Bearing the Burden: : Women, Family Planning and the Making of Modern Tunisia

Most Tunisian women say that their lives are better than those of their mothers and grandmothers. Most say that life is better, but not all. Tunisian women feel that, along with the benefits of progress and modernity, they have had to pay a heavy price in personal, public, and national responsibility. The Tunisian state actively promotes the idea, both internally and externally that women are responsible for displaying modernity. In this way Tunisia could distance itself from other Arab states on the basis of the improved status of its women. Sage femmes (midwives) and anamatrices (social workers) receive praise from the state for their efforts to modernize lower-class and rural women through family planning, but they pay a price for their modernity.