which its ties have grown increasingly close), flirting with socialism and attempting to stabilize its economic situation in large measure by developing its petroleum reserves.
Because of Tunisia's complex political history, the status of women has changed dramatically over time. Although Rome was not a perfectly egalitarian society in terms of gender, in many social and legal arenas it did recognize women as nearly equal to men. Such precepts were exported to its colonies as well and would have been at least tacitly acknowledged while Tunisia was under Roman rule.
The status of women under Islamic rule (i.e. for over the last millennium) has been more problematic because Islamic societies have not traditionally been supportive of the equal rights of women. However, exactly what women's status is in the Islamic world is difficult to analyze from a position outside that world, for Western ideas of feminism and of women's rights may not apply. (This point has been repeatedly argued by both Mosl
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