Some strides have been taken to improve the status of women in Islam, but the weight of conservatism is still very strong. How strong it is may be gauged from the following illustration. In the introduction to his book published in 1926 describing the rise of trade unionism, Shaikh Tāhir al-Haddād, a pioneer of the trade union movement in Tunisia, interprets history in a fashion that comes very close to Marxism, although he rejects Marxist atheism and materialism. No opposition came to this work from the pen of an 'alim. But three years later, when he published Our Woman in the Sharî'a and in Society, arguing that the social status of woman in Muslim society was actually inferior to what Islamic teaching granted them and pleading for improvement in the social and legal positions of women, he was severely attacked by the conservatives, lost his job, and died a few years later, a forlorn man.