Celibate Women, the Construction of Identity, Karama (Dignity), and the “Arab Spring”

Abstract

Studies of the “Arab Spring” have tended to focus on the economic and political needs of youth, but have not addressed socio-psychological needs such as an unfulfilled desire for marriage and its social consequences. This article discusses the case of celibate women in Tunisia who, because of the high rate of youth unemployment and its social consequences, find it difficult to accomplish the rites of passage that would take them from childhood to adulthood and allow full integration into the community. In order to gain control over the self in a social context that was dominated by a dictatorial state, they have chosen a form of asceticism, wearing the hijab, reading the Qur’an, practicing daily fasting, and re-negotiating hudud – that is moral boundaries and legal limits that have long been a subject of wide debate and of social reforms; at the same time, they support women’s rights as expressed in Tunisia’s Personal Status Code. Particular attention is paid in this article to the political discourse after 2011 and efforts to construct a “moral personality.”