Battle Of Algiers Essay

Women played a major role in the Battle for Algiers, during the war for independence. During that time of cultural crisis, limitations and prejudices were disregarded in the unity created by their great need. While not all women supported independence, most did, joining the National Liberation Front (NLF). Using their femininity as a shield and a mask, women were able to infiltrate enemy lines and make major inroads for their liberty (White, 2013). By some women’s role in this decisive effort has been marginalized, but historians are keeping awareness about it fresh. In the war for independence, the women of Algiers mobilized to defend their liberty (Lecture Notes). However, in many cases women are defending the very culture that disempowers them (White, 2013). The French colonial aggressors believed that making Algerians Christian would be enough to make them subservient, but their Muslim faiths would not waver (Fantasia & Hirsch, 1995). Women engaged in armed conflict in the hope of securing greater rights and freedoms for themselves. Although the 1962 Algiers constitution did give women the right to vote in national elections, many gender

This entailed, “elaborately designed events to show Algerian men that, should Algerian women choose to align with the French, the liberation movement would be lost. The purported goals of liberating Algerian women were nothing more than a thinly disguised divide-and-conquer strategy” (De Groot & Peniston-Bird, 2014, p. 246). The French attempted to bait Algerian men into enforcing their own enslavement both ideologically and actually by restraining women from fighting for their freedom (Lecture Notes). This is a tactic that had worked in the past, but the level of oppression has become too overbearing to ignore. Men turned to their women for support like never before, and women rose to the