Tunisian campaign against gender discrimination in high schools

A group of young women in Tunisia launched a campaign in protest over the bylaws of the majority of high schools in the North African country, Al Mustaqbal newspaper reported. So-called ‘Manish Labistha’ (I am not wearing it), the campaign demands an end to discrimination against female students in high schools, where they are required to wear pinafores. The social media campaign kicked off last October rejects what it described as a deceitful notion that wearing a pinafore or overalls is a means to conceal social and class differences among students. One campaign activist explained that if it were truly to cover disparities between the rich and the poor, it should apply to both genders. According to the head of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Minya Bin Jami’, the above chauvinistic discriminatory measure conveys a negative connotation that the female student’s figure or body sends disturbing messages to her male classmates. This, she added, clearly violates the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 which establishes and supports gender equality. A male student, Adam Karsi, 17 years, for his part, lamented: “While they teach us in school that men and women are equal, yet in reality this is not the case.” (An Nahar, December 27, 2017)

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