Chapter 3 considers intellectual conversations relevant to modern womanhood, digging deeper into the interplay between development logics and Tunisian nation-building in scholarship on rural populations. Knowledge about the rural interior, farming, fertility, and family structures was essential to economic planning, whether agricultural reform, public works, or otherwise. The need for local data facilitated a partnership between the state and scholars eager to shape national policy, while research in rural spaces allowed them to demonstrate expertise. It was also a space of advocacy, consciousness raising, and a feminism concerned with women’s lives and local knowledge. In fields such as demography and sociology, Tunisian academics engaged with theories of population and development, worked with international organizations, and attended conferences on multiple continents. In their approach to contemporary debates, their scholarship centered national and local contexts. Through their work in rural areas and advocacy to state agencies, the UNFT brought rural women into economic planning. Academic and policy writing operated within the political limits imposed by the single-party state and its Western alliances, avoiding explicit contestation. Yet collaborations between urban and rural women challenged the male bias of development discourse, opening possibilities of cross-class solidarity that redefined what it meant to be Tunisian.