"Men promise a lot to women, but when 'Mustache' comes to power, nothing happens." Feryel Charfeddine has a weary smile. The place of women in Tunisia? A few days before the first round of the presidential election of September 15, many are part of their disenchantment.

Passionate activists, simple women on the ground or former elected officials, they do not expect "much" from the ballot. Like Feryel Charfeddine, leader of an association fighting against violence.

"I'm not pessimistic, I'm realistic," says this young woman, alarmed by what she said to see every day on the ground: increased violence, rights decline, conservatism of society. "Women are no longer interested in politics, unconsciously they know it's the same patriarchal system that continues."

"We are in the alibi"

Highly prominent in the protests that brought down the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, electorate courted in previous elections in post-revolutionary Tunisia, women are largely absent from the campaign of 2019, which focuses on security issues or economic.

Out of 26 candidates, there are only two candidates: an anti-Islamist lawyer, Abir Moussi, and a former minister, Salma Elloumi. "We are in the alibi," sighs the lawyer Bochra Belhaj Hmida, elected to Parliament since 2014, who withdraws from politics.

"I had a very rich experience, but I leave politics without regrets," says AFP this figure of feminist struggle in Tunisia.

Without dwelling on violence in politics, the one that was at the heart of a campaign of insults and denigration because of her fight for the equality of succession between women and men, a highly inflammable subject in the country, says: Men expect women in politics to be as uncomfortable as possible, not to debate, and especially not to decide, I have lost many male friendships. "

She also mentions the lack of feminine solidarity, "as if there was only one place to win and the others had to be dismissed".

"We are better off, but between having good laws and enforcing them ..."

This sometimes trying climate dissuades engagement. "Women do not feel supported and there is no willingness on the part of political parties to change that," says Zyna Mejri, a young activist.

However, since independence, Tunisia has been considered a pioneer of women's rights in the Arab and Muslim world, with the adoption in 1956 of the Personal Status Code, which abolished polygamy and repudiation.

In recent years, the late President Beji Caid Essebsi, who boasted of having been brought to power by the voters, had several important texts passed, such as a law against violence against women or the repeal of a circular. forbidding to marry a non-Muslim.

"It's true that we are better off, but between having good laws and enforcing them ...", nuance Zyna Mejri, for whom the fight goes through a "change of mentalities" in Tunisia.

"Schizophrenia," says Feryel Charfeddine, pointing to the gap between the image of the progressive country and the conservatism of society.

Bochra Belhaj Hmida often faced the aggression of young men who did not understand his fight for equality. But she remains convinced of the need to debate, including in the violence, and admits having nuanced his point of view.

"When I managed to establish a dialogue with some of these young people, it also opened my eyes, I became aware of their frustration, of the look they think the 'bourgeois' have on them."

The question of whether Tunisian society is "ready" for more equality makes Yosra Frawes, president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, roar.

"The question does not even arise, equality is a universal principle," she retorted. Even though she finds "a huge setback" of women's rights on the ground.

She cites jumble, the growing difficulties in sexual and reproductive rights, the degradation of access to care, especially in rural areas, and the impoverishment of women.

According to a recent study by the ATFD, more than 80% of the agricultural labor force in Tunisia is made up of women and the association has denounced the precariousness of this labor force "corvéeable to thank you".

With AFP