The article I have chosen for review is State and Gender in the

Maghreb by Mounira Charrad. It is her view that the process

through which a State is formulated shapes its legal system and
she presents her case with the comparison of the three States
of the Maghreb Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
These countries are very similar. They compose a geocultural
unit. They were all colonized by the French and gained
independence along the same time (in 1950s-1960s) but they
had very different approaches to legislation concerning the
family. Tunisia made the most changes to the existing setup,
Morocco made the least and Algeria was ambivalent.
Now the traditional explanations emphasize either
industrialization or political ideology or exposure to foreign
culture as influencing the law of postcolonial countries but if
that is true why is Algeria which was highly industrialized, had a
popular socialist revolutionary movement and was exposed to
French culture the longest so ambivalent towards Family Law
while Tunisia is not?
According to Charrad the answer lies in how these states were
formed. States need to consolidate and protect themselves.
Postcolonial societies usually had networks of kinship, ethnicity,
language, caste, tribal or religious connections and colonialism
either strengthened these networks or weakened them.
Therefore postcolonial states had to work within these two
structures.
In the Maghreb the dominant structure was kinship ties. People
declared solidarity over common ancestors. Women were an
important aspect of this kinship structure. They needed to be
controlled so that kinship would not be disturbed. States fix
gender relations through law and therefore State legislation
affects women both directly and indirectly.
We must first take a look at the Family Law in these three
states. The Islamic Code in the Maghreb is the Maleki code. This
gives male members extensive control over females. For

instance, a womans consent to marriage is not necessary.

There is no legal minimum age for marriage. A man has the
legal right to marry as many as four wives (Polygyny). A woman
receives half the inheritance. The laws favour male relatives on
the man's side of the family over the wife or female
descendants.
After independence all three States legislated on Family Law
but this legislation was very different. Morocco basically
codified the same Maleki code in a systematic manner. Algeria
was always ambivalent towards family law. For 20 years after
independence (1962-84) Algeria had no Family Law. Some
changes that the French introduced where preserved but the
basic Maleki code remained in place. Tunisia completely
changed the code and introduced a secular code completely
opposite to the Maleki one. Women were equals in property,
polygyny was banned etc.
Why were there such differences in very similar States?
According to Charrad it was because of the differences in State
formation. The colonial government in Tunisia destroyed the
kinship structure and created a centralized bureaucracy. The
new postcolonial government took over this administrative
machinery and therefore did not face much resistance in
implementing the new Family Laws. In Algeria the colonial
government moved populations to different locales and used
local officials to rule. This strengthened tribal affiliations in
certain regions and weakened them in others. Therefore the
new Algerian government had to face strong resistance from
the tribes to implementing the new laws. In Morocco the
colonial government ruled indirectly through representatives
chosen from the tribes. Therefore the tribes were strengthened
and only tribal law could be implemented.
If these States did not take these actions they would have
collapsed. These states took these actions to save themselves
and were in turn inspired by how these states came into being.