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Several feminist initiatives aim today at setting up new fair-sized markets for rural women, focused on the specificity of the land, to guarantee the necessary resources that will enable long-term financial autonomy. The actions of the two associations “Femmes Montrez vos Muscles" (1) and “Appui aux Initiatives dans le Secteur Agricole" (2) follow this approach.
Follow the thread of “Femmes Montrez vos Muscles”
The story dates back to the aftermath of the Revolution of 14 January 2011. After a passage on the national television, now open to all channels, Sadika Keskes, glass artist and renowned designer, is called by telephone to the rescue of women coming from Foussana, in the governorate of Kasserine. Sadika thought she heard “Fouchana”, a working-class area in the vicinity of Tunis but it was actually this other landlocked village with a winding road, located 300 km away from Tunis. Without hesitation, the designer takes the path of this destination which she discovers to be extremely poor.
The women who welcome her are mostly seasonal workers who pick apples, an agrarian specificity of their region. Sadika discovers that these rural women in need still own looms and even a small heritage of carpets inherited from the times when they used to make beautiful pieces with wool or camel hair weft and vegetable dyes. This was before the Ministry of Handicrafts transformed the whole process in the 1970s by introducing cotton yarn, chemical colors and imposing a standardized production now made in factories.
All this heritage of patterns, symbols and shapes transmitted from mothers to daughters for centuries was forgotten: “Weaving is the most beautiful trace of the history of Tunisia after the mosaic. It is an incredible intangible heritage!” explains Sadika.
The artist and designer then decided to accompany these women in the struggle to modernize a lost profession. To this end, in 2012, she sets up the Association “Femmes montrez vos Muscles”, provides wool to these women to make their kilims and scarves, and designs models and patterns inspired by the works of the Swiss artist Paul Klee. Sadika is conviced that Paul Klee has revolutionized his art following his stay in Tunisia in 1914 during which he was not only fascinated by the dazzling light of the country but also by the creativity and colors of Tunisian carpets and kilims, including the ones woven by the grandmothers of Foussana’s women in the years 2011 and 2012.
“I use my design to revive a trade. This is what we call today, social design,” explains Sadika.
The designer’s initiative is spreading. Women from Layoun and Birouni, two neighboring villages of Foussana, have been following the dance. Up to 500 women are involved in this active production of quality kilims and carpets, which Sadika exhibits in her art space in Tunis during the celebrations of the centenary of Paul Klee’s trip to Tunisia during an event devoted to the theme “Paul Klee and the Tunisian carpet.”
A new economic momentum is thus created. Eight women open a workshop. It is a sort of horizontal business venture. The “Fondation de France” and the “German International Cooperation GIZ” become interested and allocate funds. Until the emergence of the pandemic, the products of the weavers of Foussana were the subject of several exhibitions and sales in Tunisia and abroad.
Customers come to workshops to place their orders. Some craftswomen have launched their license while others have been able to purchase a truck to transport their kilims and carpets to markets and craft fairs. However, interactive networking is lacking, and quality control requires long-term monitoring. Today, the “Femmes Montrez vos Muscles” Association can no longer do this, especially because of the distances that separate Tunis from Kasserine, the winding road leading to Foussana and the depletion of funds.
“Even if the Coronavirus has limited the income of the craftswomen of Foussana, we have sown a seed in this village that nothing will manage to uproot. The good weather will return and the creative energy of women will be reborn,” states Sadika Keskes.
The experience with the women of Foussana allowed Sadika to set up her current laboratory called Patrimoine, Agriculture, Créativité, Tactique, Ecologie (PACTE)(3). Established in 2011, this laboratory is a think tank that continues to work on the rehabilitation of old trades that have been condemned to oblivion due to a certain idea of modernity.
AISA launches the healthy products of rural women
At the origin of a multitude of initiatives for the financial empowerment of rural women in several regions of Tunisia, there is a woman with a rich civil society background: Saloua Kennou, now aged 67.
