Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture

FATIMA SADIQI

Culture may be broadly defined as a system of practices, rituals, beliefs,

values, and ways of meaning of a community. All cultures control their
members, but they differ in the degree of the control they impose on
individuals. Moroccan culture is of a type that strongly constrains the
behavior of men and women. The strength of this control comes from the
fact that it is channeled through powerful cultural components that closely
regulate the lives of Moroccan men and women through the establishment of
powerful social institutions. Eight such components have a direct impact on
gender perception: History, Geography, Islam, Orality, Multilingualism,
Social organization, Economic status, and Political system.

History

Moroccan national history has been officially recorded by men. The

images of women in it are created from a male’s point of view. Accordingly,
gender, class, and regional differences have been blurred in official accounts.
In these views, women’s roles are either ignored or made secondary to
men’s, constructing thus Moroccan women’s subordination and supporting
patriarchy through centuries. These views justify women’s subordination in
the postcolonial societies. Given the quasi-absence of female interpretations
of events in the Moroccan recorded history, a rigid gender dichotomy has
been adopted across the years and is inherited by the relatively recent
generations in the present time. This historical legacy has deepened the gap
between the two sexes and its impact has been accentuated by the status of
written history as a “venerated” institution in the Moroccan socio-cultural
context. The close association between Moroccan national history and
written languages1 distances it even further from women, the overwhelming
majority of whom are still illiterate, and, thus, largely ignorant of Morocco’s
written history. It should, however, be noted that illiterate Moroccan women
have had access to the constructions of Moroccan (and Arab-Muslim)

1
Among the languages used in Morocco, Standard Arabic and French are written, but
Moroccan Arabic and Berber are largely spoken (see Sadiqi 2003 for more details on this).
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history through radio and TV, including, increasingly, satellite dishes.

The Moroccan pre-independence anti-colonialist protest gave way to a
collective awareness that the country needed to create its own identity after
independence. This shift was occasioned by the confusion and
disillusionment that Moroccans experienced as they realized that the modern
West would not go away after independence. In fact, long into the
postcolonial era, Moroccans continue to struggle with the impact of
colonization. This materialized at the intellectual level in a spectacular
flourishing of social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, economy,
law, political science, and linguistics. Many Moroccan intellectuals, most of
them men, started to pay attention to the status, role, and expectations of
Moroccan women in this transitional phase. It is also during this period that
the first Moroccan women journalists and writers appeared on the public
scene. Further, genres other than the usual written literary ones emerged.
Folklore and oral histories attracted not only writers, but also anthropologists
and filmmakers. This period witnessed the birth of Moroccan feminism
which, among other things, is trying to “recover” women’s roles in the
historical construction of Morocco.

Geography

Morocco is the Westernmost of the North African countries; it is situated

at the crossroads between Africa and Europe, a fact which provides it with
both African and European characteristics. Although Morocco has always
been considered part of the East by Westerners, it is the most accessible to
the West; it is the first stop for many Western European travelers who often
consider it as the prototypical African, Arab, and Muslim country.
Morocco’s geographical position explains three gender-related facts:
religious tolerance, cultural heterogeneity and linguistic complexity.
Compared to many other Arab countries in the Middle East or even in North
Africa, Morocco is more open to cross-cultural exchanges, including a
European mainstream perception of gender roles.
It is important to note that Morocco is marginal to both the Arab-Muslim
world and the other countries of North Africa, namely Algeria, Tunisia,
Libya, and Mauritania. Morocco’s appellation al-magrib al-aqSaa (farthest
west) refers mainly to its geographical position. Morocco is farther west than
any country in Western Europe except Ireland. Many of the customs and
foods that are known in all the Eastern countries that fell under the Ottoman
Empire are not known in Morocco which resisted Turkish rule.
Consequently, Morocco’s culture is more deeply impregnated with both

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African and European components than with Middle Eastern cultures. This
situation explains the fact that although Morocco is not home to any holy
places of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism and although it has not produced
the grand art and literature of the ancient Arab-Muslim era, Moroccan art
and literature are recognized as a special “genre” which is, broadly speaking,
different from Arab literature of the Middle East.
The permeability of Morocco’s geographical borders and its diverse
population has allowed a flexible view of gender roles and a more
favourable attitude toward change in these roles. This is linked to
Moroccans’ tolerant use of European languages. This flexibility
counterbalances the rigid patriarchal views and correlates with modernistic
ones. It also explains the fact that Morocco has not experienced severe
versions of Islamic radicalism as has neighboring Algeria. Compared to
other Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco has always been characterized and
blessed by tolerance towards public religious practices.

