Veil as Barrier to Muslim Women’s Suffrage in French Algeria, 1944–1954

Abstract

In 1944, women in metropolitan France and across the French empire gained full citizenship. That same year, French officials enfranchised Algerian Muslim men. Yet, under pressure from the European settler community in Algeria, the French refused to give Algerian Muslim women citizenship. Why did the settler community want to withhold political rights from these women, and how did the French justify their exclusion while permitting everyone else across the empire to become citizens? This paper will argue that, due to settler resistance to seeing the Algerian electorate expanded, members of Algeria’s European community and French officials exploited the veil to emphasize how Muslim society “repressed” its women to the point that they were unfit to exercise political rights. In the process, the veil came to symbolize a barrier between these women and modernity, a constructed meaning that continues to drive secular campaigns against Muslim headcoverings in France and North Africa.