Fatma Zohra Mebtouche Nedjai Université Mouloud Mammeri

Fatma Zohra Mebtouche Nedjai
Université Mouloud Mammeri, Département de
Tizi Ouzou, Algérie,
Courriel :[email protected]
WORKSHOP 4
The Insidious Violence: A study of husband-wife power relations in the Algerian
Context
1 Abstract:
The Insidious Violence: A study of husband-wife power relations in the Algerian
Context
The denial of the ‘Other’ is one mark of power relation that characterizes gender,
in general, and wife and husband relation in particular. It is one of the multifaceted
ongoing manifestations of violence that are labelled into direct and indirect forms. If the
former practices such as rape, honour crime, sexual abuses, and physical injuries are
easily identifiable and widely condemnable, the latter embodied in the husband’s
interference in his wife’s personal decisions and desires remains obliterated because it is
done in an insidious way. Such an indirect violence against woman is often based on the
denial of the ‘Other’, i.e. woman whose dignity is denied as she is considered as a person
unable to think and to control her destiny (Simone de Beauvoir). The total subjection of
wife by husband was legitimized by both Islamic religion and patriarchal ideologies. To
put it in the Islamic theologist, Abdelhamid El Ghazali’s terms, the marriage relationship
was defined as a relationship of enslavement. The blindly overall obedience required
from wife has greatly reinforced man’s power to a point that he has allowed himself the
right to be her eternal tutor who can think, act and decide on her behalf. The husband’s
ability to permit/ prohibit everything to his wife is, for us, a kind of euphemistic
expression referring to indirect violence.
Regardless of level of education, age category and social status a woman might
have in the public sphere, she has to accept the status of a minor person in the private
sphere in order not to expose herself to the husband’s verbal and or physical violence and
maltreatment (F.Z. Sai). This type of violence seems to be psychologically more
destructive of the moral and mental integrity of individuals to such an extent that they
consider it as a constitutive component of the Algerian society, impossible to be
subverted, as affirmed by Slimane Mdher (1997).
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it strives to identify and analyse how
the violent male’s empowerment that consists of usurping the woman’s right to take
freely her own destiny in terms of the right to work, the desire to own wealth, the ability
to freely spend her money or even the desire of paying her parents a visit, and the way of
2 dressing up has been constructed trough ages. Second, it will discuss the strategies and
negotiations women should rely on in their permanent struggle to rehabilitate/negotiate
their dignity as full citizen, and how they could circumvent the subtle violence they are
confronted with on a daily basis. It is within these conflicting views on power inequity
between husband and wife that lead to the denial of woman’s psychic, social and
intellectual integrity, as a consequence of collective violent “conspiracy” that our survey
was achieved.
This research uses multidisciplinary methodology based on anthropological and
sociolinguistic approaches and discourse analysis.We applied discourse analysis with
specific focus on Gumperz’s interpretative contextual theory.
The results of the survey revealed that a relatively important awareness is
emerging within our informants. A fact that enables us to affirm that some wives are
setting up the premises of their emancipation by claiming their rights to be recognized
as fully mature and responsible citizens in order to get control over their lives. However,
some of them still show great linguistic insecurity to debate their rights as emancipated
wives or claim overtly the importance of the recognition of their mental integrity in faceto-face interaction with their husband.
Key Words: Patriarchy,husband’s power, denial of wife’s dignity, insidious violence,
Algerian society.
3 Paper
The Insidious Violence: A study of husband-wife power relations in the Algerian
Context
Introduction
Domestic violence is practised across the world, appears in various cultures,1and
affects people in lot of societies, irrespectively of their economic status and gender. As a
matter of fact, modern attention to domestic violence began with the women's movement
of the 1970s, particularly within Feminism and women's rights, as concern about wives
being beaten by their husbands gained attention. “Domestic violence also called domestic abuse,
spousal abuse or intimate partner violence” has multifaceted aspects and can be defined in many
ways (Shipway 2004) .According to the definition provided in the Unicef Digest
(2000:6), it includes physical, and psychological aggression, sexual abuse and
controlling. Marriage relationship represents the frame in which most of domestic
violence is recorded, reports the Algerian Study2. The legist doctor, Francois-Purssel, in
his book on medical ethics distinguishes conjugal conflict from conjugal violence. The
first points out two protagonists who enter into confront with each other on equal bases
and each of them attempts to persuade the other from his point of view to win the object
of conflict. The second is due to a relational system in which one of the two partners uses
physical or psychological violence as a means of controlling the other (AVIFE,
2010:80)3. If it is easy to quantify physical violence trough judicial or medical
institutions, especially when denounced, it is more difficult to study covert violence
which we call the
insidious violence that seems to be constitutive of the Algerian
patriarchal society as confirmed by (S. Madher,2010.)4. Among the types of the insidious
violence, we retain the husband’s controlling wife’s freedom5 and his denying her
individual identity .