Islam

Like history and geography, Islam is a pillar of Moroccan culture. Islam

was introduced in Morocco in the year 712 and it has ever since been the
official state religion1. Morocco is defined in the Constitution as an “Islamic
monarchy”. This is symbolized by the King’s status as the head of the
executive power and the Amir al-Muminin (the Commander of the Faithful).
The official Islamic school in Morocco is the Sunni Maliki2 school, itself
based on Shari’a (Islamic law). Shari’a is the sum of judicial “rules”
elaborated during the first three centuries of the existence of Islam. These
rules are based on a number of Quranic prescriptions and on the ahadith
(norms inspired by the behavior and recommendations attributed to Prophet
Mohammad which constitute the Sunnah). The end of the third century of the
Hegira was marked by the disappearance of Ijtihad (interpretation of the
Qur’an and Sunnah) and legislators, as well as jurists, ceased to adapt the
Islamic law to the changing times.
According to recorded history, it was only in the 19th and 20th centuries,
and as a result of worldwide industrialization, international trade exchanges,
and rapid urbanization that deep reforms in Islamic legislation were brought
about and argued for by prominent reformers of Islam such as Jamal Eddine
Al-Afghani, Mohammad Abdu, Rachid Ridha, Ali Abderrazak, Qasim

1
Islam was the official religion of both Arab and Berber royal dynasties.
2
The Sunni school is relatively moderate. According to Maier (1996: 15), Sunni Muslims
make up officially 99.97% of the Moroccan population.

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Amin, and Tahar Haddad. These intellectuals and thinkers were pretty close
to the eralier reformists. They underlined the “evolutionary” spirit of Islam
and the necessity to reflect it in the Islamic law according to changing social
and economic eras. The reformists’ names that official recorded history has
retained were all male. These reformists were genuinely interested in
eradicating the difficulties that the clash between rigid interpretations of
Islamic precepts and secular states engendered. It was through the rising
voices of these pioneer reformers that “exceptional clauses” and sometimes
total changes in the Islamic legislative laws were introduced after centuries
of stagnation. In the newly independent Morocco, King Mohamed V, as well
as nationalist political leaders and thinkers such as Allal Al-Fassi Hassan
Ouazzani were favorable to the spirit of reformism. In practice, this
reformism was reflected in modern progressive legislation in all the key
societal institutions such as the Constitution, the administration, commerce,
and the penal code. It is interesting to note that the spirit of reformism hardly
affected the family laws that dealt with women’s behaviour, duties and
obligations, as the latter continued to be largely based on the Islamic law
(Shari’a).

Islam and Modernity

Morocco’s proximity to Europe has promoted a spirit of tolerance in the

way Islam is conceived and practiced in Morocco. For example, of all Arab-
Muslim countries, Morocco has always been the most tolerant towards its
Jewish population, even during the most critical moments of the tension
between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East. This may be due to the fact
that in the Moroccan context, Islam has never been daily threatened by the
presence of Christianity or Judaism, as has been the case in the Middle East,
where Isla m coexists and even “competes” with these two religions1. This
might explain the fact that veiling, for example, appeared in the Middle East
before it appeared in North Africa, as a means of protecting a ‘‘threatened’’
identity.
When dealing with Islam and modernity, it is crucial to differentiate
between Islam as “faith” and Islam as “culture”. Islam as faith is perceived
as a personal relationship between an individual and God, and Islam as
culture is perceived as part and parcel of the Moroccans’ overall identity
(whether they practice or not). The cultural aspect of Islam is apparent in
many strong icons of Moroccan social life. For example, almost all aspects

1
It is true, however, that there are Jewish and Christian Moroccans, but these are relatively
smaller in number than Muslims.

