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Campus de Sciences Po Paris à Menton

Association étudiante Babel Initiative

From Household to Market

* * *

Bashir Bekka and Cordelia Long

[FROM HOUSEHOLD TO MARKET, B. BEKKA, C. LONG] Babel Initiative

Introduction

“Never before our own time were markets more than accessories of economic life;

however, the market mechanism is now empowered to control and direct the actual elements

of social life”– Polanyi1

The modern self-regulating market, in which economic activity is isolated

from the social system, functions only if the elements of industry – labor, land, and

money – are subordinate to its needs. The more “classically liberal” the economy, the

more power the market mechanism has to direct the fate of humans (labor) and their

natural environment (land). It naturally follows that the relative “market value” of a

individual source of labor within the system is directly correlated to its ability to

produce, and the amount and quality of it’s product. The most convincing historical

example of this is the economics empowerment of women as a result of their

inclusion in the work force during the first a second world wars.

Due to this effect on our mindset, an automatic and subconscious positive

instinct is very quickly associated with the worker. Someone who produces and

expends for the society (and for themself) is of, or worth, a specific value. It is this

value that is added to women when they enter the job market and begin to work. Not

only does it raise women in front of their peers, but it saves them from the last of the

three sins stated in Voltaire's famous quote on work: need. If a woman is financially

independent then there is a whole strata of threats and means to control that are

immediately taken away. And as the Middle East steadily applies a free, self-

regulating market structure to their economies, the more significant the gender

distribution in the workforce will be. It is for this reason that we are invested in the

potential for women to create and perpetuate their own businesses, where they are

the master of their fate, the captain of their ship.

1 Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. New York: Octagon, 1975. Print


Our study takes as its basis a vast field of economic, social, and political

studies and articles supporting the significance and effect of female economic

empowerment through Political Representation (2007 Iversen, Rosenbluth,) Fertility

levels (2006 Lim) and Gender Equality (2012 Kabeer).

After independence many factors combined to bring about changes in the

position of women in Tunisia. Legislative changes were made, such as the Code du

Statut Personnel of 1956, which forbade polygamy, introduced judicial divorce for

women as well as men, and set a minimum age for marriage. Women were given the

right to vote and were considered eligible for political office. Education was made

free and available to both sexes, and an ambitious program of school building began

in order to realize these objectives. Women were to be given the same chance of

employment as men, and the same principle of equal pay was to be observed. To

many observers of Tunisia the greatest change has been in the emergence of women

on the labor market. A woman's work is seen as proof of her emancipation, and it is

assumed that a woman's work will automatically affect her private life and bring

about an improvement of her position in her family and society. President Bourguiba

expressed this view during his speech of 26 December 1926. He said:

Female workers must be trained and given jobs. Work contributes to female emancipation. By

her labor, a woman or young girl assures her existence and becomes conscious of her dignity.2

Traditional Attitude towards Women Working

Before independence the only “role” approved for women was that of wife

and mother, although economic necessities often meant that women did in fact work

as agricultural laborers and artisans. Both the colonial situation and traditional

patriarchal norms limited women to the role of wife and mother. While Tunisia was

2 Mercury, Thérèse. La femme tunisienne au travail en usine: aspects psychologiques et sociologiques. These de

IIIeme cycle. University of Aix-en-Provence, 19689


under French rule, Bourguiba and his supporters found it difficult to attack existing

social and religious customs in case they lost the much-needed support of the

traditionalists. Bourguiba refused to attack the veil or to support the criticisms of

Islamic society made by Tahar Haddad in his book Notre femme dans la loi et la société

in 1930, in case it was seen as an attack on the family and religion. Once

independence had been won, however, he supported feminine emancipation and

tried to persuade women to go without the veil, "ce suaire chiffon". While

colonialism did not produce the emancipation of women, contact with French

settlers, schools, newspapers, and films did open up new horizons and modes of

behavior to Tunisian women. An informal feminist and nationalist group emerged in

the 1930s, which in 1955 became the Union Nationale des Femmes de Tunisie

(UNFT).

The traditional interpretation of Islamic norms concerning the behavior of

women was that they should neither have contact with men, nor go outside the

house, nor show their faces unveiled to men not related to them by blood or

marriage. These norms effectively prevented women from working. What is

remarkable, and quite illuminating in the larger scheme of our analysis, is that these

norms were sometimes ignored for reasons of financial hardship in rural areas,

where women worked unveiled in the fields alongside men, or in the case of women

artisans who could work at home on weaving and carpetmaking. In this respect poor

rural women enjoyed a greater amount of freedom than urban women and the

daughters or wives of wealthy rural farmers or landowners who (without the

justification of financial need) were obliged to remain in seclusion as a sign of their

families' social prestige.

