While the North African country provides female citizens more rights than most other Middle Eastern nations, protesters marched to the parliament building in Tunis this weekend demanding that women receive the same inheritance rights as men. Under Islamic law, men are granted double the inheritance of women.
Last year, the country allowed Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, an unprecedented cultural permission in the strictly fundamentalist religious governments of the Middle East.
On Saturday, many women carried signs proclaiming, "In a civil state I take exactly what you take." Many men marched alongside women.
"It is true that Tunisian women have more rights compared to other Arab women but we want to be compared with European women," noted activist Kaouther Boulila, cited by Reuters.
"We just want our rights," she added.
In August, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essbsi established a committee to establish proposals to expand the rights of women.
His announcement was met with indignation and opposition by many Muslim clerics claiming that the forward-thinking proposal was a violation of Islamic doctrine.
The 2011 revolution in Tunisia collapsed the regime of autocratic president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and is said to have contributed to additional color revolutions across the Middle East.