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it will explore how unequal power
between husband and wife has been culturally and historically constructed and
4 legalized by patriarchal ideology, oral tradition and religious orthodoxy, leading,
therefore to husband’s violence6 against his wife by denying her dignity as a full
citizen that aspires at freedom of action and thinking. Second, we will try to discuss
the woman’s attitudes towards violence through discourse analysis. We also intend to
study this issue, in depth, from both anthropological and sociolinguistic point of view
within the frame of gender studies which negatively point at patriarchy.
1)Gender Relation Construction
1.1 Patriarchy
The role of the male as the primary authority figure is of a paramount importance to
social organization in patriarchal system.This system is based on fatherhood authority
that allows control over women, children, and property. Patriarchy is obviously the corner
stone of the male prevalence and female submission. ‘Historically, the principle of patriarchy has
been central to the social, legal, political, and economic organization of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Indian,
Arabian, and Chinese cultures, and has had a deep influence on modern civilization’.7 It is the
historically unequal power between man and woman which has led to injustice and
violence against woman and which has hindered her development as stated by The UN
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993). Whyte's 1978
comprehensive study examined 52 indicators of patriarchy which refer to
the
empowerment of men. It seems important for us to explore how patriarchy is enacted
locally in Algeria with a specific focus on two Whyte's dimensions: ‘low value placed on
the labor of women’ and -‘lack of women's indirect influence on decision making’8, that oral culture
has enforced for centuries.
1.2.Oral Tradition
The Algerian culture basically founded on oral tradition has shaped the social imaginary
through legends, proverbs that deeply structure the social attitudes. To start with a legend
collected by Genevois who states that human copulating used to be performed by woman
lying on man. But when man constructed houses with roofs, he decides to reverse the
copulating position by standing on the woman. Henceforth, the domination started (Cited
in Plantade).9 The Genevois’s tale does not explain the link between the construction of
5 roofed houses with the change of the male sexual position. But we can infer it from the
notion of property and limits. The moment man has constructed a covered space which
becomes a private one as opposed to the public one; he becomes more aware of privacy
and of the need to create new rules for this new space. He thus, imposes the ‘riding’
position in the sense that he gives himself the right to subvert the prevailing order. We
can also say that in that position he can physically abuse the wife without giving her any
chance of moving by blockading her under his weight and forcing her to passivity and
total obedience.
In the lines within the riding and the ridden position, Tassadit Yacine makes an
analogy between woman’s domination and that of a donkey’s riding which is ranked at
the lowest value of animal scale for the Kabyles. In Kabylia, donkey is referred to by
‘amerkub’, (the ridden). The etymology drives from the Arabic origin RKB the one
destined to be ridden and dominated. The metaphor connotes with the sexual intercourse
too. This is why the use of the verb rkb is considered as a linguistic taboo in some
Algerian regions such as Bouira.10 Being ridden by the man stands for both woman and
donkey as a sign of lack of value and domination (Tassadit Yacine, 2004:39). The
gendered transmission of oral tradition has been reinforced by dogmatic interpretation of
Islamic religion.
1.3 Ulama’s and Woman’s Status.
If many economic political changes have occurred in
the MENA region (Middle East
and North Africa) where Islam is the overriding religion, the women’s status is frozen on
behalf of Charia (Islamic law). ‘Blatantly, emphasis is made on woman as a second- class
citizen.[F]amily law and personal status issues such as marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance,
11
citizenship and social mobility are still based on a religious law’(Nayereh OHIDI,2008:327) . Many
Islamic researchers among which (M.Arkoun,1984) and (L. Lakhdar ,2010) denounced
the biased and out of context interpretation on gendered base of Koran Thus,’Sharia is
frequently used in its codified, unreformed,outdated and patriarchal version that lags far behind the modern
realities of changing gender roles.’(Nayereh TOHIDI, 2008:327). In addition, male domination
is best institutionalized through the idealization of marriage.
2 Idealization of Marriage
6 The marriage represents the social institution of woman’s insertion or marginalization.
The place of the woman in the Algerian tradition is only recognized through motherhood
that is achieved within this frame. From Islamic point of view, marriage represents half
practice of religion. In euphemistic discourse, it is common to hear some persons say: “I
want to complete my half religion, (nasf dini). It means that the person wants to get married. Any
single or divorced woman is stigmatized and becomes a prey to daily humiliation and
social rejection. As a case in point, we can refer to two insults that evidence this
marginalization: “bayra, spinster” and “mtalqa” (divorced)
2.1 Bayra (Spinster)
The insult “bayra”12 hides several evocations in Algerian language. It
pejoratively
designates a girl who did not find a‘taker’. ‘Bayra’ is similarly associated with other
negative connotations as it is the case for ‘spinster’ in English. (ROMANCE, S.
2000:109)13. The same holds true for the status of the divorced woman, ‘mtelqa’ .
