First woman mayor of Tunis on the fight for empowerment
Souad Abderrahim sits at her wooden desk in Tunis. The elegant woman is surrounded by files and documents, all waiting to be signed. Her office is in the building of the Municipal Council chambers in the heart of the Tunisian capital.
The walls are adorned with prints and paintings depicting Tunisian traditions. From the window there are views of the Kasbah up to the bay.
Ms Abderrahim has returned from a forum to support women in rural areas, where she discussed projects to develop new sources of income and establish commissions to guarantee equal opportunities between the sexes.
Ms Abderrahim, 54, became involved in politics in 2011, after the Tunisian uprising that ousted the country’s autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. A former manager of a pharmaceutical company, she made history for women in the North African country just seven years later.
In May, Ms Abderrahim was elected as the first woman mayor of Tunis since the establishment of the municipality in 1858. She follows 32 male predecessors.
Her campaign was supported by the Islamist party Ennahda and she beat Kamel Idir, a former high-ranking official and president of Tunisian football team Club Africain, who was backed by the secular Nidaa Tounes party.
She was the first mayor appointed by an elected city council, and not on the authority of notable families, as was the case until July last year.
Now, the mayor, known officially as the Sheikh of the Medina, the term for a male Muslim leader, is trying to use her platform to further women’s empowerment in the country.
She is far from the classic image projected by the Ennahda party. She does not wear a veil and she defines herself an independent candidate.
“I have being saying this since 2011, our aim is the freedom of all women. The veil is a religious and personal choice,” she says.
“I am not interested in propaganda, I am interested in the results and the confidence of the voters, and putting women at the centre of public debate.”
She has faced criticism from political opponents and her gender has been targeted. Before her mayoral victory, Foued Bouslama, one of the leaders of the Nidaa Tounes secular and modernist party, said “we are a Muslim country, unfortunately here a woman cannot be an imam in a mosque, she cannot be present on the eve of Ramadan night in the mosques”.
But Ms Abderrahim has vowed to attend the celebrations of Laylat Al Qadr, the holy night of Ramadan, in the capital, where the mayor receives the sitting president in the city’s Zeitouna Mosque. “Nothing can forbid me to do so, neither the law nor religion,” she says.
Tunisia has made great strides on gender equality, which has been enshrined in the constitution since independence from France in 1956.
Women have started to work outside the home and last year the government legalised their right to marry non-Muslim men. A law to grant them equal rights to inheritance is also under discussion. Yet in large areas of the country, they are still excluded from public life and are considered second-class citizens. In many areas, emancipation is taboo. Girls cannot live alone or travel without permission from relatives.
But the mayor, from outside Tunisia’s wealthy northern elite, is focused on helping women all over the country.
“Under Tunisian law, there is equality between men and women. All government decrees that forbid women to travel have been abolished. Of course we admit that the situation of Tunisian women in the cities is not the same as the situation in the internal regions,” she says.
“So our steps will all be aimed at economic support for women, to liberate them politically and socially.”
But Ms Abderrahim has also courted controversy for her comments on single mothers. Speaking to Arabic radio station Monte Carlo in 2011, she said that women who have children out of wedlock “should not be protected by law”.
Prominent members of Tunisian civil society have criticised her on her conservative leanings on the role of single women. Her assertions have jarred with her mission to empower women. Some are also concerned about her Islamist ties.
Tunisian actress and playwright Leila Toubel was quoted by French newspaper Liberation as saying: “I do not know if I have to applaud a woman because she is a woman regardless of her retrograde statements. We should remember her statements when she said that single mothers are ‘infamous’ and ‘ethically, they do not have the right to exist’.”
Ms Abderrahim refuses to respond, saying criticism is part of the job. “We have long struggled for freedom of expression. Everyone is free to think what they want,” she says.
The mayor is not focused on being the face of Ennahda, but on what she can do as a rare female voice in African politics.
“The message is that people are giving their trust to women. We must change the mentality, challenge obstacles and break taboos. That’s why I want to give a huge role to women,” she says.
“I think women are writing their own story, not the ones someone else has dictated to them.”