ABSTRACT
Sherifa, Miriam, Nura, and Hannan: working women and housewives, migrants and original inhabitants of Tunis, university graduates and women who can barely read and write. Although each woman's network is distinct, their ties fall into three complementary patterns: the kin exclusive network, neighbor networks, and the friendship pattern. Poorer women, who do not have the money, time, means of transportation, or household help required for frequent entertaining, tend to restrict their visits to nearby kin and neighbors. The primary factor affecting the size of women's networks is clearly household income. Many women in Tunis, such as Sherifa, who lives next door to her husband's four brothers and their wives, continue to spend their daily lives in the company of the neighboring extended family. Yet several ethnographic studies of women in the region also indicate a bilateral pattern for Arab women's kin relations, in contrast to the ideal preference for patrilineal kin.
