Kristine Goulding's article "Tunisia: Feminist Fall?"

In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, governments, activists, and scholars are negotiating the roles that women will play in the emerging political landscape. One such article considers some of the obstacles to women's effective participation in governance in the new Tunisia. In Kristine Goulding's "Tunisia: Feminist Fall?", she lists Islamism as an obvious barrier to women, but the article also proposes women's lack of qualifications as another barrier. For example, the author considers literacy to be a necessary political qualification. Gender-based parliamentary quotas, according to the author, threaten women's equality by undermining the role women might play. In other words, in order to fill gender quotas, there is a real possibility that unqualified women will win seats. However, the author does not define what is qualified and what is unqualified, other than to mention literacy and formal educational levels.

This is a sad norm among feminist writers. This particular article even concludes that if women are not represented, they are to blame for not being "ready or willing". The point is subtle, as the author craftily maintains gender-neutral grammar. However, it is certain that the author means women and not Tunisians. For example, in the paragraph that immediately precedes her statement about the readiness or willingness of the people, she is specifically speaking to women's qualifications, and especially rural women's lack of qualifications. And after she makes her point, she laments that only the Tunisian government and political elites really "get it" in terms of women's participation and equality for all. It is, sadly, a typical conclusion, but all the more frustrating coming from an otherwise excellent set of articles.

In the rest of the article, she makes some interesting and important points. It is just a shame that she falls in the same "illiterate equals obstacle" trap rampant among scholars and practitioners.