Africa at Noon: Why do Autocrats Adopt Women’s Rights Reforms? Contrasting the Maghreb and the Middle East

Based on a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, this talk looks at both domestic and international factors behind why non-democratic governments in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia adopted women’s rights reforms. This presentation also explains why these three countries are passing legislation around women’s rights almost in tandem, and why these countries have been on a faster trajectory than the Middle East regarding women’s rights over the past 15 years.