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of Moroccan social behaviour are religious in origin such as greetings and

leave-takings, as well as rituals that accompany the celebration of marriage,
birth, circumcision, funerals, etc. The meaning and nature of Islam in
Morocco, and indeed throughout the Muslim world, cannot be separated
from questions of gender and gender roles.
Islam interacts with other aspects of Moroccan culture. It is perceived
and practiced in a way that is peculiar to the Moroccan socio-cultural context
in the sense that Islamic principles are translated into the Moroccan local
culture and have become impregnated by it. This is attested in the “classical
style” of Moroccan Islam, as opposed to the “national style” of Indonesian
Islam, for example. As Geertz notes, these differences are exhibited in the
shape of the mosques, dress, ritual practices, etc. and are due to the fact that
Morocco and Indonesia constitute the farthest geographical limits of the
Islamic area. Thus, although Islam is basically the same throughout the
Islamic world, it is lived and manifested differently in different cultures. As
a religion in a patriarchal society, Moroccan Islam is closely linked to
Standard Arabic, rather than Moroccan Arabic or Berber.

Orality

Orality is an important component of Moroccan culture which deeply

differentiates it from mainstream Western cultures. In the Moroccan culture,
speech carries greater significance in regulating everyday life than writing as
communication is mainly channeled through unwritten languages. In
Moroccan culture, the views of others count and carry social meaning. For
example, oral blessings, profanity, curses, insults, etc. are more
consequential in this culture than in Western cultures. These oral ways of
expressing the self are not mere words; they carry genuine positive or
negative values and regulate behavior in no trivial way. The importance of
speech in Moroccan culture is also attested in the fact that conversation is
perceived as a means of bonding between people. Speech in Moroccan
culture is inherently dependent on the private and public dichotomy: public
and private speeches are two distinct acts: whereas the former is geared
towards keeping appearances and, thus, is far from reflecting facts, the latter
is more personal and direct.
The unique place of orality in Morocco is largely due to the fact that the
two mother tongues used in this country (that is, Moroccan Arabic and
Berber) are mainly oral. The tight link between non-written mother tongues
and orality positions the latter at the center of the Moroccan speech
community’s sensory experience. As such, orality becomes a powerful

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system of communication that deeply shapes the way visual and non-visual
representations of cultural roles, among which gender roles, are constructed,
maintained and perpetuated. Being related to seeing and hearing, orality is a
valuable source of information and constitutes a strong vehicle of cultural
values.
Orality is also closely related to illiteracy and to women as the vast
majority of the latter are illiterate and do not have access to print and
electronic texts. These women express their inner self, transmit various types
of knowledge to their children, and communicate with the world outside
home exclusively through the oral medium. The written medium is generally
perceived by these women as alien; and even when the written languages
(that is, Standard Arabic and French) are used orally in the audio-visual
media, these women do not readily identify with these languages; they
generally do not understand movie broadcasts on TV and television
programs. Most women in Morocco identify with Egyptian films because the
latter are channeled through the typically oral Egyptian dialect.
Orality has a dual status in Morocco: it is simultaneously perceived as a
“degenerate”, “vulgar” and “lower class” medium of expression and a
powerful symbol identity and authenticity. The negative attitude to orality
resides in the fact that it is transmitted by non-prestigious mother tongues:
Berber and Moroccan Arabic. As for the positive attitude to orality, it resides
in the fact that it characterizes Moroccan culture and differentiates it from
Western literate cultures, for example. The power of lkelma (the oral word)
is attested in many deep aspects of the Moroccan culture, such as marriage
contracts, business deals, and even legacies after death. These contracts
were, up to relatively recent times, based exclusively on the oral medium. In
present-day Moroccan society, lkelma “the oral word”, more precisely
lkelma d rrajel “the oral word of a man” still holds sway and has authority,
especially in rural areas.

Multilingualism

Like orality, multilingualism is a defining component of Moroccan

culture. An understanding of gender role conception in Moroccan culture
necessitates a prior understanding of the overall linguistic situation in this
country, as well as the way languages are used by men and women. The
linguistic situation in Morocco is complex as it not only involves a variety of
languages but also highlights the social meanings of oppositions such as
mother tongue/learned languages, oral/written languages, prestigious/non-
prestigious languages, etc. The complexity of this linguistic situation is the

