Legal issues involving women's status in the Middle East tend to be quite different from those in the West. Although there are feminist organizations in Middle Eastern countries, they tend to be small and to lack significant input into the political process. Thus, the improvement in the status of women has not resulted from pressures from women's groups as much as from the desire of male members of the political elite to modernize and industrialize their societies, using law reform as a tool of social engineering. It is where political leadership has judged that legal reforms in the status of women would promote the achievement of full modernization that reforms have been made.