2.2 ‘Mtelqa’(a divorced woman)
The impact of repudiation in the Kabyle society is described as being the obsession of any
woman ( OUITIS, A., 1977: 38). 14Plantade reports that the Kabyles say of a repudiated
woman that she lost more half of her value ( Plantade, N., 1988:139). She is also
assimilated with one who is “perverted”. This is why she cannot live alone and she is
extremely supervised because she represents a constant danger of sexual transgression
and social dishonor contents (Lacoste- Du-Jardin, C., 1990: 93).
15
The divorce’s
stigmatizing makes woman endure male violence without complaining. The national
survey on violence towards women in Algeria, reports that an interviewee who has
been enduring 16 year husband’s violence could not divorce because of her parents’
pressure who kept saying to her ‘no divorce in our family’ (She is now suffering from
high blood pressure, diabetes and has made a surgery of fibroma and has to undergo
another for the cervix,). It is only recently with the intervention of the police who have
urged her parents to permit her to divorce.(Badra Moutassem-Mimouni,2006:109)16.To
make the fright of divorce clearer, it seems important to refer to the unsaid discourse that
blames woman and obliterates the unilateral husband’s power that the Islamic canonical
law confers to him. He can decide at any time, and sometimes wrongly, to divorce his
7 wife who is unable to defend herself. Exceptionally, she can ask for “col’, e.g. providing
payment for what her husband would require to divorce17. In spite of the fact that the
divorce concerns the right of the husband, it is the wife who is negatively pointed at: the
customs and habits designate her as the person in charge for the rupture. Thus, the act of
divorce reverses the responsibility. The husband has the right to divorce, but the
responsibility for the divorce often falls on the wife’s shoulders who is not able to keep
her husband. It is precisely this insinuation which can be at the origin of the fear of
divorcing.
Thus, the spinster and the divorced woman are both blamed either for being unable to find
a ‘taker’ or to keep a ‘protector’. Obviously, if a woman desires to escape the’ bayra
/divorced status’ she has to be psychologically prepared to accept without any subversion
any man who will protect her ‘yeseterha’18. As widespread saying goes on ‘ezwaj setra’,
(marriage is protection). Such a belief is reinforced by the proverb that says: a woman
without (male) authority is like a horse without bridle’. This statement reveals the social
underlying substructure that is based on the idea that woman needs male control to be
protected from social depravation. Knowing the negative impact of divorce and celibacy
on women, this will lead man to take advantage of socially and religiously
institutionalized power.
2.3Husband ‘s Prevalence and Islam
According to the orthodox islam, the relationship between husband and wife is prescribed
as a relation of enslavement, ‘women is somewhat a slave to her husband’ as it is
mentioned by Abu Hâmed Al Ghazali, an acknowledged Muslim Theologist. It is for this
reason that the husband occupies a higher place over the father’s wife in Isamic culture. A
blinded obedience is imposed to the wife towards her husband. Abu Hâmed Al Ghazali
reports that a husband had forbidden his wife to pay visit to her family living in the first
floor while she was living in the second one of the same house, during his absence.
(because in the Islamic tradition, a wife cannot go out if she is not authorized by her
husband).It happened that during the absence of her husband, her father fell into a serious
disease. She sent a messenger to the Prophet Mohammad to inquire whether she could
transgress her husband’s order and visit her ill father. She received a negative answer
insisting that she had to stick to her husband’s instruction. Then, when her father died, she
8 reiterated her request to the Prophet asking whether she could attend the funeral
ceremony, but once more she was refused to go. Later the Prophet sent a messenger,
praising her behaviour and informing her that God had rewarded her for respecting her
husband’s indications, by electing her father to be sent to Paradise. (Our translation of
Arabic version). Bennoune
reiterated the analogy of
slave
and
woman
when
respectively showing disobedience to their master, -in case of a slave in flight and a
wife’s sexual refusal-,the both of which
prayers will not be accepted by God.(
19
BENNOUNE,M., 1999, p. 198)
The blinded obedience to husband required from wife incited the prophet to match its
importance nearly to that one devoted to God. In this sense, Nawal Essadawi reported that
a Muslim
feminist
woman said on the Egyptian TV. ‘[T]he prophet Mohammed
declared that woman should obey their husband as they obey God and if he (the prophet)
allows any body to kneel to any body apart from God he will allow the woman to kneel
to her husband’.(Nawal Essadawi,2008:11)20. Besides, the religiously backed claim, the
husband ‘s obedience is endlessly reiterated through the social discourse sum up by the
term ‘sbar’ (patience) which refers to a highly valued feminine attribute.
3 Obedience or Insidious Violence
Not only represents marriage unequal power but it is also marked by violence that the
Morrocan feminist Bourqia describes as a one- way domination that subdues woman to
reach a total denial of the self. This domination is enacted through the term’ sbar’ that
means literally patience. But culturally, it connotes with a completely total submission of
woman to the authority of man who polices her to silence. Bourqia comments the value of
“obedience” that female spouse is expected to be endowed with or compelled to possess.