It all started in the early 1960s when Saloua was a child and joined the Sabbalat Ben Ammar primary school, in the countryside near Tunis where her uncle was the director of the establishment. This was her first contact with rural life and families and immediate attachment to this universe, which touches her, challenges her, and fascinates her. This is probably what pushes her to further her graduate studies at the National Institute of Agronomy. With her agricultural engineering degree in hand, rural areas become her field of expertise, particularly when she taught at the higher agricultural schools of Mateur and then Mogren, where she had the opportunity to supervise her students on farms.
Saloua Kennou also meets women at the Agro-Ecological Club of Mateur, where she teaches members coming from the surrounding countryside, skills of which she has the secret: crocheting, knitting, sewing... While doing manual work together, conversations lead to confidences.
“That’s where I got a better understanding of their lives. They told me how thanks to their small chicken coop or their few sheep, their only property, they managed to meet the needs of their school children. I then understood the importance of personal resources, however minimal they may be, for rural women, especially when we know how much the fruit of most of their domestic agricultural work are pocketed by husbands,” she recalls.
In April 2013, when Saloua Kennou is elected head of the “Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche sur le Développement” (AFTURD)(4), she sets the tone of her mandate: “economic rights will be the entry point for all our campaigns and actions, from the fight against violence to the personal development of women.”
After training and mentoring around 28 women in several activities, such as ecotourism, artisanal soap making, beekeeping and agroforestry, in 2014, with the financial support of the European Union, Saloua Kennou’s organisation sets up a cooperative in El Feija National Park in the Jendouba region.
In December 2015, the State entrusts AFTURD with a place likely to host a shelter for women victims of violence. If the Association wins this call for tenders, it is because the proposal of its president is based on a central idea: to work and exploit the smallest centimeter of the land surrounding the center to supply the refuge and sell the surplus to individuals. In addition to introducing women to the different opportunities provided by agriculture.
“We have experimented with composting techniques, greenhouse cultivation, the production of ornamental plants, the distillation of floral waters, calling upon trainers each time a new idea emerges in the group,” details Saloua Kennou.
However, women who are victims of violence do not stay in these spaces which welcome them only until they have found a way out of their crisis. Empowering them financially so that they can rely on themselves is also a way of immunizing them against their attackers, whether they are a husband, lover, father or brother.
The Center then launches two projects: a sewing workshop for the manufacture of cotton underwear made from recycled fabrics and a healthy pastry shop, specializing in the manufacture of cakes, salty foods and juices that are low in sugar, good, healthy and without food additives. Thanks to Saloua Kennou’s network, gender-sensitive international organizations as well as embassies are beginning to place orders with women pastry chefs, including for end-of-year gifts. The Spanish Cooperation is interested in this project and decides to finance it.
The laboratory is a think tank that continues to work on the rehabilitation of old trades that have been condemned to oblivion due to a certain idea of modernity
However, Kennou’s two mandates at AFTURD come to an end in 2019. She then takes the reins of the “Association Appui aux Initiatives dans le Secteur Agricole” (AISA)(5), launched in 2016 and chaired until then by her husband (who passed away in 2019) and of which she is co-founder. This structure allows her to continue the supervision of the pastry chefs by inaugurating in October 2021 a store in Sidi Thabet, and the birth of the “Ideeyet” (little hands) brand.
Over the past year, AISA has also been supporting about thirty women from Mateur, for the processing and marketing of products made from whole grain and gluten-free products (couscous, flour, pasta, flax seeds, oatmeal) with a label referring to the “Ghezala Dulces” village where these women work at home.
According to the president of AISA, if women now master the manufacturing phase, there is still a lot to do in terms of marketing. This is the hardest step in the process.
“Women sell at regional craft fairs and exhibitions. But this is not enough to distribute their products. We are working to establish sales agreements with local product shops, which have spread in major cities in recent years. I hope that we will one day reach the stage of online sales,” says Saloua Kennou.
(1) Women Show Your Muscles
(2) Support for Initiatives in the Agricultural Sector
(3) Heritage, Agriculture, Creativity, Tactics, Ecology
(4) Association of Tunisian Women for Research on Development
(5) Association for the Support of Initiatives in the Agricultural Sector