Women in Government, and Tunisia’s Secular Experience

I thought that this article from The Atlantic was really interesting seeing as it points out that Tunisia has been a democracy for a day, and is already predicted to have more political representation by women then the US. I think this is an interesting point seeing as the West has been concerned about progressive politics, but with 3x as much representation by women in the government, it seems as though Tunisia has made more progress in one day then predicted. I know this is an early stage of their democracy so things might change, but so far Tunisia appears to be on the right track.

The article also address why the PDP (the Ennahda’s biggest opposition) has been trailing so far behind Ennahda. The article states that PDP did not oppose Ben Ali regimes but rather they tried to address some of the problems under him. In my opinion, I also think that many people in Tunisia knew who Ennahda was but didn’t have a background knowledge on the other parties. This lead to people voting based on what they knew. In addition to this, Ben Ali opposed all religious parties so the people in Tunisia saw what it was like to be governed under “secular” policies, which didn’t fare well for them. So I think that they were driven to the Islamic party because they had a negative experience under secular rule.

To view the article click here!

*this article also has a list of the parties and what they represented!

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