“Obedience” one can translate by patience, endurance, abnegation of oneself and fatal
passivity, reinforces the bases of the ideology of misogynist violence. The remarks of
BOURQIA, R., support this idea when she declares: for example dealing with the
authority of the husband several women evoke the concept of patience and endurance
(sbar) which falls within the competence of the wives when they are confronted
sometimes with an overpowering authority, even with the violence of the husbands. The
patience and the endurance which accompany the tender with this authority become
attributes of women and consequently remove the wives the possibility of positioning in a
9 relation of reciprocity with their husband. The patience and the endurance on a (wife side)
do not imply the reciprocity on the husband side. On the other hand the patience implies
its antipode: severity and anger, sign of masculinity constantly put in awakening in the
marital relation. (Our translation)21 The woman’s endurance is closely related to her
ability to show accepting psychological pressure and to perform physical arduous home
working.
3.1 Culture of Duty for Woman
The culture of duty22 confines woman to the role of mother, wife,or girl,who is expected
to perform house tasks as cleaning, cooking and children’s caring all days long without
complaining reported Ouitis while describing rural Kabyle society in Sétif in Algeria.It
is currently known that daughter in- law is over exploited. It is within a hostile
environment that marital relationship fed with culture of wife’s exploitation evolves. We
wish to reconsider the analogy master/ slave and its effect on the wife/husband relation
that OUITIS, A explains. At the time of the transaction of the exchange (the marriage
contract), the girl changes’ her master’ and not status. She becomes “the property” of her
husband alike with the whole members of the family in-law . The good wife according to
the proverb kabyle of Sétifois is portrayed as follows:“ yallis n nif dal horma,t-tin ur yatnaffissen
zat nimRaren is d’idolan is” (the girl of the honor and dignity is that who is not allowed to
push a sigh in front of her brothers-in-law and his/her parents-in -law).The
woman’exploitation goes hand in hand with denying her right to happiness since she a
second -class citizen
3.2 Denial of Woman’s Happiness
In her book Dreams Of Trespass Tales Of Harem Girlhood , Mernissi explains that
woman are excluded from happiness namely that one which is related to wandering,
discovering the world, singing, dancing and expressing one’s opinion (1996:83).The
prohibition of time-leisure perspective represents another insidious violence that is worth
mentioning .For example, some husbands who may admit that their wives can go out for
work but not for fun. Going to the work is legitimized but going out for leisure in public
places is prohibited or hindered. This attitude reiterates what Mernissi said about the
Harem’s ideology where woman is not brought up with the aspiration to happiness for
10 the self, on the opposite, all along her life she is learnt how to be good to others and how
to please her husband at her detriment. It is only in this way that she could endure all
the sufferings, naively believing that is the only way to be . This is the violence of the
oppressor who disciplines the Other to be a servant to a point of alienation . The
insidious violence in this frame is that the husband has taken and is still taking what
interests him from woman and rejects what disturbs him in spite of the socio-economic
changes affecting the society.
4. New Female Identity and New Forms of Violence
With the advent of Independence, Algeria has opted for democratic and free education
that has allowed girls to have access to high education to a rate of 57% of the population
according to recent statistics. This involved a basic training and mastery in writing and
technology both of which are structurally linked to the development of individuality and
therefore to the capacity to understand/master the world. Consequently, more and more
woman who become as specialized or less skilled persons, have entered labor world, a
fact that has enabled them to be producers of wealth and source of income. This is what
has destabilized the man’s economic prevalence as used to be the only acknowledged
bread-feeder. Henceforth, women are confronted with a contradictory situation, the desire
of building ‘individuality’ and ‘relational identity’. Both concepts are well explained by
Hernando Gonzalo, who said: “On the one hand, they adopt a Subject-position, as Agent through a
quite relational connection with the world which allows them to choose their own destiny and to enjoy a
feeling of empowerment. But at the same time, they explicitly acknowledge the need for healthy emotional
bonds ,which make them, on the other hand, yield and give precedence to other people’s wishes over their
own,
thereby
adopting
23
Gonzalo,A.,2008:108)
the
position
of
Objects
vis-à-
vis
. The problematic issue of the
those
others
female
(Hernando
independent
individuality is that it is inscribed in the opposite way of the man who still resists
change while she is subverting the established order.
4.1 Denial of Woman’s Public Status
The historical course which
has set up the premises of new historical female identity,
has created many conflicts. Women who are employed in education, health institution,
university, enterprises, some times as head office, manager, accomplished successfully
11 their works outside home and are widely valued and acknowledged by their work pairs.
However, in spite of the independent identity acquisition, women are still motivated in
building emotional identity. It is at this point where social disfunctioning appears. While
the woman seems to claim recognition of both individual and relational identity, the man
only looks at one facet of the coin, the relational identity in its traditional aspect. Thus, he
behaves towards his wife as if she were uneducated, unemployed, powerless,
outrageously denying, her individuality. He expects her to serve him and to be subdued to
him as used wives to behave for centuries ago, perpetuating, therefore, the conservative
prescriptive social norms. Shamelessly, he continues restricting her freedom of taking
decision, working, paying visit to her parents, and travelling alone. In deed, husbands
in a kind of purposely maintained blindness are unable to recognize that modern woman
deserves more respect and needs to lead her life with more dignity. It is not enough for
her to be denied as a human, but she is still exploited by the husband who has invented
modern exploitation as another expression of violence.
