Sunday, October 30, 2011

Women in Tunisia

From the Financial Times:

Suad Abd al-Rahim, a tall, elegant, 47-year-old Tunisian woman with dyed red curls, is no one’s idea of what an Islamist politician should look like.
Yet the businesswoman, who says she has no plans to don the Islamic headscarf, has just been elected to Tunisia’s new constituent assembly on the ticket of Nahda, the Islamist party that has emerged as the strongest political force in the country.
After 22 years of repression under the regime of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president ousted by a popular uprising this year, Nahda has staged a powerful comeback, winning 90 out of 217 seats according to final results of this week’s election.
Now the largest party in the new assembly that will write the country’s democratic constitution, it is poised to lead a coalition government.


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