Algerian Women at War: from Independence to Civil War Recently, Algerian women have begun to explore women’s experiences of the Algerian War of Independence and participate in a discussion previously dominated by a masculine perspective. This study examines how texts such as Louisette Ighilahriz’s autobiographical Algerienne and Djamila Amrane’s collection of testimonies Les femmes dans la guerre d’Algérie illustrate how traditional constructions of gender were challenged during this period. However, as this examination argues this war-time transgression led to a return to traditional roles upon independence and an attack on women during the civil war. As seen in La Bataille d’Alger, women frequently unveiled and submitted to the sexual gaze of the French ‘other’ to pass through checkpoints carrying bombs for the FLN. However, as Ighilahriz and Amrane’s texts illustrate, women fighting with the Moudjahidin outside of Algiers were required to desexualize themselves by wearing ‘masculine’ clothing to negotiate the tradition of separating the sexes. Although women were only permitted to perform conventionally ‘feminine’ tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and nursing; they had to withstand the harsh rural living conditions and also resist capture and torture by the French forces as well as their male counterparts. Far from being an accepted requirement of the war, as suggested by Franz Fanon, writers such as Mohammed Dib expressed anxiety associated with the changing role of women in society. Masculine unease provoked a return to conventional gender roles upon Independence. Meredith Turshen a specialist in public health policy notes that the majority of women re-occupied a place in the home rather than in the professional world after the war. The civil war perhaps best symbolizes the transformation in women’s roles. Rather than participating in the war, women became the targets of aggression. Algerian writers such as Rachid Boudjedra and contemporary films such as Viva Laldjerie and Bab El-Oued City, represent the Islamists’ brutal treatment of their female victims and the forced disappearance of Algerian women from society. As this examination demonstrates, women writers often relate the more recent violence against women to the War of Independence and accuse their FLN ‘brothers’ of betrayal.