This presentation attempts to provide a close look at the ideological interplay involved in the formation of female subjectivity within the contemporary Algerian context.

1. Imene BOUGUESRI
PhD student
Gender Studie sand Sociolinguistic Diversity
Mostaganem University-Algeria
i.bouguesri@gmail.com

2.  In the Arab culture patriarchy is a system of
hierarchical relations defined by gender and
age, that finds its legitimacy in kinship.
 The family used to be the locus of
patriarchal rule that grants the father
authority over the household, all other
members are defined in relation to him.
 However, the situation has become more
complex with the advent of neopatriarchy.

3.  Society being patriarchal for a considerable
period of time, undergoes transformations
that gave birth to a neopatriarchal society.
 To put it simply, it can be described as a
reshaping of the same patriarchal, traditional
social order into a modernized one, however,
this process occurs at a surface level
allowing the inner layers of the patriarchal
system to operate and be reinforced.
(Sharabi, 1988:22)

4.  The neopatriarchal society is constructed on a
number of woven and often conflicting layers
that produce subjects habituated according to
certain criteria.
 These layers consist of:
 The state that represents abstract equality
among individuals
 The society manifesting concrete differences
among these individuals
 The individual is habituated to internalize and
reporduce certain values necessary for the
survival of the community to which s/he belongs.

5.  Reproduction as a concept is said to dispose
of three interrelated facets:
 Human or biological reproduction
 Reproduction of social roles,
 Reproduction of the labour force.
 Women are considered as a supply chain that
ensures the continuity of family basic
structure, and of larger social institutions as
well.
 This process is succeeded by a preparatory
stage of access to male-dominated realm
‘the public space’.

6.  working women are perceived as the agents
of capital who have been homologized
according to the male subject, in a
transitional period to liberation:
 “ Women in the modern world have been
accepted to the sphere of abstract equality
modeled on the male paradigm.” (Bock, 2010:
35)

7.  Today’s Algerian women face the
contradictory effects of homologization
(access to traditionally male dominated
areas) and the dragging forces of traditional
social roles which have crippled their
movement to emancipation.

8.  Female subjectivity implies abiding by rules
defined not only by the patriarchal system
but by the equally oppressive capitalist and
materialist one.

9.  The formation of an ambiguous female
subject can also be understood within the
frame of the ‘sexual contract’ (Pateman’s
term, 1988) which consists in the
government provision of a better
socioeconomic status and women offering
their time and effort in return.

10.  At a microlevel, Algerian women’s lives are
quite heterogeneous and unfold the
underlying structures that regulate their
relationship to their surroundings.
 The new role model that many women are
assimilating to is the educated working
woman as a symbol of an intellectually and
economically independent subject.

11.  they are still struggling with the symbolic
objectification of traditional femininity and
the new ‘subjectified woman’

12.  Marriage as a social institution has been a
fertile ground for intermingled power
relations.
 In a society such as the Algerian, relations
are structured on a hierarchy of positions
and roles.
 Marriage used to improve women’s economic
status but nowadays the reverse is
happening. Women participating in the paid
labor are contributing a great deal to the
economic welfare of the husband and the
household as a whole.

13.  This is due to the increasing rate of
education and employment among women
compared to men, leading to increasing
chances for women to access high-ranked
and more stable work positions.
 Despite the improvement in the public
sphere, the private sphere remains governed
by downgrading norms that reduce women
into minors and encloses them within
traditional roles.

14.  Wherever there is subversion there is
resistance, power is never stable or
homogenous, it is in constant shift and
reshaping. A new horizon of authority seems
to arise supplanting the old gender patterns
in an unquestionable manner because now
it’s something women do for themselves,
their empowerment (their choice)
 Women's creation of selfhood is still a
process in the making.

15.  Sharabi, H. 1988. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of
Distorted Change in Arab Society. Oxford
University Press.
 Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract.
Stanford University Press.
 Bock, G., James, S. 1992. Beyond Equality
and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist
Politics and Female Subjectivity. Routledge
London.