The gender relations approach has now acquired the right of being cited in the social sciences and particularly in the domain of development studies. The emphasis on gender issues during the world conferences of 1994 in Cairo (on population) and 1995 in Beijing (on women) has shown the importance of training and research programmes in this domaine. Demographers in their statistical studies have contributed a lot to the awareness of the disparities between men and women but they are often limited to the description of situations.
In the countries of the Maghreb, there exist a large number of studies on the situation of women and feminists' analyses of these situations. However, the gender perspective which rather aims at highlighting the nature of relationships between men and women, both at the macrosocial and microsocial level, is yet almost absent. This article examines how demographers and other social science specialists can adapt the concept of gender so as to further knowledge on population dynamics as well as use their tools for the evaluation of development activities and projects. In the suggestions on areas of research and training to the favoured, we have adopted an absolutely interdisciplinary approach.
