Tunisia's Modern Woman
Nation-Building and State Feminism in the Global 1960s

Looking at women, politics, and culture in Tunisia from 1950s independence to the 1970s, highlighting the centrality of women to post-colonial state-building.

Amy Aisen Kallander (Author)

9781108845045, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 June 2021

280 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

'… an in-depth study of the evolution of Tunisia's state feminism. With its findings on the collision between modern nationhood and modern womanhood in Tunisia, it will interest both political scientist and cultural scholars of the Middle East and North Africa.' Chaoqun Lian, China International Strategy Review

Claims over women's liberation vocalized by Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba began with legal reforms related to family law in 1956. In this book, Amy Aisen Kallander uses this political appropriation of women's rights to look at the importance of women to post-colonial state-building projects in Tunisia and how this relates to other state-feminist projects across the Middle East and during the Cold War. Here we see how the notion of modern womanhood was central to a range of issues from economic development (via family planning) to intellectual life and the growth of Tunisian academia. Looking at political discourse, the women's press, fashion, and ideas about love, the book traces how this concept was reformulated by women through transnational feminist organizing and in the press in ways that proposed alternatives to the dominant constructions of state feminism.

Introduction
1. Between State Feminism and Global Sisterhood
2. Family Planning as Development: Urban Women, Rural Families, and Reproductive Justice
3. Postcolonial Tunisian Academics: Between International Aid, National Imperatives, and Local Knowledge
4. Fashion, Consumption, and Modern Gender Roles
5. Love and Sex: The Limits of Modern Womanhood and Heterosexual Masculinity
Conclusion: Love, Politics, and Bread.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]