"Hassiba Ben Bouali, If You Could See Our Algeria": Women and Public Space in Algeria

Abstract

Reprinted from the 1995 Middle East Report special issue on Algeria, this essay asks how to interpret Algerian feminists of the early 1990s holding public demonstrations in the name of Hassiba Ben Bouali, a moudjahida killed by the French during the Battle of Algiers in 1956–1957? Women’s movement into public space exposes the interplay among Algerian society’s spatial arrangements, the status of women, and the ideological underpinnings of the Algerian state since independence. What are the complex ways women must negotiate either acceptance into masculine space or valorize their own internalized perceptions as intruders disturbing the equilibrium of a regulated, single-sex, urban milieu?