New President of Women Democrats: A Feminist Revolution that Triumphs over Mediocrity and Reaction!

After her election as a new president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Naila Zoghlami confirmed that the association will defend the economic and social rights of women and equality in inheritance. This came immediately after the end of the work of the 13th conference of the “Tunisian Association of Democratic Women” with the election of a new executive office that will lead the women’s organization.

Naila Zoghlami stated that in such political, economic and social contexts in which threats against women rise remarkably as it varies between economic and social violence in addition to the extension of populist and reactionary currents that are hostile to women and their rights, the role of the association has become increasingly important.

The health conditions and the seriousness of the epidemiological situation that the country is going through prompted the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women to postpone its thirteenth conference before a decision was taken to hold it while adhering to preventive measures and adopting modern communication techniques to enable those involved to participate in it.

A conference that started last Friday and ended by Sunday with elections for a new executive office consisting of nine members who distributed tasks among themselves and elected Naila Zoghlami as the new president of the association.

This conference was held in difficult circumstances characterized by a serious health crisis that necessitated the adoption of strict measures to ensure the protection of the health of the conference participants and guests. The means of remote communication were relied upon and resorted to in the voting processes and the discussion of the financial and moral reports.

According to the association’s new president, this reliance on modern technologies resulted in a successful conference, a conference whose slogan was “a feminist revolution that triumphs over mediocrity and reaction.”

The new managing body of the association considers that the current political situation in the country, with its fragmentation and the rise of a reactionary and populist tide, raises fears about the fate of the country and the protection of women’s rights and individual and public freedoms, which are now under threat, as the right to health and work has been retracted by the state that resigned and withdrew from all its responsibility towards its citizens, leaving particularly women in difficult and dangerous situations.

The epidemic has contributed to complicating the situation of women in Tunisia, as economic and social violence and physical violence against women have multiplied, and women have become the most vulnerable to it. Here, Naila Zoghlami indicates that the association will continue its work in defending women and their economic and social rights.

The association is described as a tent for all Tunisian women, including abused and dismissed women, domestic workers and others whose economic and social rights will be defended by the association, especially during and after the epidemic period, given that women will be more affected by the economic and social repercussions of the epidemic.

Here, Naila Zoghlami points out that the file of economic and social rights, in addition to the file of equality in inheritance, will be a top priority for the association, which will stand to defend women’s rights against the reactionary and populist tide that targets them and that, according to Zoghlami,  has emerged strongly in the Tunisian scene in light of the dispersion of progressive political forces and that it promotes a discourse and policies that raise the association’s fear of the rights of women, marginalized people, and minorities who are subjected to social stigma and exclusion.

She also says that the women, the marginalized and the stigmatized are the ones that the association defends and it will continue to defend with its partners who believe in a civil state that respects the rights of all its citizens.

Here, too, Naila Zoghlami stresses that the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women has opened up to intersectional work and will continue to do so with the aim of defending and fighting for the benefit of all those who are stigmatized and excluded in society. The association will continue its work to change the discriminatory laws and put an end to the culture of inferiority viewed by all the marginalized.