Gender Equality in Tunisia: The EU’s Tripartite Dialogue

To what extent is the EU projecting democratic norms in the area of gender? Gender equality and women empowerment are at the heart of EU’s external action and since the Arab uprisings. This article is an in-depth study of how the EU interacts in practice, and beyond the recipient-donor relationship, with non-state actors in the format of tripartite dialogue. First it reviews what EU democracy projection involves in the field of gender equality. Then it offers a mapping of the local actors active on feminism and gender equality. Thirdly, the article focuses on an innovative practice of trust-building, that of the gender sub-group of the tripartite dialogue. The main argument is that dialogue established amongst the EU, civil society and the Tunisian government, has provided a new venue to project trust-building practices that are central to the consolidation of democracy. Yet this practice is weakened by the lack of considerations of major divides around gender in Tunisian society. Interaction on democratic norms thus remains secluded to a very selective venue. Democracy projection is however not fully ‘transversal’ as the Islamist-secularist cleavage, socio-economic inequalities, and rural-peripheries divides constraint the impact of the tripartite dialogue and subsequent democracy projection.