Fadela Amara

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Fadéla Amara, also known as Fatiha Amara (b. 1964) is a French advocate for women in poor urban areas and a feminist. She is president of the organisation "Ni Putes Ni Soumises".

Amara was born to Algerian Kabyle parents in an emergency housing district of Clermont-Ferrand, which she later described as a shanty-town. The neighborhood was mostly populated by immigrants from the Maghreb. She was born into a family of ten children, having four sisters and six brothers. Her father was a workman during the week and worked in the markets on the weekend while her mother was a housewife. She attributed to her father the values of solidarity that she learned at an early age; a hard worker, he sent money back to his home village in Algeria and kept some more aside for the poor of the district, despite not being well off himself. About the situation there for women she said, "daughters, sisters, cousins, female neighbors must either act like submissive but virtuous vassals, or be treated like cheap whores. Any sign of independence or femininity is viewed as a challenge and provocation." ^[1]

Although she wished to study literature, she ended up taking a qualification as an office employee.

In 1978, at the age of 14, Fadela Amara witnessed the drama that would change the course of her life. Her brother Malik was run down by a reckless dirver, and died of his injuries a few hours later. Fadela was appalled to see the police take the side of the driver at the scene of the incident.

This experience led her to participate in the first demonstration aimed to encouraging electoral registration among the young people of Clermont-Ferrand. When she was 16 years old, the municipal authorities decided to demolish the district she lived in. She decided to go from door to door canvassing support for its retention. At th age of 18, she established the Association des femmes pour l'échange intercommunautaire (women's association for intercommunal exchange), with the aim of developing women's autonomy and individual thought through meetings between neighbouring communities.

In 1983 she took part in the mass demonstration of the Beurs (French of Arab origin), and from 1986 on she was a militant of SOS Racisme. In 2000 she was elected president of the Fédération nationale des maisons des potes (FNMP). In 1989 she established the "Women's Commission", whose principal objective was to investigate the position of women in urban and suburban areas and register the demands of the communities of those areas.

In 2002 she organised a women's parliament in the Sorbonne with over 250 participants, drew up a petition which gained almost 20,000 signatures, and organised a nationwide tour of Ni putes ni soumises, which finished in Paris on 8 March 2003.

After the murder of Sohanne Benziane she organized a march starting from the place of Benziane's murder behind the banner declaring the women "Ni Putes, Ni Soumises" (neither whores, nor submissives). The motto stuck and changed into the name of the organization. She is currently the president of the Ni Putes Ni Soumises organization.

She has been called the female alter ego of Malek Boutih, former president of SOS Racisme.^[2]

[edit] Bibliography

Ni Putes Ni Soumises. (ISBN 2-7071-4458-4)
Neither Whores Nor Doormats: Women's Rights and Human Rights in Contemporary France. (ISBN 0-520-24621-7, English translation)