This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Personal Status Law in Tunisia which helped advance gender justice for generations. Yet, Tunisian women still face an uphill battle in accessing their rights, which drove some MPs to introduce two draft laws to address some of the gender gaps endemic to Tunisia’s economy. These laws, however, risk deepening the gaps they seek to bridge.
The first, a draft law on supporting mothers and facilitating family life, provides care work leave exclusively to women. Care work is the work done to tend to others such as child care, elder care, and domestic chores, and care work leave aims to provide individuals with the space and time to undertake these tasks without risking losing their jobs. The second draft law, on the right to public child care services for children under the age of four, focuses on providing financial support for households to pay for child care. Both proposals aim to support working mothers and alleviate the share of unpaid care work that women take on, especially around child care.
Despite the noble intentions declared by lawmakers in drafting these laws, including achieving gender equality and the right to decent work, the contents of these proposals run opposite to their declared objectives. Rather than solving gender inequalities, these draft laws risk deepening them.
Women and girls are at a disadvantage in Tunisia
The MPs are on the right track in terms of the urgent need to address the unfair gendered distribution of care work.
Estimates on care work in Tunisia show that women do over five times more unpaid care work than men, but do nearly five times less paid work. These inequalities get worse after marriage, as married women still do five times more unpaid care work than married men, but do six times less paid work than men.
The care work distribution also leads to discrimination against women in the formal job market, as prospective employers are less likely to hire female candidates. Employers look at women as a more uncertain investment. If female employees take a leave, employers will have to redistribute the work; if they quit, they will have to invest in hiring and training a replacement. And so, blue-collar jobs in Tunisia—which make up most of the vacancies—45 percent of employers explicitly prefer male candidates. That number rises further in sectors such as auto manufacturing and construction.
As such, along with social norms and other factors, the unfair distribution of care work continues to contribute to deep and chronic gender gaps in labor markets. In 2025, only about 30 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 65 were in the labor force, meaning they had or were seeking a job. This rate increases to 72 percent for men, translating to a 42-point gap.
In 2024, the female unemployment rate was at 20 percent, while the male one was at 13 percent. Defying assumptions, Tunisian women’s employment chances actually decrease when they pursue higher education
The few women who are in the labor market face higher rates of unemployment than their male counterparts. In 2024, the female unemployment rate was at 20 percent, while the male one was at 13 percent. Defying assumptions, Tunisian women’s employment chances actually decrease when they pursue higher education, with unemployment rates for female college graduates double the male rate.
These exclusions and inequalities are not without consequence. Women in Tunisia have less access to income and assets, and households headed by women are more likely to be poor. The lack of employment also excludes women from critical social protection programs, such as employment-based healthcare coverage and retirement programs.
Rather than rectifying all these gender-based injustices, the two laws proposed threaten to deepen them.
A swing and a miss
One major issue is that both laws offer the care work time-off exclusively to women. The draft law on supporting mothers and facilitating family life states that employers must provide women with children under 12 flexible or remote work options, though they do not explain what flexibility options are available or how many hours/days of remote work they are allowed. Employers would also be required to provide mothers with five additional days of leave for care work duties related to the sickness of a child or an urgent family matter (they fail to define the latter). Additionally, the proposal provides women with children with a disability or on the autism spectrum priority for part-time or full-time remote work, and the right to reduce their weekly hours by a fifth without it impacting their salary. The law also requires employers that have 20 female employees or more to have a partnership in place with a private or public health facility to provide their female employees with healthcare screenings. All these accommodations are offered only to female employees.
As a matter of principle, offering care work-related accommodations exclusively to women reinforces the stereotype that they are the primary, or sole, care providers for households, meaning the legislation would deepen rather than combat gender inequality. It also absolves men and the government from their responsibility to fairly and equitably redistribute care work between members of the household, and disengages the government from its responsibility to redistribute the care work between households, the state, and the private sector. After all, if women have access to all these accommodations to perform care duties, why should a man take on some of this work when he has no access to the “privileges” associated with them? Similarly, why should the government provide access to affordable, quality care services if women are afforded these accommodations?
The legislation also deepens hiring costs for women. In addition to having women take long maternity leaves, employers will also now have to think about the extra days of leave and the potential loss of 20 percent of working time for female employees.
Another strange aspect in the draft law on supporting working mothers is the access, for women only, to annual preventative screenings for burnout and chronic illnesses, such as high blood pressure, anemia, diabetes, and spine-related diseases. This keeps men from equal access to healthcare, reinforces stereotypes that women are weaker and less likely to adapt to working environments, and further increases the costs of hiring them.
If lawmakers aim to support women through employer-led care accommodations, they should make these accommodations available to all employees regardless of gender
If lawmakers aim to support women through employer-led care accommodations, they should make these accommodations available to all employees regardless of gender and actively encourage men to also take advantage of them. The government must support the private sector in implementing these mandates and ensure monitoring for compliance.
However, employer-provided care services, in their very design, discriminate against different groups of women. For instance, self-employed women, informal female workers, and stay-at-home women who are full-time caretakers for other people cannot access these child care or health check-ups.
Not throwing the child services with the bathwater
There is a pressing need for a framework that fairly redistributes care work both intra-household and between the household and the government. And there are bright spots within these draft laws that achieve that purpose.
For example, the draft on supporting working mothers mandates that employers must provide child care services when they reach a specific number of employees, regardless of the gender of employees. While, as mentioned, this does discriminate against non-salaried categories of women, this is still a good step forward that does not link care services exclusively to female employees. Another promising example from the same draft law is the shifting of child care benefits toward more cash transfers to women. Studies show that mothers are more likely than fathers to spend the child benefits they receive on meeting the needs of the children.
To build on these gains, there are ways to tailor these draft laws to make them truly “revolutionary” as the MPs who have proposed them want them to be. The system needs to be built in the same spirit as the child care provision mandate, meaning that any accommodations offered does not need to be gender specific. Men should have the same expectations of care as women. This also includes parental leave that needs to be adjusted, as research has shown that non-transferable paternity leave has a positive impact on women’s labor force participation and is associated with fathers taking on more of an active role in unpaid care work.
Additionally, care needs to be addressed more holistically by policymakers, going beyond child care to other types of unpaid care areas such as eldercare and care for the sick and those with disabilities. As Tunisia faces an aging population, the need for this care is expected to grow, and with it, the unpaid care work of women unless policies proactively address it.
Finally, an important aspect of care provision is for it to be public. The draft law on child care services acknowledges that the astronomical rise of private care facilities has rendered child care highly inaccessible for many families. As such, publicly funded care services such as day cares, kindergartens, elderly care facilities, and others, provide a sustainable, accessible, and affordable necessary service that fairly distributes care work between men and women, as well as between the household and the government.
Tunisia has a long road ahead in achieving gender justice, especially economically. If done right, these draft laws have the potential to revolutionize care work and support women in and out of the formal labor market. However, if kept unchanged, they risk deepening existing inequalities and further excluding women from public spaces.
Sahar Mechmech is the Inclusive Economies Manager at TIMEP.