Tuesday, June 25, 2013
2.21 (Binnengasthuis)
The creation of the “femme musulmane” (Muslim woman) as a category obscured more than it defined. While the term was used by French legislators and social workers alike to describe native Algerian women, it conflated nationality, race, and religion. During the Algerian War (1954-1962), the “femme musulmane” came to the forefront of policy discussions as a crucial way to sway Algerians’ “hearts and minds” during the conflict. As such, the French government attempted to reform Algerian women’s status in society in order to “protect” Algerian women, and to re-affirm France’s ideology of gender equality as the progressive way of the future. The reforms (1958-59) came at a crucial turning point of the war, as the Fourth Republic crumbled away and General Charles de Gaulle established the Fifth Republic. This paper examines how the French government attempted to accommodate Islamic law within their reforms to the femme musulmane, yet never considered how Algerian women understood their roles in their own society. As the femme musulmane became the focal point of government policy, I will show how the government’s understanding of Algerian women’s needs became further divorced from women’s actual concerns. Thus, discourses about this “contested category” during the war set into place a rubric for French discussion about the need to rescue and protect the femme musulmane in the postcolonial period.
