History terms in Protest and change

Policies that require employers or institutions to take active steps to recruit and promote groups that have faced discrimination, such as women and racial minorities.

The main US federal welfare programme for poor families with children from 1935 to 1996, most of whose recipients were single mothers.

A Tunisian jihadist group founded in April 2011 by Seifallah Ben Hassine (Abu Iyadh). It attacked the US embassy in Tunis in September 2012 and was declared a terrorist organisation in August 2013.

The sharp rise in the birth rate in the United States after the Second World War, from 1946 to about 1964, peaking in 1957.

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted in 1979, which commits states to end discrimination against women in law and practice.

A state whose authority comes from its citizens and its laws rather than from religion or the army. Article 2 of Tunisia's 2014 constitution defines Tunisia as a civil state.

Tunisia's family law of 1956, which abolished polygamy, required the consent of both spouses to marriage and introduced judicial divorce open to women and men. Inheritance still followed Islamic law.

A Black lesbian socialist feminist group in Boston (1974–1980) whose 1977 statement argued that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.

The practice of meeting in small groups to share personal experiences in order to discover their common, political causes, developed by radical feminists in 1967–1968.

A legal settlement approved by a court in which a party agrees to change its practices without admitting guilt, such as AT&T's 1973 agreement with the EEOC.

A procedure in the US House of Representatives that forces a bill out of a committee that refuses to act on it, if a majority of members sign.

The belief, dominant in post-war American culture, that a woman's fulfilment lay in being a full-time wife, mother and homemaker in a single-earner family.

Frances Beal's term (1969) for the combined oppression of Black women by racism and sexism, together with economic exploitation.

Tunisia's main Islamist movement, founded in 1981 as the Islamic Tendency Movement and renamed Ennahda ("Renaissance") in 1989. Banned and repressed under Ben Ali, it was legalised in 2011 and led the government from 2011 to 2014.

A US law of 1974 banning discrimination in lending on the basis of sex or marital status.

The US federal agency created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce Title VII's ban on discrimination in employment. It opened in July 1965.

A US law of June 1963 requiring equal pay for women and men doing equal work in the same workplace.

A proposed amendment to the US Constitution banning the denial of equal rights on account of sex. Passed by Congress in 1972, it was ratified by only 35 of the 38 states needed.

Betty Friedan's name (1963) for the post-war belief that women could find fulfilment only as wives and mothers, spread by magazines, advertising, psychology and education.

The campaign for women's rights, above all the right to vote, from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth; in the USA it ended with the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920.

A person who travels to another country to join an armed group in a war there, such as the Tunisians who joined jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq and Libya after 2011.

Equal representation of women and men, for example through rules that require election lists to alternate between male and female candidates.

A strike in which workers in many industries and services stop work at the same time, usually with political as well as economic aims.

The Supreme Court ruling of 7 June 1965 that struck down a Connecticut ban on contraceptives and found a constitutional right to privacy for married couples.

The use of computer hacking for political protest, such as blocking or defacing government websites or leaking documents.

The body chaired by Yadh Ben Achour in 2011 that brought together parties, unions and civil society to prepare Tunisia's transition, including the electoral law for the Constituent Assembly.

A provision first passed by the US Congress in 1976 that bars the use of federal Medicaid funds for most abortions.

The part of an economy that is not registered, taxed or regulated by the state, such as unlicensed street trading; its workers have no contracts or legal protection.

The idea that systems of oppression such as racism, sexism and class interlock and shape people's lives together; the term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.

Tunisia's independent electoral commission, created in 2011 to organise elections in place of the interior ministry.

A political ideology that holds that Islam should shape the laws, institutions and public life of a state. Islamist movements range from parties that compete in elections to groups that use violence.

The occupations of the Kasbah square in Tunis in January and February–March 2011 by protesters, many from the interior, which forced the resignation of the interim prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi and led to the election of a constituent assembly.

The strand of feminism that seeks equal rights and opportunities for women within existing institutions, mainly through law, lobbying and elections.

The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), a US government report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan that blamed problems in Black communities partly on a "matriarchal" family structure.

An organisation founded in New York in 1973 to address the combined effects of racism and sexism on Black women.

The 217-member assembly elected in Tunisia in October 2011 to write a new constitution and act as the parliament until 2014.

The largest liberal feminist organisation in the USA, founded on 30 June 1966 by Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray and others to win full equality for women through law and politics.

An agreement of November 1988 between Ben Ali's government, the legal opposition parties, the UGTT and the Islamists, promising political pluralism and respect for Tunisia's Arab and Islamic identity. Its promises were soon abandoned.

An organisation of welfare recipients, mostly poor Black mothers, active from 1966 to 1975, that campaigned for an adequate income and dignity for women on welfare.

The Tunisian nationalist party founded by Habib Bourguiba and others in 1934, which led the struggle for independence from France and became the ruling party after 1956.

The coalition of social and religious conservatives that grew in the USA in the 1970s, opposing feminism, abortion and the ERA, and helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980.

