Veil as Barrier to Muslim Women’s Suffrage in French Algeria, 1944–1954

Bibliographic Data

ID6147656
AuthorsElizabeth Perego (0000-0001-6075-4371, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume11
Issue2-3
Pages160-186
Publication date2014-06-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHawwa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2078 • E-ISSN: 1569-2086
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/15692086-12341246
OpenAlexW1973568501
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

In 1944, women in metropolitan France and across the French empire gained full citizenship. That same year, French officials enfranchised Algerian Muslim men. Yet, under pressure from the European settler community in Algeria, the French refused to give Algerian Muslim women citizenship. Why did the settler community want to withhold political rights from these women, and how did the French justify their exclusion while permitting everyone else across the empire to become citizens? This paper will argue that, due to settler resistance to seeing the Algerian electorate expanded, members of Algeria’s European community and French officials exploited the veil to emphasize how Muslim society “repressed” its women to the point that they were unfit to exercise political rights. In the process, the veil came to symbolize a barrier between these women and modernity, a constructed meaning that continues to drive secular campaigns against Muslim headcoverings in France and North Africa

Citizenship · Empire · Meaning (existential · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Suffrage · European Political History Analysis · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · North African History and Literature

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