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Abstract

This thesis investigates how Tunisian women’s organisations contributed to the production of women’s security across two critical periods: the authoritarian era under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1987–2011), and the transitional decade following the 2011 uprising. It argues that certain women’s organisations, such as Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche et le Développement (AFTURD), and Aswat Nissa, although unmistakably civil society organisations, simultaneously functioned as epistemic communities – producing policy-relevant knowledge, setting standards, drafting language, and brokering expertise into state and international arenas.

To capture when these Tunisian women’s organisations operated not only individually as sources of expertise, but also as collaborative, adaptive, and practicebased knowledge networks, this study further develops the notion of epistemic communities of practice (CoPs), drawing on epistemic communities theory and the CoPs literature. Following and extending recent work by Adler and Faubert (2022), these are defined as larger constellations anchored by one or more epistemic communities, operating through shared practices and collaborative learning processes in pursuit of normative and policy change. My thesis applies and empirically elaborates this conceptual synthesis in the Tunisian context, highlighting how women’s organisations engaged in sustained, strategic knowledge production, shaping Tunisia’s legal, political, and social frameworks around women’s security through practices that were relational, adaptive, and politically contested. In the post-2011 analysis, I also postulate and trace a concrete instantiation of this form – the Women’s Security Epistemic Community of Practice (WSECoP) – anchored by ATFD, AFTURD, and Aswat Nissa and supported by smaller allied groups.

The study makes several core contributions: it extends epistemic communities theory into non-Western, transitional, and comparative contexts; it identifies and empirically substantiates a specific Tunisian case of an epistemic CoP, the WSECoP; it provides the first systematic analysis of Tunisian women’s organisations as epistemic communities; and it bridges empirical richness with theoretical innovation. Whilst grounded in an empirical, case-centred research design, the thesis offers broader insights into epistemic agency, knowledge production, and the role of non-state actors in authoritarian and post-authoritarian settings.

In highlighting how Tunisian women’s organisations co-produced knowledge, contested political hierarchies, and influenced women’s security nationally and transnationally, the thesis foregrounds their epistemic labour, offering a distinctive framework for understanding their praxis in conditions of both repression and democratic opportunity, with broader implications for the study of knowledge-power, gender politics, and women’s security in the Global South. It also challenges conventional dichotomies between civil society and state, or feminist and Islamist, advancing a more nuanced understanding of women’s agency and security in Tunisia.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science > JZ International relations
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of International Politics School of Policy & Global Affairs > School of Policy & Global Affairs Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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