Algeria: Algeria's women like a 'class apart' at the polls

Apr 8, 2009

ALGIERS (AFP) — Nesrine and Rym, two students at a marketing college, have each been to the theatre only once in their lives and almost as rarely to the cinema, seen as a place Algeria's women should not frequent.

Neither will vote in Thursday's presidential election, they told AFP, since they do not expect that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika will do much for women on winning a third term, which is a foregone conclusion.

Many Algerian women feel like a class apart, a view reflected in the way city streets empty of all but men after shops and offices close at night, though women form a large part of the workforce.

"Algerian women are subject to a curfew that has never been officially decreed, but which is an crying reality," says 20-year-old Imane Ghezali, the daughter of a journalist and a teacher.

Her parents are modernists by general standards, and Ghezali with her long brown hair seizes occasions to go out without fearing the wrath of the family and social opproprium if she does.

Sometimes she visits the only bowling alley in the whole of the north African country, which is located in an Algiers suburb. But each 30 minutes play there costs 2,000 dinars (27 dollars / 21 euros), which is 15 percent of the national monthly minimum wage.

Pressure on women from Islamic extremists has eased since the 1990s, when Algeria plunged into civil war waged by groups out to turn the secular state into a hardline Islamist one, but most women wear the hidjab, the robe that covers them from head to foot.

For some, given the rising cost of living in the oil-rich but economically distressed nation, the hidjab is a matter of convenience to hide poverty rather than an ostentatious sign of religious belief and means of avoiding "Satanic" lust.

Nesrine and Rym, who wear headscarves and discreet make-up around their eyes and lipstick, are also among those who feel privileged. Their parents, who are architects and teachers, are understanding and allow them to go out.

But go where? The three students say that the few cinemas in Algiers are dodgy venues. Short of places to be on their own together, young Algerians go to the cinema to steal kisses and caresses, but at the risk of being accused of debauchery.

Hopeful men also hang out at such places and the three girls said they prefer to avoid them rather than be hassled afterwards by insistent and creepy courtiers.

There are a few teashops that young Algerian women can go to and where they can also hang out with their boyfriends. However, their prices are too high for much of the population in a country that goes to the polls more concerned about recent inflation than the political aspects of Bouteflika's bid for a third term.

The tea-rooms keep spaces that are "reserved for families," which people know to mean that solitary young men will not be admitted.

But more often than not, young Algerians are resigned to "long-distance love" by mobile phone, Rym told AFP. About 17 million people in the country use cellphones, accounting for roughly a third of the population.

Sarah K, a journalist who works on the culture pages of an Algiers daily, confirmed that when youngsters want to step out, the number of places they can go is "derisory." For the vast majority of girls, family outings are the only ones they get and television is their one source of leisure.

The cafes, mosques and street corners are the nightly preserve of Algerian men.