Can the law presently in force in North African countries put men and women on an equal footing? In the three countries, social claiming for equality is turned down point blank for non-conformity to Islam, for questions of cultural specificities and Arab-Muslim authenticity.

Beyond national experiences, judicial systems show the same paradoxes: normative duality (profane rule and Sharia considered as immutable), distortion between the law and the facts, shift between judicial norms and economic and social facts…

Since the nineteenth century, however, an intellectual thought, progressively coupled with social action, is trying to further this equality. It was in turns led by Muslim reformists, supporters of modern intellectual renewal and by feminists.

This content is published in French: Les chantiers de l'égalité au Maghreb