State discourse and gender inequalities: a case study on Tunisian gender legislation between 2011 and 2021

Abstract

Despite the scholarly attention to the Tunisian Constitution and the 2017 law against violence towards women, the relationship between these texts and the historical trajectory of women's rights in Tunisia has been limited to a focus on the Personal Status Code, at the expense of other social, historical, and political considerations. This study addresses this gap by analysing the impacts of the post-2011 revolutionary context and of democratic transition on the discursive tropes that can be found in these texts. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, this study scrutinises the 2014 Constitution, the 2017 law against violence towards women, and a decree establishing a watchdog on gender violence. It explores how the language in these texts reflects the historical and political context of their enactment, regional dynamics and state feminism. This study of state discourses reveals that Tunisian state discourses perpetuate a hierarchy between men and women through an emphasis on the family as a fundamental social unit, a portrayal of individuals as actors of violence and an overlooking of the role of the state in the creation and perpetuation of gender inequalities. These findings suggest that the legal discourse of the Tunisian state has limited the emancipatory potential of some of its laws and highlight a contradiction between policy goals and their formulation.