Students and professors of sociology and related fields gathered at the Centre d'Etudes Maghrebines a Tunis (CEMAT) on the afternoon of October 6, 2004 to hear Professor Laroussi Amri describe the findings of his recent publication, "La Femme Rurale dans l'Exploitation Familiale (nord-ouest de la Tunisie)" published by Harmattan in 2003. Amri, who is professor of sociology at the Institute of Human Sciences of the University of Tunis, focused on the central role played by women in the transformed economy of the Bousalem region in northwest Tunisia. After four years of research in the field, Amri has uncovered many interesting findings. Women have taken on more tasks as the economy has modernized and are involved in more of the everyday jobs in the family economy than are men. In certain areas, particularly those identified as "reproduction" (child-rearing and tasks inside the home) and "production" (animal husbandry in particular), women undertake the vast majority of the work. Among Amri’s other insights: Tunisian rural families today are almost exclusively "nuclear" families, and many consist of older couples often living alone on small parcels of land and earning less than $1000 a year. Their children live in the city or have emigrated. This then raises the question of the future of Tunisian agriculture, as the rural population ages and migration removes the youth from the land, continuation will be difficult. Professor Amri’s conclusions help to further the understanding of rural life and gender roles in Tunisia’s northwest.