After independence in 1956, Bourguiba set out to emancipate women and to

accord them equal rights in the new state they had helped to create. As Henri de

Montéty observed: “The female revolution was more the work of Habib Bourguiba than of

women themselves.”3

3 Montéty, Henri de. Femmes de Tunisie. Paris: Mouton, 1958.


He held the modernist view, propagated by Mohammed Abduh and Qasim

Amin in Egypt, that the traditionalist interpretation of Islamic norms for woman's

seclusion and veiling was a misinterpretation of the Prophet's intentions. According

to the modernists, the Prophet had improved the status of women from pre-Islamic

days. Later, Persian and Ottoman customs had degraded it. However, his concern for

women's emancipation followed more his dedication to a nationalist and socialist

ideal of secularization, participation, and activity by all citizens, than as a result of

women's role in the nationalist movement. Bourguiba's efforts at emancipation,

through the Code du Statut Personnel, as a code wasn’t met with fervent opposistion.

However, the task of changing mentalities was an enormous one, as Bourguiba

himself admitted:

In the task of changing people's mentality, we have difficulty not only with the men

but also with the women themselves, who cling to this state of servility, decadence, and

bondage just as if they considered it their normal state in this base world. (La participation de

la femme rurale au développement économique et sociale, p. 127-130)

Therefore, with the context now in mind, the question remains to what extent

has entrance into the labour market changed the way women are perceived in

Tunisia.

Part I: Economic environment for women entrepreneurs in Tunisia

One of the main issues that post revolutionary governments in Tunisia face is

high unemployment. High level of unemployment was a very strong contributory

factor to the uprising that occurred in 2011 and prior to the revolution the

unemployment rate was 13%. Unemployment is an issue that no post-revolutionary

government has successfully tackled. According to the World Bank, at the end of


2013, the unemployment rate had dropped down to 15.3% which a fall from 16.7%

unemployment at the beginning of the year4.

Under Ben Ali, there was a large public sector but the private sector was not given

much room to develop. High bureaucratic and transaction costs increased the

difficulty of creating and expanding businesses. Under Ben Ali’s government, there

was also a large increase in the number of students graduating from university as

university entrance was not competitive. Unfortunately the supply of jobs for

university graduates was and remains very restricted. There is a demand for manual

labor but university graduates are often unwilling to take jobs that they feel they are

overqualified for. This means that there is a very high level of unemployment at 33%5

among young university graduates and the hardest hit within this demographic are

women.

Overall in the Tunisian economy, unemployment hits women hardest, despite

the fact that there are currently more women graduating from high school and

university. The unemployment rate for women is almost double the unemployment

rate for men. In the third quarter of 2013, the unemployment rate for women was

22.5% while the unemployment rate for men was 13.1%6. Not only does

unemployment hit women harder but there are far fewer women even who elect to

4 The World Bank: Tunisia Overview: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tunisia/overview, 2014

5 Essebsi, Béji Caïd: Babel Group Interview: Febraury 2014

6 National Institute for Statistics: http://www.ins.nat.tn/indexfr.php: 2013

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tunisia/overview

http://www.ins.nat.tn/indexfr.php


enter the labour market. Thus there is a lower participation of women in the labour

market but even women who do participate in the labour market are less likely to get

a job then a man. the graph below shows the evolution of unemployment in Tunisia

since 2006. The red line is the average unemployment rate, the orange line represents

the unemployment rate for women while the yellow line represent the

unemployment rate for men.

Woman rights activists, Bochra Belhaj Hamida argues that women are often resented

for the support they were given by the Ben Ali government and this has contributed

to making their entry and their participation in the labour market more difficult. Ben

Ali’s regime used it’s policy of support for women’s rights to gain support overseas.

The media and the government projected the image that any rights that women had

gained in the half century, were gained because the government had given it to them.

Bochra Belhaj Hamida argues that some men came to resent women in Tunisia

because they believed that they were gaining special privileges. It is true that the

regime did advocate for the rights of women but in real terms in the labour market,

women are still very much at a disadvantage7.

The largest source of job creation in the Tunisian market for men and women

in the creation of small businesses. This is a fact that Ben Ali’s regime was conscious

of and from 2000 to the 2011 revolution, most universities in Tunisia, no matter the

subject taught, were forced to also teach an entrepreneurship class. According to

Professor Raja Cherif, the courses were started to create an entrepreneurial spirit

among students as there were so few jobs available for them when they graduated.

