ABSTRACT
Throughout the varied social structures in the Arab World, feminism is as difficult to be articulated to socialism as it is to economic liberalism. Women's inequality is presented as an inequality of rights for which the Algerian government is to a large part responsible. An Algerian woman militant has noted that under the Front de Liberation Nationale it was a struggle to find a job, and that it is common to refuse accommodation to women living alone. The Islamist resurgence in Algeria and in Tunisia is best examined in the light of the following three factors: the national system of government, the cultural duality of the elite, and the deficiencies of "modernization" in this part of the world, the economic depression, and its negative social and cultural consequences. Fundamentalist Islam in Tunisia may be qualified as "underground," and submissive to a strong and resistant state as well as to other different authorities representing it in civil society.