A secular Tunisian party founded in 2012 by Béji Caïd Essebsi to oppose Ennahda. It won the parliamentary election of 2014 and included many former members of the RCD.

The concentration of women and men in different jobs, with women crowded into a narrow range of lower-paid occupations.

A social system in which men hold most power in the family, the economy and politics, and in which male dominance is treated as natural.

Describes low-paid jobs dominated by women, such as clerical work, retail, nursing, teaching and domestic service.

A state in which the government controls the population through a large security apparatus that watches citizens, arrests opponents without fair trial and uses fear to prevent dissent.

A US law of 1978 that made discrimination against pregnant workers a form of sex discrimination under Title VII.

A commission set up by President Kennedy in December 1961, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, whose report American Women (1963) documented discrimination against women.

The movement opposing legal abortion that grew in the USA after Roe v. Wade (1973), led at first by the Catholic Church and later joined by evangelical Protestants.

Laws that limited women's working hours, night work or the weights they could lift. Meant to protect women, they also kept them out of better-paid jobs and overtime.

A territory that keeps its own ruler and some institutions but is controlled by a stronger state, which runs its foreign affairs, defence and often much of its government. Tunisia was a French protectorate from 1881 to 1956.

The strand of feminism that sees male power (patriarchy) running through the family, sexuality and culture, and argues that legal reform alone cannot end it.

The process by which a person comes to support or take part in extreme political or religious ideas, including the use of violence to achieve them.

The Constitutional Democratic Rally, the ruling party of Tunisia under Ben Ali from 1988 to 2011, successor to Bourguiba's party. It was dissolved by a court in March 2011.

A vote in which the whole electorate decides directly on a single question, such as a new constitution, a change of territory or approval of a ruler; a vote used to approve a ruler or regime is often called a plebiscite.

The right to decide whether and when to have children, including access to contraception and abortion and protection from forced sterilisation.

A constitutional right found by the US Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), protecting intimate personal decisions such as contraception and, from 1973, abortion.

The US Supreme Court ruling of 22 January 1973 that recognised a constitutional right to abortion, limited by the stage of pregnancy. It was overturned in 2022.

A strict Sunni Muslim movement that seeks to return to the beliefs and practices of the first generations of Muslims. Most Salafists are non-violent, but jihadist groups draw on Salafist ideas.

The unpaid housework and childcare that women in paid work continue to do after their working day, a double burden found in capitalist and communist societies alike; the sociologist Arlie Hochschild named it the second shift (1989).

The women's movement in the United States and other Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought equality in work, education, law, the family and sexuality.

The principle that the state and its laws should be separate from religion. In Tunisia, secularists generally opposed giving Islamic law a role in legislation.

Setting fire to oneself as an act of protest.

Islamic law, derived from the Qur'an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad as interpreted by religious scholars.

The promotion of women's rights by the state from above, as part of a government's own programme, rather than through an independent women's movement.

The sterilisation of people without their informed consent. In the 1970s USA it fell mostly on poor Black, Native American and Mexican-American women.

The campaign founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 to prevent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; it later worked within her wider conservative organisation, Eagle Forum. STOP stood for "Stop Taking Our Privileges".

A package of free-market reforms, such as cutting subsidies and state spending, privatising state companies and opening the economy to trade, required by the IMF and World Bank in return for loans in the 1980s and 1990s.

A government of non-party experts appointed to run the state for a limited time, usually during a political crisis or before elections.

A section of the US Education Amendments of 1972 banning sex discrimination in any education programme that receives federal funding.

The measures a society uses to deal with large-scale wrongs after war or dictatorship, such as trials, truth commissions, compensation, purges and amnesties.

The coalition that governed Tunisia from 2011 to 2014, made up of the Islamist Ennahda and two secular centre-left parties, the Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol.

The Tunisian truth commission created by the transitional justice law of December 2013 to investigate human rights abuses by the state from 1955 to 2013 and recommend reparations.

A Tunisian human rights organisation founded in the 1970s, the oldest of its kind in Africa and the Arab world. It documented abuses under Ben Ali and was a member of the National Dialogue Quartet.

The Tunisian General Labour Union, the national trade union federation founded in 1946. Its regional branches helped lead the 2010–2011 revolution, and it chaired the National Dialogue Quartet in 2013.

Tunisia's main employers' federation, a member of the National Dialogue Quartet.

The uprising in Tunisia from 17 December 2010 to 14 January 2011 that forced President Ben Ali to flee. Western media called it the Jasmine Revolution, a name many Tunisians reject.

The radical, mostly younger wing of the women's movement of the late 1960s and 1970s; the press also used "women's lib" for the whole movement, often mockingly.

A nationwide day of protest on 26 August 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of women's suffrage, demanding abortion rights, equal opportunity and free child care.

A short, theatrical protest designed to win media attention, used by radical feminists, anti-war activists and gay liberationists around 1968–1972.

A coalition of Tunisian opposition groups formed after a hunger strike in October 2005, which brought secular liberals, leftists and Islamists together to agree common positions on rights and freedoms.