The aim of the government was to encourage students who were not able to find

work to start their own businesses. In support of this aim, private and public sector

incubators were created to help young graduates finance their projects and grow

their businesses. According to the National Institute of Statistics, the number of small

businesses has grown tremendously, the only recurring problem is that very few of

7 Hamida, Bochra Belhaj: Group Interview Babel: January 2014


these businesses once created are able to continue growing. This means that the

market in Tunisia is not very dynamic and there are few opportunities for growth8.

The national institute of statistics only evaluates businesses in the formal

sector but their statistics would suggest that a vast majority of small businesses being

created in Tunisia operate in the informal sector. According to Enda Inter-Arab, the

leading micro finance institution in Tunisia, many women entrepreneurs work in the

informal sector. Professor Raja Cherif quoted a colleague of her’s who argued that

three quarters of women entrepreneurs in Tunisia work in the informal sector. Enda

Inter-Arab started it’s operation in the poorest neighborhood’s of Tunis offering

loans to women trying to start small businesses. They have since expanded across

Tunisia and now also offer financial services to men. Their core business remains

focused on investing in women’s enterprises, which on average have a lower default

rate. Many clients have Enda Inter-Arab run successful businesses and are the soul

breadwinner in their families. Few of the their clients, however, make the transition

from informal to formal.

The fact that many businesses owners and in particular women business

owners prefer to stay in the informal sector is due to both their personal ambitions

and dreams for their businesses but also the high administrative costs of joining the

formal economy. According to Fethi Cherni, the director of Young Projects at Enda

Inter-Arab, many of their female clients ask for loans purely to create a business that

will allow them to support their family. The business is the source of income that will

allow them to pay for their children’s food, clothing and education but they have no

personal ambitions to turn the business into a large operation. Fethi Cherni gave us

the example of his clients in the countryside, the men were often more likely to ask

for more money then they could afford. They had larger expansion plans but also

planned to use some of the money for their own use. According to him, many of their

male clients would use a portion of the loan to go to the cafes during the day. In

contrast, the women were more likely to ask for a small loan that would just cover

8 National Institute for Statistics: Private Firms dynamics and job creation in Tunisia: Tunis, May 2013, p74


the costs necessary to run their business, despite the fact that it is often the women

who take responsibility for the household expenses9.

Part II: Perceptions of women entrepreneurs

Professor Raja Cherif

Professor Raja Cherif is an entrepreneurship professor who had done

extensive research on the ability of women to create and run their own businesses in

Tunisia. She argued that the women who were most able to succeed in becoming

successful entrepreneurs were those who had a strong level of support from their

families and in particular from their fathers.

Professor Cherif has also analyzed the ability of women to insert themselves in

the market. She argues on most of the formal work setting women are able to insert

themselves. They generally put more important on their education then men as it is a

source of legitimacy for women if they are running and managing a company. The

real difficulty for women occurs in the informal setting where many business

negotiations take place. In Tunisia, there is a strong cafe culture; the cafes are places

where men meet after work and during the day and smoke Shisha, drink coffee and

discuss politics as well as business. According to Professor Cherif, many

businessmen develop ties and trust in this informal setting. Although formal

negotiations will take place in the office or the board room, it is often in the cafe that

the relationship between the two business partners will be developed. There are very

few cafes in which women are allowed and it is often frowned upon when women do

enter these cafes. As businesswomen credibility depends on their reputation, they are

unable to take part in these informal meetings which gives the men in the business a

large advantage. Other social norms prevent women from taking part in many of the

9 Cherni, Fethi, Personal Interview, Febuary 2014


activities that surround the business world. For instance, businessmen in Tunisia,

despite being Muslim will often drink alcohol at business dinners. Any

businesswomen who would do the same would be deemed untrustworthy. It is also

more difficult for women to travel on their own to develop their business around the

country. It is of course possible just more difficult.

Professor Cherif described instances of women who have been able to

surmount these obstacles. One businesswomen started hiring male intermediaries to

go to the meetings in the cafe and many of the business dinners. The male

intermediary would represent the interest of the women entrepreneur and would

report back on the conversation and informal negotiations. This strategy was highly

successful but it still alienated the women from a part of the business and forced her

to hire another staff member, thus making her company less productive.

Furthermore, for women who are first starting their business the cost of hiring an

intermediary could sink their business.

Professor Cherif argued that the banking sector is the sector in which women

are still face outright discrimination. Although banks such as Enda Inter-Arab have

allowed for many women to borrow money for their businesses in the informal

economy, it is still very difficult for women to approach traditional banks to borrow

money to set up their businesses. Until recently, many banks would still demand that

a male from the women’s family sign all bank documents. For instance, Samia Ben

Khalifa, the women who pioneered the export of Tunisian handcrafts, set up her

business single handily and travelled throughout the country but the bank refused to

give her the loan, unless her husband countersigned the documents. Furthermore,

Tunisia remains a patriarchal society and where many families are willing to support

their sons initiatives to start a business, they are less willing to support their

daughters same initiative. As you need a substantial amount of support to get a loan,

it is particularly difficult for young women to obtain a loan10.

