Eventually captured, the trials of these women, specifically Bouhired, gained recognition from international audiences. This is not to marginalize those women who did engage in acts of violence, but simply to illustrate that they constituted in the minority.ĭespite the fact that destruction of civilian and military targets by women through paramilitary activities included less than seventy women, or about 2% of the total females in the military arm of the FLN, it was these acts, especially during the Battle of Algiers (1957), which received most of the attention given to women in this conflict.Ī reason for such attention was that included in the women who perpetrated direct violence against the French were Djamila Boupacha and Djamila Bouhired, combatants in the Battle of Algiers. The reality was that “rural women in maquis support networks” contained the overwhelming majority of those who participated. While the majority of the tasks that women undertook centered on the realm of the non-combatant, those that surrounded the limited number that took part in acts of violence were more frequently noticed. Meredith Turshen claims, “Women participated actively as combatants, spies, fundraisers, as well as nurses, launderers, and cooks.” Gerard De Groot adds, “women assisted the male fighting forces in areas like transportation, communication and administration.” The range of involvement by a woman could include both combatant and non-combatant roles. Women operated in various areas during the course of the rebellion. The urban women combatants were referred to as the fidayat and largely "engaged in paramilitary activities in the urban centres". They also had important political responsibilities as many of these female combatants promoted the FLN by "organizing political meetings with local women". The mujahidat also were "social assistants to the rural population in the zones in which they were posted and would give local female peasants advice on topics such as hygiene and education". They tended to be young, unmarried, and prepared to join the resistance "with or without the approval of their families". The rural women combatants in the Algerian War were referred to as the mujahidat and "left their homes and families to join the FLN armed guerrilla bands, the Armée Libération Nationale (ALN)". Largely illiterate rural women, on the other hand (the remaining eighty percent), became involved due to geographical proximity to FLN operations paired with force, although some of them did join out of compassion. Urban women, who constituted about twenty percent of the overall force, had received some kind of education and usually chose to enter on the side of the FLN of their own accord. There exists a distinction between two different types of women who became involved: urban and rural. The total number of women involved in the conflict, as determined by post-war veteran registration, is numbered at 11,000, but it is possible that this number was significantly higher due to underreporting. The France included some women, both Muslim and French, in their war effort, but they were not as fully integrated, nor were they charged with the same breadth of tasks as their Algerian sisters. The majority of Muslim women who became active participants did so on the side of the National Liberation Front (FLN). Women fulfilled a number of different functions during the Algerian War (1954–1962), Algeria's war for independence. Women in the Algerian War of Independence with the flag
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |