JUDGING WOMEN'S RIGHTS:
GENDER & CITIZENSHIP IN BEN ALI'S TUNISIA
"Tunisia has often been commended for its progressive stance on women’s rights and viewed as a role model for family law reform in the Muslim world. Judging Women’s Rights, Gender & Citizenship in Ben Ali's Tunisia weaves together intimate stories and theory to demystify claims that the progressive laws supported gender equality in practice. Through the eyes of citizens and legal professionals, it reveals how women and men experienced their rights under Ben Ali’s repressive regime, tracing connections between gender, ethics and the law. This accessibly written book provides a vital backdrop for understanding contemporary debates in Tunisia where women’s rights remain a hotly contested topic."
Published by Brill as part of their series on Women and Gender: The Middle East and the Islamic World
My book
Researching and writing this book was a labour of love. It is the result of almost five years living in Tunisia, learning Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, living with a local famliy and observing in a family court. I feel immensely grateful to all those who supported my research. It was a privilege to gain such insight into the life in a different culture. It is this learning - about Tunisia, legal reform, gender, women's rights and anthropology - that I hope to convey to others in this book.I wrote this book after several years of teaching anthropology and gender at Webster University Geneva. I really wrote it for my students and for colleagues to be able to use in class. It is broken down into bite sized pieces and into sections that relate to some key topics in anthropology: family, marriage, gender, identity, the law, the state and citizenship, as well as giving a sense of what it is like to do fieldwork. It is made to be a companion text to a textbook (like Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology). You can find a brief extract and an overview to give you a taste of the book below.
If you would like to use the book in your teaching, you are welcome to reach out in case I can offer any support.
EXTRACT.
DARK & LIGHT
"The moments when I understand nothing, I learn the most. In these moments, dark becomes light.
A safety pin appearing, as if by magic, on my bedside table teaching me about trust and friendship.
A glance, a sigh, a silence leading me to ask a question I would not have asked.
The look in the judge’s eyes when litigants argued. The look in the judge’s eyes when a mother said she could not take care of her own children.
The difference in meaning between a wink and a second wink responding to the first wink.
Scientists estimate that only 5% of the universe is made up of normal matter that we have been able to observe; 27% of the universe consists of dark matter and 68% of dark energy; it surrounds us, yet we remain unaware, unable to perceive its presence or its significance in our
lives (NASA, 2022).
Anthropology became a burning passion precisely because it helped me look beyond. Through encounters with others and their infinite patience and generosity, dark matter was slowly revealed and began to take on meaning."
Grosso, 2025: 8
PART 1 - DARK & LIGHT
Anthropology can help shed light on dark places. This first part of the book introduces how I see anthropology as the craft of "hunting for and interpreting stories" that are not usually heard. It also provides a foundation, introducing you to the reform of women's rights - in marriage and divorce - that I explore in my research. Tunisia is well-known for having radically reformed these rights. I wanted to know how these legal changes impacted men and women in practice, both at home and in the courts.
PART 2 - FAMILY
In this part of the book, I bring you with me to the neighbourhood and family home where I lived for 6 months and visited for many more. We get to see how marriage and family life play out against the backdrop of the reformed legal rights in marriage. Not so long ago, the neighbourood had been nothing but fields. We get to see how people made an empty field into a loving home and thriving community. We also see how people build relationships and marriages in this context, including how economic changes were shifting the roles of husbands and wives. You can see how marriages are made and can meet some who - despite the legal right to do so - did not feel able to file for divorce.
PART 3 - LAW
In part 3, you come with me into the court house where, over two years, I spent time in the family court handling divorce cases. We get to see how connected the court is with the neighbourhood and its morality and how litigants, lawyers and judges navigate and implement the reformed divorce laws. You can also look into the confidential pages of divorce files that are central to these cases and where people negotiate their rights in divorce along highly gendered lines.
PART 4 - JUDGING WOMEN'S RIGHTS
My research showed me that we cannot think about women's rights or gender outside of the relationships in which they are lived and experienced. Legal rights cannot be understood without considering the relationships in which they are broght to life from our most intimate relationships in the home to our broader, more impersonal relationship with the state and those (like the judge and court clerks) who represent the state. The laws provide the stage, but how people experience the law - and whether it brings a sense of justice - hinged on how the law was played out by all these different actors. In turn, these experiences also shaped how people thought about the state itself and were a source of its own legitimacy.
The book concludes with a short meditation on the reforms that have happened since my fieldwork that took place under Ben Ali's regime and how this work can be relevant to understanding the legal reform of women's rights in other contexts.
REVIEW
"Judging Women’s Rights: Gender & Citizenship in Ben Ali’s Tunisia can definitely serve as a reference for anybody interested in learning about the intricacies of the Tunisian legal system, women’s rights in the context of family law, and gender relationships within an Islamic culture. Further, her ethnographic study could be used by future scholars as a point of departure to compare and contrast the content of family codes in countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria whose political regimes are quite different."