4.2 Woman’s Modern Exploitation
Many women are complaining of being in charge of more duties in comparison to past
time when woman’s role was restricted to house making and children caring. They are
required to fulfill all the home working, shopping, children’s caring and school tutoring.
Not only has the wife to equally perform her work outside the home but she has also to
behave as a perfect housekeeper as well. Obviously, though the time spent at home is
reduced, home working is the same. She has to accomplish it in a condensed time or
during the weekend. This is done with greater stress and therefore more arduous labor. It
goes without saying that wives are rarely if never helped by their husband. If they ask any
assistance, they are answered
that they have to bear the consequences of their choice.
Implicitly, this means they have to pay the price of their outside transgression. They have
to be ‘Woman of substance’ meaning that to be a well- accepted and successful person
,woman has to excel in private and public spheres, to be at the same time a good wife
and a good man. In other words, she has to bear the feminity attributes, such as, beauty,
tenderness, cooking, cleaning and children caring on the one hand , and to acquire the
masculinity attributes
such as studying, working, driving, on the other hand24.(
Marshment,G. 1989:27 ) This is one type of insidious violence that has resulted from
12 woman’s emancipation.
This situation has exposed woman to a more intellectual,
physical exploitation and stress for the double employment without any husband’s
support or recognition. Moreover,this exploitation has been extended to financial control.
4.3 Woman’s Financial Control
In addition to that, another abusive husband’s behavior is expanded to the control of the
wife’s salary. In many cases as brought by evidence of our Doctorate Thesis25 and the
Algerian National Survey on domestic violence, the benefits of the working woman’s
salary go back to her husband. Some husbands do not hesitate to show cupidity towards
their wives’ salary by having a total or partial control over it. This represents for us a
perpetuation of the patriarchal spirit which was based on the woman’s exploitation,
nevertheless, with another facet. Here two kind of violence could be identified. First, we
refer to those who openly force their wife to provide them with their salary. As an
illustration, some female university teachers are obliged to confer powers of attorney on
husband to withdraw money at will, from their bank account, to spend it for the family or
personal needs. Clearly, the hidden idea behind man’s controlling his wife’s income and
his asking for powers of attorney is a way to deprive her from economic autonomy. It also
means that she is prevented from taking family’s decision of expending her money as she
wants. Second, there are those who indirectly get profit from their wives’ salary. Even if
Islamic religion obliges the husband to financially support his wife, with minimal risk of
errors, I can assert that I do not know salaried woman whose money is not totally or
partially
poured in the family budget. In vicious speech some husband claim that they
never ask their wife to give them money, but they do not refuse if she freely decides to
contribute in buying the furniture for the house, a car, building the house, buying the
children ‘s clothes or other things for her well- being. Whether she is free or constraint to
spend her salary to her family is a fact that is widely admitted, but what remains unfair is
her totally denied financial contribution in case of widowhood or divorce. We mention
the case of a working informant who has largely contributed to the building of their
house, was surprised to learn, after she has suddenly lost her husband, that her heritage’s
portion, according to the Algerian family Code, is legally fixed to the eight of the
house’s value while her two young boys
will inherit somewhat 70% of it value . The
inheritance for the woman’s portion remains the same whether she has actively invested
13 or not. For the divorced woman, unless she is in possession of all the bills of what she
has spent during all that period of common life, no recognition by the legal institution
would be possible under the pretext that she was not obliged to spend her money for the
family since this falls on the husband’s duty. So, she has no right to claim anything,
which is, for us, another institutionalized male abuse and violence. What seems abject in
this situation is the fact that the working woman’s financial contribution is minimized or
ignored, though it is clear that the standard of living of a working couple is ,by no
means, the same of a one-working partner. However, it is fair to mention that a marriage
contract has been recently institutionalized in the Algerian legislation, through which
the wife’s personal property(ies) are registered before marriage, which could be
considered as a great progress. Besides
wife’s the salary
the husband’s exploitation of the working
,the violence of limiting her personal freedom with regards to
clothing and working is worth discussing.
4.4 Woman’s Clothing Control
The contradiction of woman’s emancipation and man’s resistance to change is daily
displayed in woman’s discourse. Under the raising of Islamism in Algeria in the two last
decades, woman are imposed the veiling, or the prohibition of working. One of our
informant relates that during the religious wedding ceremony (the fatiha), her fiancé sent
his sister to have her commitment to wear the veil. Being hastened in front of many
guests, she felt obliged to accept his request. There is a need for contextualizing the
fiancé’s attitude to best understand the insidious violence. First, by expressing his desire
to veil his wife, during the ritualized religious ceremony, and not before, he has left no
room for the young fiancée (19 year-old) to refuse it because his request is commonly
believed to be religiously legalized. Second, socially speaking, she could not refuse it
since this would have led to the parental disapproval, to the social dishonor, on the one
hand, and probably to the cancelling of the marriage and the risk of remaining ’ bayra’
(spinster), on the other hand. Moreover, in conservative society, it is taboo for a woman
to impose her conditions, since the power of negotiation obeys to the top-bottom rank.
