The Colonial “Emancipation” of Algerian Women: The Marriage Law of 1959 and the Failure of Legislation on Women’s Rights in the Post-Independence Era

The failure of the newly independent Algerian state, after a long war of decolonization in which women played a major role, to introduce progressive reform to women’s legal, and thus social, status is widely recognized. This article explores a neglected aspect of this problematic by showing that binary perceptions of a radical colonial/post-colonial hiatus can be misleading. Through a focus on the reform of marriage and family law, it is shown that both colonial and post-Independence states proved weak and ineffective in the face of the entrenched power of patriarchal family structures and ideology.