17 November 2011

Tunisian Islamists, Women's Rights: Watch and Wait

.... the recent victory of the Islamist party in the first elections in the post-Zine El Abidine Ben Ali era unsettles those feelings and raises questions about the fate of Tunisia's 1956 Code of Personal Status.

That law was enacted in the newly-independent Tunisia under President Habib Bourguiba and has long served as the most progressive piece of women's rights legislation in the Arab world. It abolished polygamy. It allowed women to purse a divorce and an amended version established a minimum age for marriage with the consent of both spouses. [Women's eNews Inc] Read more