This evidence could be exemplified by another case related to work prohibition.
4.5 Woman’s Work Prohibition
14 Another informant said that she was trapped by her husband explaining that they were
studying in the same discipline at the university and were fallen in love. Her fiancé too
imposed his will to her to be veiled during the official wedding ceremony but omitted to
mention his intention to prevent her from working. After their marriage, she unexpectedly
found herself prevented from working and then, imprisoned in the house .Neither her parents,
nor she were able to subvert this decision because once more, it is socially and culturally
taboo for a woman to ask for divorce, for instance, for a such reason, backed by the Islamic
legitimate discourse that woman needs not to work since it is up to the husband to guaranty
the financial support to his wife. The explanation lies in a reminiscence of patriarchal system
which devalues woman’s work. Of course the abusive husband’s attitude, who has not
explicitly expressed his will of preventing his future wife from working, is violent because he
is taking advantage of the conservative norms of the society. This is not an isolated case, on
the opposite, the national survey on domestic violence reports that preventing woman from
work is still a common practice in Algeria which represents the third place of male violence.
(CEDIF,2010:12 )
In short, the above illustrations are meant to argue for woman’s victimization deduced from
daily life facts. It seems fair to us to explore how she reacts to this violence.
5.Woman’s Attitudes towards violence
5.1 Submission and Violence Banalization
It appears to many women that there is no sharp line between conjugal conflict and conjugal
violence which is made invisible and futile by different members of the society. The
husband‘s violence is minimized, sustained by the arguments that few women officially
complain about it or do not leave their home. The 2006 Algerian national survey on violence
above-mentioned, reports that 67% of women believe that it is natural to be punished by their
husbands. It is the man’s role to discipline woman ( AVIFE,2010:81).This what Bourdieu
confirmed in La domination masculine. Thus, the representation of the internalization of the
gendered hierarchy is rooted , drained and reproduced by many social instances, such as the
family, (Malika MOKKADEM,1996) the religious discourse and the media.Violence is
conceived as an unavoidable fatality or misfortune that woman have to live with while men
are sorted out to use violence to meet their needs and desires in a total impunity.
15 Nevertheless, impunity does not exclude female defensive reaction enacted in the culture
of hatred.
5.2 Mysogyn /Androgyn Attitudes
If the husband’s empowerment is accepted in most cases because believed as if it were
natural, some wives are betrayed by their discourse that signals the relation of hatred. In this
sense, Assia Djebar in her book Vaste est la prison mentioned that in some areas, the husband
nickname is referred by “l’adu”, (the enemy). Unequal power entails resistance and enmity
between husband and wife.26. Similar enmity is conveyed by a popular Algerian saying ,
recurrent in women ‘speech which says: no woman has found her brother or father (in the
husband’s house), but only her enemy ‘makansh elli eddat KuHA wella buha , Rir ellidat ‘duha’.The
culture of hatred is fed with the feeling of despise and reject from the side of woman and
with the feeling of domination from the side of man.The exclusion of the feeling of love and
tenderness - which is not retained by the Algerian culture in marital relationship - as
contended by (Plantade :148) is perceived as a way of resistance to overcome the violence
that is a constitutive attribute of this relation. In other words, man considers mark of love as
a weakness :if expressed it will devalues and threatens his virility and manhood.On the other
side,hatred and mistrust
are culturally
instilled in woman’s mind to enable her
to
circumvent the husband’s violence and abuse with its various aspects. The marital relation
bears contradiction in itself; it is the location of the idealization of marriage,and a location
of enmity between the spouses.
5.3Attitudes of subversion
In spite of the inherited socio cultural situation,the man’s dominance is relatively subverted in
the nowhere by woman who are undergoing greatly educational and economic changes and
who are, consequently reversing the passive identity to a progressively active one that will be
demonstrated through the discourse analysis of our corpus.
Let’s consider the following corpus27:
1.“I ask so that he has to respect me “. ilâq tameTot ts' U $eToH nlaliberté”. (It is necessary that the woman has
a little freedom.)
16 2 - “Me I refuse that he interferes in my clothing behavior like imposing for example. The “Hijab” (the veil)”
3 - “He must accept that I work”
4 - “I got along with my boy friend that is out of question to marry him before
I finished my training course. It is clear that my work passes before engagement. “
5- “They believe that the woman who wants to work is a question of money only. In my opinion, they are
selfish.’
6- because they do not even take account of the efforts that the girls agree to make during
all these years of studies. ”
7- “I do not understand why knowing that I am an engineer with a stable work, applicants propose to marry
me under condition of leaving my work. They have only to seek for a girl without work!
