Tradition and the Veil: Female Status in Tunisia and Algeria

Abstract

Theories of modernisation and social change have been increasingly challenged during the past decade by events in the Middle East and other areas of the developing world. Leaders of oil-rich nations are choosing to industrialise but not to westernise, and Islamic revivals are shaping new patterns of political and social development. For example, improvements in female status can no longer be regarded as the inevitable concomitants of industrialisation; to the contrary, gender inequality may actually be exacerbated by national resurgences of religious and cultural traditions which often accompany planned social change.1