Gender, Work, Locality – Female Protests in Tunisia Re-framing socio-economic Rights as Women’s Rights

This article sheds light on new protest dynamics that emerged seven years after the revolution in Tunisia, incorporating a public emancipation of female protesters from Menzel Bouzaiane, in the center of the country. Presenting two cases of women-led protests, we argue that they express resistance against intersectional structures of oppression, including gender and locality. Drawing on recent scholarship on women’s rights in North Africa and intersectional theory, we show how their realities have not sufficiently been presented in legal debates over the last years and had been marginalized by different expressions of patriarchy: reaching from their families and communities to legal authorities and modern conceptions of nationalism. On the other hand, we show that the process of Transitional Justice, which is now jeopardized, has incorporated the dimension of marginalized localities.