Women’s policies, men’s politics ? Towards a gendered division of labour within the Tunisian Parliament (2011-2019)

On July 25th 2021, President Kaïs Saied shut down the Tunisian Parliament. This coup came in the wake of a strong antiparliamentary movement. Various criticisms condemned the violence between MPs, their clientelism, as well as their inability to pass new laws. However, since 2011 the Parliament played an important part in the restructuring of the political field: new alliances were made, new parties were created. The 217 new MPs incorporated new and old ways to do politics and interacted with a wide range of actors – from legal advisers to international observers. More specifically, women MPs who were often novice to politics, managed to conquer important positions within the Assembly, even though most of them carried a triple bind: being women in an androcentric space, being Islamist when political Islam was subjected to repression until 2011, and being part of the diaspora when mzigri were disqualified as legitimate political actors. Based on 110 interviews with MPs and their entourage, eight months of observations, and sociographic datas, this paper argues that a new gendered division of political labour takes place within the Tunisian parliament and paves the way to a gendered circulation of actors in places of power.