Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution quiz: 8 questions

Howard Smith proposed the amendment on 8 February 1964. He was a segregationist who had also long supported the ERA; his motives for proposing it remain debated. Martha Griffiths and others ensured that it survived. NOW was founded two years later to press the EEOC to enforce it.

The statement described oppressions as “interlocking” and coined the phrase “identity politics”. This idea, later named intersectionality, challenged a mainstream that treated sex as the only axis of women’s oppression.

The Constitution requires amendments to win two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. In 1982, three-quarters of 50 meant 38. Opponents needed to hold only 13 states to prevent ratification; they held 15.

The United States signed CEDAW at the Copenhagen ceremony in July 1980, but the Senate has never ratified it. The signature alone did not bring the United States into the treaty, leaving the movement’s best-known homeland outside its key agreement.

Decreed on 13 August 1956, the Code abolished polygamy and unilateral divorce, required the bride’s consent and set a minimum marriage age. The other changes came later: women voted in 1957 and 1959, and independent feminist groups became legal only in 1989.

The army was small and politically marginal, and it stood aside. One account says its chief refused an order to fire, but that story is contested: Rachid Ammar later testified that he was never asked. Police carried out most of the killing.

The Quartet’s members came from civil society, not the parties. Through the National Dialogue they persuaded Ennahda to hand over to technocrats and the Assembly to complete the constitution, which was adopted on 26 January 2014.

By 2014, rival governments and militias had divided Libya. Tunisian recruits trained in camps near Sabratha, across a border where the Tunisian state could not reach them. Tunisia built a barrier along that border in 2015.