It is important to underline the emerging subversive identity of these informants’s
discourse which is made visible through the use of the I form. In (1), the first person ‘ I’
operates as a linguistic identifying operator . The voice of ‘I’ seems to fully endorse the
responsibility of the contents of the speech and claims the desire to build a new identity.
Nevertheless, it presents the negotiation in a modulated form. It introduces a seldom
expressed claim that of personal freedom. The deontic verb in Kabyle “ilâq”, by its
impersonal turning, with value of general recommendation wants to be the spokeswoman
of the female-intonated voice of everyone. However, let us notice the restrictive
expression in kabyle “Cettoh nelaliberté”, (A Little freedom) revealing the maintenance
of a certain linguistic insecurity, because the claim of freedom is a new challenge that it
has not been considered as a feminine attributes yet.
On the opposite, the request for freedom with regards to the clothing behavior, namely,
“the refusal of the “Hijab” in (2) is more explicit .This defensive attitude expressed by “I
refuse”is interpreted like a reaction of resistance in a political context characterized by the
rise of political Islamism, in the recent decades in Algeria.
In the prolongation of the attitudes of resistance to the traditionalist vision, the statements
(3, 4, 5,6 and7) are articulated around the question of the work of the woman, according
to several points of view. Let us notice the use of the deontic auxialiary “must” in (3).
This is the expression of a defensive categorical attitude which imposes the right to work
explicitly, in the same way as the statement (4) places work like an indisputable priority.
17 Not to become engaged before the end of the training course makes it possible to foresee
an attitude of insecurity. First, it is justified by the fact that engagement can lead to a
precipitated marriage, from where fear not to complete her formation and to see herself
prevented from work. The vigilance of the young informant is certainly the fruit of a
maturity which makes it possible to avoid falling into the trap of not working ,for
example for reason of incomplete formation. In addition, this attitude translates the
objectivation of the primacy of work on the feelings of promised marriage in order to be
equipped for safer future. In addition, the statements (5,6and 7) raise the polemic posed
by female work, according to two antagonistic optics, that of the men and that of the
women, in terms of tradition/ modernity. Amazing is the attitude of the applicants who
aspire at marrying university graded woman and forbid them to work. This highlights
contradiction, or a form of arrogance and refusal of the Other. In deed this category of
man appreciates an educated wife for social prestige,but is not ready to admit that an
educated wife has new aspiration of life and status.
The statement (6) underlines the fact that female work is not only justified by the
money’s quest, expressed by the adverb of restriction “only” but by the desire of being
recognized as an intellectual entity too. The women seek the recognition of the Other,
namely, the acknowledgement
that they have involved great efforts to achieve
their
studies .It is this man’s violent denial which is important to grasp through the contents of
the statement (6). The discourses(3,4,5,6 and 7) show that the informants are in rupture
with the traditional vision and place themselves in a modern position asserting the right
to work and thus evacuate the related linguistic insecurity.The rupture between I/THEY
is said through the pointing of THEY of a quantifiable plural (of the applicants). It can
mean the intense revolt of these informants. In addition, the reiteration of “I do not
include/understand” in (7) is not a descriptive negation, but a rhetoric one which is
formulated by I, which negatively points to the ambivalence of THEY whose
contradictory behavior reveals their remoteness from reality. These women’s discourse
shows that they have set the bases for negotiating new place in order to build a new
identity that will call into question the power relation and the underlying related
violence .
6.Discussion
18 What conclusions can we draw from this investigation of the insidious violence and
gender faces?The problematic issue of the insidious violence is inscribed in man’s
behavior and subverted by woman leading to conflicting views. For man, dominance and
violence is a historically cultural transmitted heritage that he is not ready to requestion
or rationalize , perpetuating,thus, the holistic patriarchal and static idea of culture that
confers him the right to control and abuse woman in order to preserve his manhood. On
the other hand,the woman who has been more deeply influenced by education access ,
western rationalization with regards to feminist movements and media , becomes more
and more aware of the changes
that occur in her life
as
a consequence of her
individuality and of the power of knowledge she is constructing. For this reason it is
important to call for the social and political forces to start from reality to legislate on
situation and to stop applying out-dated religious laws that do not meet the present
needs of working woman as the Algerian family code continues obliterating her financial
contribution to her family in case of widowhood or divorce.
The feminization of power of knowledge is evidenced in Algeria by
girls ‘s higher
grading in different levels of education than boys’, which reaches 57% . Nevertheless,
the girls’s educative success is too significant to escape the critic’s attention. This may
please the feminists, but it is rather an alarming situation because ,according to us,it will
deepen the gap between man and woman. If boys show demotivation and regress in
acquiring knowledge, this means that they will not be able to develop critical and
innovative thinking to rationalize the social changes of their society among which the
woman’s claim of equality. Boys’ and men ‘s education failure has probably led to the
fear of loosing man’s power that makes the political Islamism concentrates on the
woman’s identity , in terms of the restriction of woman’s freedom and clothing/veiling
as a social project instead of focusing, for example on economic one. Whether man’s
violence is due to powerfulness/ powerlessness, this will endlessly lead both woman and
men to fall into the vicious circle of ‘violence generates violence’ as previously
referred by Assia Djebbar who pointed at the culture of hatred between husband and
wife.
