In the secular conservatism of the Arab-Muslim world, Tunisia has broken an old taboo. Everything went in August 2017 when Beji 90 year old Caid Sebsi, president of the country’s Maghreb and Mashrek lab, has set up a commission for individual freedoms and equality.
The commission’s recommendations resulted in a bill defended by the executive. This project stipulates that the general rule will be equality, the option for the Islamic heritage to be declarative before the notary. Caution is therefore required in lawmakers who know he has to face
social and ideological weightings that do not only concern the party
Islamist Ennahda (ally of power, who would not want us to touch the
Sharia and Tunisian identity) but also some currents of left. The concession made to the Conservatives has made it possible to rally several tendencies to this bill, which is still, let us be clear, far from being adopted.
In the coming days, the Tunisian parliament should debate, vote and establish or reject equality in inheritance between men and women. If this were not the case, revolutionary Tunisia would have to contend with a contradiction with the necessary equality which constitutes the foundation of democracy. If the law passes, it will be a first in the
Arab world or even Muslim …
In this regard, we join the position of the Tunisian president saying
that there is no democracy without equality and that there is no real progress
without the abolition of discrimination between men and women “. According to this
brave head of state, Islam has guaranteed the rights and dignity of women.
“Excluding women from equality in heritage by arguing specificity
religion is in opposition to the very spirit of the Muslim religion and the precepts of sharia and is not in line with philosophy and
principles of human rights “.
The Tunisian example reveals the social and cultural weight of Arab and African societies. In Senegal as in Nigeria, two democracies who have just renewed their executives after transparent presidential elections, the woman enjoys in law all her
freedom but must deal with a society that regulates the essentials of this
which belongs to the family and personal status with customary law.
As a result, the modern woman observes a sort of compromise between
modern realities of his business and the cultural “quasi-constancies”
of her status as a woman.
If, on the whole, the idea of equality is accepted, basically, as the
recalls Mouna Kadiri, Director of the Africa Development Club, “to
skills and functions, women receive 30% less
only men”. In the same vein, Seynabou Dia, director of the agency Global Mind, regrets that “only 29% of managerial positions
are occupied by women “. Despite its modernism, the
finance is not the place where parity is most obvious. Advice
Directors and the Management Committees remain strongholds of the order
former curator. The Binta Ndoye Toure (president of Oragroup) do not make legion. Let’s salute, in this closed world of bank executives,
the arrival of Mauritanian Leila Bouamatou at the head of General
Bank of Mauritania. The thirty-year-old completes his first exercise on 31
March 2019.
These different examples denote a shudder. But the social realities are still there, urgent and dramatic. Every year, 1 million women die giving their lives, says Mouna Kadiri. By funding the training of a midwife, or 2,000 euros, we save 500 women according to African Medicine and Research Foundation, the first public health NGO in Africa. The path to freedom is still long. Provided we do not remember that for March 8. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Africa is not yet Switzerland nor the …. Rwanda.