10

Cherif, Raja: Personal Interview, Febuary 2014


Mrs Raouda Ben Saber

Mrs Raouda Ben Saber is the CEO and founder of a large packaging company

in Tunisia. She is also the President of the CNFCE (Chambres Nationale des Femmes

Chefs D’Entreprises). She has faced many challenges to reach this point in her career.

As the President of the CNFC she helps determine what the key challenges

businesswomen face in Tunisia and she advices the largest syndicate’s of Tunisia

(UTICA) on the strategies they should adopt to help women in the field of business.

Mrs Ben Saber argues that women in Tunisia are independent and have the

freedom to enter into the commercial world. Their independence was given to them

first by Bourguiba and later Ben Ali’s regime but in the period following the

revolution, Tunisian women were forced to fight for this freedom and they will never

stop fighting for their freedom.

Starting a business is difficult for both men and women. Many businesses fail

not matter the gender of the creator but women have to work even harder then their

male colleagues to succeed. Mrs Ben Saber described situations in which she faced a

lot of skepticism because of her gender. One of her strategies of overcoming this

skepticism was finding a male mentor who believed in her ability to bring her plan to

fruition. She argues that the men who are skeptical of businesswomen are just

“machos” and jealous of the success of these women. These type of men can be found

everywhere but it is true that many of them work in the business world. With the

help of a mentor and through her own hard work, she was able to work around

them.

For Mrs Ben Saber, the most important quality a businesswomen must have is

an impeccable reputation. Clients are more forgiving of men as they often start their

business relationship with women with skepticism. A women in the field of business

must therefore insure that she is always more prepared then her male colleagues, as

Mrs Ben Hamida argued a women must “doubler ou tripler d’effort sur tout les


plans: le sérieux, la parole, l’engagement, c’est ce qui fait de vous une femme chef-

d’entreprise reussit. C’est la reputation: la franchise, l’apparence, l’honnêteté”.

Therefore women do face more challenges then men in the business world and the

only way for them to overcome those challenges is work 3 times as hard as the men

in their field.

There are particular points in the development of a business where women

have distinct disadvantage in Tunisia. Like Professor Cherif, Mrs Ben Saber pointed

to traditional financing as the largest barrier to entry for women entrepreneurs. To

get a loan from a Tunisian Bank to start a business, you need a real guarantee,

generally in the form of land. Young Tunisian entrepreneurs also have to auto-

finance 30% of their project in order to approach a bank regarding a loan. Tunisia

families are much more likely to back the projects of their sons and therefore will put

up their own resources as collateral. Furthermore, it is still easier for men to find the

necessary investors for their project as young women do not yet have an established

reputation that would allow them to overcome the initial skepticism that they face as

women. As the head of the CNFCE, Mrs Ben Saber is organizing a conference with

the managers of the largest banks as well as established and new women

entrepreneurs to try and find a way of overcoming this particular barrier to entry for

women entrepreneurs11.

Conclusions

It has been difficult to directly connect the entrance of women into the labor

force to emancipation. From what we can tell most of the changes in the position of

women in family structures have resulted from modernization, industrialization, and

urbanization, rather than from the sole fact the fact of women working. Whether a

woman works or not may be an index of her emancipation, but it is more likely to

indicate financial pressure. It is only among the wealthy or well-educated urban

families that work is approved of in theory as well as in practice. Among the poorer

11

Ben Saber, Raouda: Personal Interview: Febuary 2014


classes the traditional norms that discourage women from working remain

unchanged and the practice is admitted only out of economic hardship.

However it is true that women gain, through working, a new realization of

their own ability to support themselves independently of their family or husband.

They must necessarily feel freer as a result of this possible independence, though few

make use of it and the majority still hand over their salaries to their families.

Although the “working woman” is restrained by the family in the use she makes of

her new contacts, she still goes out of the house, often alone, to her work and meets

workmates outside the sphere of the family. This must, in time, have an effect on her

behavior and attitudes, as she becomes less ready to accept unquestioningly the

authority of parents or husband. She cannot go on indefinitely dissociating the two

roles without grave risk of psychological crisis.

However we believe it is essential to point out the effect of the movements against

Ben Ali, the “Tunisian spring”. On the 13th of August 2012, the anniversary of the

passing of the Personal status code, women from all socio-economic backgrounds

descended onto the streets to protest a law proposed by the Islamist party

“subordinating” women to men. There is a palpable since of rights having been

acquired, and a fundamental opposition to the idea of taking any steps backwards

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