Hager Karoui: A Voice Against Everyday Sexism
Hager Karoui wears many hats, and wears them brilliantly. Her rich and inspiring journey has now taken on a new dimension through her role administering the Facebook group “Sayeb Salha.” This community “defends women against sexist insults, particularly in public spaces, the media, and advertising.”
An Accomplished Medical and Literary Career
From Medicine to Writing
Mother of three daughters and now retired, Hager Karoui holds a doctorate in medicine from the University of Lyon. After more than 30 years devoted to pediatric care, she wrote her first book, “Chroniques des années cactus” (“Chronicles of the Cactus Years”). In it, she paints a powerful portrait of Tunisian society during a particularly turbulent historical period, drawing the reader into the daily life of a bourgeois Tunis family.
A New, Committed Work
She has just finished writing a second book: “Fatima, l'héritière controversée” (“Fatima, the Controversial Heiress”). This fictionalized account traces the short life of the Prophet Mohamed's daughter, as suggested by the often-contradictory Sunni and Shia hadiths.
“A classic example of family violence perpetrated by the touchy Omar Ibn al-Khattab, a man not particularly known for his gentleness toward women,” she explains.
The idea took root thanks to “Les derniers jours de Muhammad” (“The Last Days of Muhammad”), written by Tunisian academic Hela Ouardi. Hager Karoui “was determined to lift the veil on the circumstances of the tragic life — deliberately hidden by Sunni Muslims — of this inconvenient heiress, who was assassinated, according to Shia accounts.”
The Birth of Sayeb Salha: A Response to Sexism
In the Wake of #MeToo
The Weinstein affair of October 2017 triggered a global shockwave. The hashtag #MeToo, created ten years earlier by American feminist activist Tarana Burke, gave voice to victims of sexual assault and harassment. The movement quickly went viral on social media.
Its French-language counterpart, #BalanceTonPorc, broke the code of silence and gathered testimonies ranging from everyday sexism to street harassment and sexual assault. The site allowed victims to post their testimony anonymously and connect with one another.
“With these two movements, women put everything on the table: from the most trivial to the most serious, every manifestation of patriarchy was called out. The goal is for fear to change sides.”
The Tunisian Context
Three years on, the picture is of freer speech, better heard. But “the broader conversation launched across society as a whole is far from over.”
#EnaZeda, the Tunisian #MeToo, was born out of a sexual harassment case involving a Qalb Tounis MP. It triggered a vast movement of women speaking out on the country's social media.
The Origin of the Group
The birth of Sayeb Salha stems from “the vile smear campaign targeting the two Tunisian women running for the country's highest office: Abir Moussi and Selma Elloumi.”
Hager Karoui observes: “Our democracy is still finding its feet. We are learning the right to live free, but not every argument used is legitimate.”
The Daily Fight Against Sexism
An Omnipresent Scourge
“Every day, Tunisian women — whether public figures or private individuals — have their dignity attacked. They risk being suspected of having ‘slept their way up' if they get a professional promotion, or being called a ‘slut' when their clothing doesn't suit certain people.”
The group's stance: “Criticism, yes — but not reductive, sweeping generalizations!”
Goals and Methods
Sayeb Salha aims to build a watchdog network against sexism in everyday language. This monitoring covers professional circles (journalism, education, medicine) and the sexist images and advertisements that persist, particularly those for detergents or cars.
The group speaks out against sexist insults hurled at every opportunity and sexual innuendo used as an argument. “Fertile ground for discrimination and harassment, sexism must be flagged and condemned at every level, national and international.”
The strategy includes screenshotting sexist comments made by Facebook friends. As French feminist journalist and activist Benoîte Groult put it: “Feminism has never killed anyone; machismo kills every day.”
Inspiring Figures of Feminism
Two Landmark Figures
Hager Karoui identifies two figures who “shook up mindsets and are the leading embodiments of feminism.”
President Habib Bourguiba, and his famous Tunisian Personal Status Code, which governs marriage, divorce, and inheritance. “This code is remarkable in several respects, because unlike reforms in other countries in the region, it departs considerably from certain Islamic legal traditions: polygamy, child marriage, forced marriage, and unilateral repudiation.”
Simone Veil, the eminent French politician and pioneer of women's rights who led the campaign to legalize abortion in France. “She is the person most responsible for advancing women's legal rights over the course of the 20th century.”
Vision and Hopes for the Future
Overcoming Reluctance
“Even if we're hesitant to get involved in association work, each of us, at our own level, can move things forward without expending huge amounts of energy. It's enough to call out the sexism running rampant on social media, at work, within the family, in the media, in advertising.”
The goal is to “raise the alarm and awaken consciences to fight the normalized sexism lurking everywhere.”
Obstacles to Overcome
Hager Karoui identifies the difficulties Tunisian women face in speaking out about everyday harassment. “There's a lack of accessible language to talk about these traumas and bad experiences. Masturbation, penis, penetration are ‘crude,' obscene terms, often banished from family vocabulary, that no woman of good virtue is supposed to utter.”
“Legal texts,” she adds, “remain vague by invoking ‘modesty’ and ‘good morals.’” These “imprecise terms” open the door to abusive interpretations.
The Call for Women's Solidarity
Her hope rests on collective mobilization: “May women come together to build solidarity among women — cross-generational, and above all, cross-partisan.”
She analyzes: “Male solidarity is the bulwark of patriarchy. It has succeeded in dividing women and creating competition among them.”
The solution: “With a little kindness, women can come together to talk and find solutions toward parity, because they share the same difficulties and experiences.”
Readings and Influences
A Memorable Book
“The book that moved me deeply and that I reread regularly is ‘Via Mala' by John Knittel, published in 1934. It's the story of a collective parricide that shakes the impartiality of the judge in charge of the investigation.”
She is currently discovering “Le voile sur le divan” (“The Veil on the Couch”) by Professor Saida Douki, co-written with Dr. Hager Karray.
Advice for Young Women
Never Tolerate Disrespect
“My warning: never let disrespect take hold. It's an open door to every kind of excess.”
She quotes Gisèle Halimi: “Don't let anything slide — in gestures, language, or situations — that infringes on your dignity. 100% of women have been victims, at least once, of sexist behavior or sexual assault.”
Raising Awareness of Normalized Sexism
“Young women need to be made aware of normalized sexism. Every girl has the right to say, ‘that doesn't suit me.'”
She condemns seemingly harmless terms of address: “It may seem harmless to call an employee ‘ma petite' (little one), tahfouna, aroussa, and yet these words are rooted in a paternalistic power dynamic.”
These familiar forms of address are “perceived by 58% of women as inappropriate. So the remark can be both kindly meant and out of place. It's an insidious sexism that marginalizes women in subtle ways.”
Hager Karoui embodies this generation of women who turn their professional experience into a societal fight. Through Sayeb Salha and her writing, she builds a bridge between intellectual reflection and concrete action. Her message resonates: women's emancipation will be the work of women themselves, built on solidarity and mutual kindness.