The multifaceted insidious violence stemmed from patriarchal spirit based on low
value of woman’s labor encouraged man to patronize and exploit
19 her without
scruples.Modern times brought modern exploitation
which is enacted through the
husband ‘s controlling his wife’s salary is interpreted as a sign of economic abuse
which is intended to limit the wife’s autonomy and decision making. Man’s mentality
shaped in enslavement spirit that used to consider wife like a slave ,e.g. as his own
property has to be fought and
abolished .In stead of looking at his wife as a
slave,husband has to learn how to recognize her individuality as a human being who
has the right to take her own decision and to budget her income. The fact she was ruled
by her husband in the past under the pretext that she has a small brain that prevents her
from thinking is no more valid argument since the neurosciences have proved the
opposite.
Does this mean that gender equality y is an utopia? The answer is negative because the
discourse of the subversive informants demonstrates a more optimistic view of gender
negotiation in the daily life. Needless to insist that woman are undergoing a deeply
changing process to improve their status in spite of all the resistance they are confronted
to. The new historical change will certainly help both man and woman to seek revision
of the established order and unequal genderized power and to initiate inscription in a
new social order that characterizes modern society and the emergence of feminine
agency. The fact that woman have decided to enter the subjectivation process by
themselves ,they will find enough force to defeat the culture of insidious violence.
It is for this reason that gender studies must be encouraged,in order to highlight the
arbitrariness of man’s power construction. The need for redefining the social roles and
attitudes of both man and woman
on democratic bases is
an issue of paramount
importance.
Conclusion
With regards to what has been argued , insidious violence stemmed from a manifestation
of historically unequal power relations between men and women, and which has led to
men domination over and discrimination against women,has been
constructed by
patriarchy and culture.The husband ‘s empowerment has led to the exploitation of
woman and to her abusive controlling in various ways in past and present times leading
thus, to the slowering of her full advancement. If the majority of men and women
20 minimize domestic violence which is socially, culturally and religiously legalized, we
strongly believe that there is an urgent need to remedy this situation by emphasizing the
importance of the social and economic changes that are affecting the Algerian society. It
is time to get rid of prejudices and
to recognize that the woman in general,and , the
educated one ,in particular, has not to be considered as an exploitable source of wealth
only, but deserves to be treated with dignity as a human being who is able to act and
think freely. Therefore, the emergence of feminine agency has started to mediate
the
negotiation between wife and husband in order to set up the rules of equity in power, in
law and in freedom as inferred from the informant’s discourse Analysis. The change of
mentality,though slower than the rapid social mutations will certainly favour a better
dialog between man and woman for a greater equity and reduce the insidious violence. References and Notes
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7
Mac Millan Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender p. 1104 8
Whyte (1978) The status of women in preindustrial societies 9
Légend collected by H. GENEVOIS(1968:56) cited in PLANTADE, N.,1988, p. 47. 10
The researcher noted an analogical use with the verb ‘montar in latine languages which is different from ‘
subire’ . (Tassadit Yacine 2004:39).
21 11
Nayereh TOHIDI,2008, ‘Gender Equality: The Blind Spot of Islamic Reformation and Democracy in the
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12
A.Certeux provides its etymological meaning in classical Arabic:“bayra: the name of the female camel ,
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not be immolated, and becomes free of grazing where good seemed to it ". (A.Certeux ,1884, p. 182).12 “
13
ROMANCE, S. , counts at least, ten seven negative collocations such: “gossipy, nervy, ineffective,
jealous, coil/sex-starved, ..... frustrated. .cold-hearted…, despised ", (ROMANE, S.,Langage in Society,an
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15
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18
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19
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21
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la
22
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23
Hernando Gonzalo,A. , “Independent individuality”:Woman’ in ,Woman World 2008,Equality is not a
Utopia,New Fontiers:Challenges and Changes,Plenary lectures,Universidad Completense, Madrid,
Thomson Arzandi,2008, p.108,
22 24
Marshment,G ,’Substantial Woman’, in Garman,L,Marshment,G,The Female Gaze,,Women as Viewers
of popular Culture,Seattle,The Real Comet Press,1989pp27-43.
25
Mebtouche Nedjai, (F. Z.), Le tabou linguistique : étude sociolinguistique des attitudes des femmes des
wilayas de Tizi 0uzou et de Boumerdès ; thèse de doctorat (Nouveau régime), en sciences du langage, option :
sociolinguistique, Université d’Alger, Faculté des lettres et des langues d’Alger, Département de Français de
Bouzaréah, dirigée par A. Dourari. 2008 26
Assia Djebar, Vaste est la prison,France,.Abin Michel,1995,p.13.
27
Corpus extracted from our thesis. 23