{"id":30514,"date":"2019-01-25T05:23:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T05:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30514"},"modified":"2019-01-25T05:23:30","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T05:23:30","slug":"in-rural-tunisia-inheritance-reform-offers-women-rare-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30514","title":{"rendered":"In rural Tunisia, inheritance reform offers women rare boost"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nJENDOUBA, Tunisia: Tunisian divorcee Latifa counts herself lucky \u2014 she has a modest home that boasts a neat vegetable garden, a fig tree, and a pomegranate tree, along with a panoramic view of neighboring farmland.
\u201cWithout this land that my father gave me, I would be nothing,\u201d she told AFP, happy to have escaped a violent marriage with her two teenage children in Jendouba, northeastern Tunisia.
\u201cI guess it\u2019s part of my inheritance,\u201d Latifa smiled hopefully, surveying a homestead that she built by careful use of the 10 dinars ($3.5, three euros) per day she earns as a laborer on nearby farms.
\u201cBut here it is rare for a woman to inherit land.\u201d
A bill that would equalize inheritance rights between men and women has created debate here in Tunisia\u2019s countryside, where gender discrimination is the strongest and its consequences the most disastrous.
In common with other Muslim nations, Tunisian inheritance law currently provides that a son receive twice as much as a daughter from a father\u2019s estate.
When her father dies, Latifa is counting on her three brothers to let her stay on the small parcel of land she occupies.
They \u201cowe me that \u2014 I am the oldest, (and) I didn\u2019t go to school because I had to take care of them,\u201d said the 48-year-old, who also has four sisters.
Even applying the current law\u2019s 2:1 formula should safeguard Latifa\u2019s future, since the land already granted to her by her father is less than the roughly 3,500 square meters (0.35 hectares) she is entitled to out of a total estate of 40,000 square meters.
But in rural areas, the current law is rarely applied, so male heirs often end up taking considerably more than double their female counterparts.
Latifa\u2019s neighbor Skhyara Bouslemi is less fortunate.
Skhyara has five brothers, including several who have built homes and paddocks on family land.
The land is too small for everyone to have a share.
\u201cThere is nothing left for my sisters and I to take \u2014 what could we do with our share? It\u2019s just 13 square meters,\u201d she sighed.
Skhyara works all day to feed her children and her husband, a sick carpenter.
Latifa has sympathy with Skhyara and others whose brothers leave them with little or nothing.
\u201cOften, the brothers tell their father it would be better if you give us the inheritance to ensure that it remains in the family,\u201d she said.
\u201cA woman who makes her claim is silenced by a small sum of money… (or) a basket of produce from time to time,\u201d Latifa lamented.
She hopes \u2014 without daring to believe \u2014 that the situation will change, thanks to legislation pushed by Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi.
The bill proposes that the inheritances of men and women be made equal, unless the person making the will goes through clear legal channels to state otherwise.
The proposed law change will soon be discussed in committee, before being submitted to a plenary session in parliament.
The legislation has unleashed passionate debate in families, on television shows and among political parties.
It has also reopened a fissure on the place of religion in Tunisian society, as tensions rise ahead of elections later this year.
In the hamlets of fertile Jendouba, many men are anxious to safeguard their privilege.
\u201cI work this land \u2014 it\u2019s normal that I have more than my sister,\u201d said Mehrez Sakhri, who owns one of the farms Latifa works on.
\u201cIt is what our grandfathers said\u201d should happen.
\u201cThis is the way the land has been passed on. Perhaps in 2040, things could change \u2014 but not now,\u201d Sakhri added, as his workers harvested peas.
Mehrez\u2019s father Mohammed is less resistant to change.
Mohammed said he would like to share the family\u2019s 30 hectares equally between his sons and his only daughter, who he \u201cloves very much.\u201d
And making inheritance law equal is not trespassing on religious matters, he added.
\u201cMany people are greedy. They cite the Qur\u2019an to demand a two-thirds inheritance, but when it comes to paying the 10 percent\u201d nobody bothers, Mohammed said, referring to an obligation in the Muslim holy text to pay a tenth of one\u2019s income as alms to the poor.
For activist and lawyer Sana Ben Achour, the unequal inheritance law is rooted in a \u201cpatriarchal tradition,\u201d which is sometimes dressed up in religious terms, leaving women vulnerable.
\u201cIn large parts of Tunisia, women don\u2019t even get the small share of inheritance that they\u2019re entitled to \u2014 especially when it comes to land and homes,\u201d she said.
Without receiving their share \u201cthey can only work, so when a woman retires or is sick and has no income, she falls into a precarious situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JENDOUBA, Tunisia: Tunisian divorcee Latifa counts herself lucky \u2014 she has a modest home that boasts a neat vegetable garden, a fig tree, and a pomegranate tree, along with a panoramic view of neighboring farmland.\u201cWithout this land that my father gave me, I would be nothing,\u201d she told AFP, happy to have escaped a violent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}