Secular feminism in Tunisia: a political generations approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT We argue that the ‘youth movements’ of the Arab uprisings are better understood through a political generations framework that shifts the analytical lens away from a transitional stage towards a collective identity forged as the result of a major event. We identify a pre-revolutionary generation of feminists, a political generation of the revolution – those who, as a result of the revolution identified themselves as feminist for the first time and, consequently, founded or joined a feminist organization – and an incipient generation of feminists, that emerged from the recent protests marking the 10th anniversary of the revolution. We demonstrate how the revolution created a new political generation of secular feminists that can be distinguished from pre-revolutionary feminism along four important lines: state feminism; decolonization; intersectionality; and their perspective on and use of the term gender. We conclude with a discussion of the fragmentation of the secular feminist movement.