Table Of ContentGender, Textile Work,
and Tunisian Women’s
Liberation
Deviating Patterns
Claire Oueslati-Porter
Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s
Liberation
Claire Oueslati-Porter
Gender, Textile Work,
and Tunisian
Women’s Liberation
Deviating Patterns
Claire Oueslati-Porter
Department of Anthropology, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program
University of Miami
Coral Gables, FL, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-24103-2 ISBN 978-3-030-24104-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24104-9
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This book is dedicated to Faris and Maher.
Acknowledgments
The process of creating this book took many people’s support. The dis-
sertation research fellowship awarded to me by the American Institute for
Maghrib Studies funded this study. Le Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines à
Tunis offered support and practical assistance in the process of obtaining
government permissions to conduct research in Binzart’s export process-
ing zone. Kevin Yelvington’s rigorous and caring mentorship throughout
my research and writing process is of central importance. Juliet Erazo
reviewed and offered detailed comments on this book proposal, and then
reviewed and offered invaluable suggestions to this manuscript. Mia
Leonin’s support for the creative aspects of ethnographic writing encour-
aged me to excavate my fieldwork experiences; she also reviewed and
offered help with the manuscript. Aslihan Akkaya reviewed the manu-
script and provided support and important suggestions. Andrew Porter
offered much-needed encouragement. E.J. Ford’s unwavering friendship
edified me throughout this writing process. Sarah Tobin’s work in the
Middle East continues to be an inspiration. Starting with the weekends
we spent together in Binzart in 2008, Heather Jendoubi helped keep me
grounded during the fieldwork.
My parents, Suzanne T. Gilliard Porter and Terry E. Porter shaped my
ability to think critically and to value the creative writing process. My son
Faris’s presence while I conducted this research kept me deeply aware of
vii
viii Acknowledgments
working motherhood; in the years since 2008, countless conversations
with Faris continue to inspire me. Maher Oueslati’s insights and support
continue to be precious.
Contents
1 T he Paradoxes of Tunisian Women’s Liberation 1
2 Fieldwork and Family 15
3 Producing Factory Femininity 41
4 Producing Men and Masculinity in the Factory 63
5 Female Masculinity in the Factory 81
Postscript: Women’s Work and Revolution 105
Index 109
ix
1
The Paradoxes of Tunisian Women’s
Liberation
Abstract This chapter introduces readers to the research which focuses
on gender and work in Tunisia. The author’s own experiences are impor-
tant to the research. This chapter describes the popular discourse of the
already-liberated Tunisian woman and how it depicts women’s rights as
stemming from Tunisian legal codes. The introduction introduces skepti-
cism around the ways in which women’s rights can obfuscate the realities
faced by many women in the labor force and in the family, the two social
institutions that are most closely scrutinized throughout the book.
Further, liberated Tunisian women are the subject of societal anxiety
about women’s sexuality and power.
Keywords Ethnography • Tunisian women’s liberation • Personal
Status Codes • Class
On my first trip from our home in Miami, Florida, to Tunisia in 2006,
my Tunisian husband Maher and I and our one-year-old baby Faris stayed
with his parents in their apartment in Ezzahra, a suburb of Tunis. My
in- laws lived with two of Maher’s unmarried older brothers, and his
© The Author(s) 2020 1
C. Oueslati-Porter, Gender, Textile Work, and Tunisian Women’s Liberation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24104-9_1
2 C. Oueslati-Porter
then- unmarried younger sister, Kalthoum. As we pulled up at their apart-
ment building, my sister-in-law stood in the courtyard performing ulula-
tion that was audible through the closed car windows.1 As I exited the car,
I remember my father-in-law taking Faris from me. The following days
were a blur of visiting relatives coming to the apartment. They doted on
baby Faris and had a good look at the American wife.
After being in the apartment for a day and a half, as I watched the sun
setting from the rooftop terrace, it dawned on me that I had not left the
apartment to go anywhere for a full two days. While Maher left the apart-
ment with his brothers and father just a few hours after our arrival and
seemed only to come home for meals and to sleep, his sisters and mother
only left the house to do quick errands in neighborhood shops. Being in
the apartment with my mother-in-law and Kalthoum as they endlessly
cooked fabulous meals, cleaned, and served visitors and family, gave me a
very particular first impression about Tunisian gender relations. What I
learned did not jibe with the academic and government descriptions of
Tunisian women’s liberation.
Both my sisters-in-law had remained unemployed for most of their
twenties, despite their college degrees and tenacious job searches. Both
spent many years after graduating college living in their parents’ home,
earning little or no money and having little autonomy. The fact that they
remained unmarried throughout most of their twenties meant that they
remained “girls,” in a cultural sense. They spent their days assisting their
mother, hosting visitors, and serving their male kin.
My eldest sister-in-law Awatef eventually married and moved into a
middle-class neighborhood twelve blocks away from her parents’ apart-
ment. For married women homemakers like her, whose college degrees
were supposed to have opened the door to careers, life is marked by fre-
quent frustrations. “Why did I get this college degree? So I can be stuck
at home, a housewife?” Awatef repeated these sentiments to me frequently
in her perfect British English. She especially liked to speak to me frankly
in English because her husband did not speak English. She acknowledged
her economic privilege as a woman married to a man with a job at a mul-
tinational company, but she lamented that she did not have a chance to
leave her beautiful walled villa for up to four days at a time. She was not
forbidden from going out by her husband, but she was expected to do the
