fair. But instead they want women not only to be “free” to wear hijab, but to be forced to wear it also well:

Hijab is directly related to this topic since it has to do with a woman’s body and society’s and man’s views of it. In that regard, I am completely against all forms of suppression even if practiced against my opponents. I believe that wearing or rejecting the hijab is a matter of personal freedom. This is how I am basically different from zealous proponents of hijab and those who apply human rights unilaterally, and take advantage of the hijab to serve a political agenda that is totally divorced from a woman’s individual rights. Also, the hijab is a sign of disdain of women, who it is believed should be hidden.

Source: Tunisian women’s rights activist Hmida warns against decline in gains.