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result of Morocco’s historical background and geographical position. The

languages used in Morocco neither have the same status nor the same
symbolic value in the local linguistic market.
Unlike in the Middle Eastern cultures where multilingualism is often
considered a threat to Arab unity and identity, multilingualism is perceived
in the Moroccan culture as a positive identity-builder. It is highly respected
and generally perceived as a way of increasing the individual’s potential for
communication and for social ascension. Indeed, the mastery and use of
more than one language brings social power to language users in Morocco.
In the private sector, knowledge of French and/or English is an absolutely
necessary requirement. As for intellectuals, they generally perceive
multilingualism as a means of knowing better oneself and one’s own
language(s) and culture.
Being a power-related factor in Morocco, multilingualism has social
meaning and is important in gender perception and construction. Its
importance stems from its correlation with class and level of education: the
more economically privileged and more educated a person is the more likely
s/he is likely to be multilingual, and the poorer and uneducated one is, the
less likely one is likely to be multilingual.
So far as Moroccan women are concerned, the most economically
privileged ones are likely to be bilingual, if not multilingual. Women who
speak only Berber and/or Moroccan Arabic usually belong to the lower
classes and are at a disadvantage at the level of communication in
comparison to middle and upper class women. As for monolingual women
who speak either Berber or Moroccan Arabic, they are illiterate in the
majority of cases. Monolingual Berber women usually live in remote rural
villages. Within the overall Moroccan social context, monolingual women
are socially perceived as constituting the most disadvantaged portion of the
Moroccan population. However, these women are very sucessful in the local
communities where they live: they work inside their homes and in the fields,
they support families and move easily between local villages.
Given this overall state of affairs, Moroccan women are fully aware that
mastering more than one language is a means of improving their personal
and social conditions. Educated women are conscious that it is only through
knowledge of written languages that they can compare their conditions with
those of other men and women, reflect critically on their situation within
society, and extend their cognitive and functional knowledge. They know
that multilingualism broadens women’s horizons and allows collective
emancipatory action. They also know that literacy and social advancement in
Morocco depend greatly on the knowledge and use of the more prestigious
languages, namely Standard Arabic and French. As a result, Moroccan

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women make specific empowering choices of language according to

circumstances and situations: if they are illiterate, they use an oral language
to express themselves through poetry, folktales, or songs, and if they are
educated, they use the strategy of code-switching to score gains in
conversation and force positive attitude. These uses are used as strategies of
communication which aim at valorizing women on the social level.

Social organization

Of all the components of Moroccan culture, it is social organization that

has the strongest impact on gender perception and gender construction. Men
and women in Morocco evolve within the same social and cultural context.
Cultural discourses constantly circulate and affect their speech and
behaviour. These discourses are not internalized and reproduced
mechanically; they filter through an “active” reproduction mechanism where
social organization plays a key role. Moroccan society is built on clear role
assignments for men and women. These roles guarantee the structure and
functioning of society. Control over men’s and women’s behavior is ensured
through a set of three substantive designata: rituals, the codes of honor and
morality, and the concept of “collective self”. These three designata are
“created”, “fostered” and “perpetuated” in the unit of the Moroccan social
organization: the family. The family in Morocco is in most cases agnatic and
patriarchal. Moroccan family structure is generally headed by the father and
the father’s male lineage and is legally founded on blood relations; “natural”
affiliation (that is, cases where women, usually very young, give birth to a
child whose father is not known) and adoption are strictly prohibited.
However, there are adoptions within extended families at least, where a
barren couple will raise a niece (or more likely a nephew) as their own.
The Moroccan patriarchal system is built on the exclusion of women
from spaces of public power and by the sanction of all forms of physical and
moral violence against them in these spaces. Women’s freedom is seen as a
challenge to the patriarchal social fabric and men’s status quo. It is in the
family that women are initiated into their role of guardians of social
organization. This initiation is channeled through a rigid system of kinship
relations, a battery of traditions and rituals, and taboo.

Rituals

Rituals may be defined as the sum of patterned actions and utterances

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that characterize meaningful cultural events. They are usually remnants of

past practices or symbols of socially significant acts and words. Being
relatively fixed and less resistant to change than everyday interaction, rituals
often explain the historical and actual meanings of social practices.
Rituals are inherently oral and culture-bound. As culture is the sum of
values, symbols, and norms which differentiate one society from another,
rituals are a means of preserving these values, symbols, and norms and
transmitting them from generation to generation. As such, rituals have an
integrating role and because they are often surrounded by superstition, they
have power on the individual. Schneider qualifies the rituals that accompany
cultural events as “enchanting” not only for anthropologists, but also for the
members of the community which produce them. They operate profoundly
through gestures, words, and exchanged icons in special events. They are
crystallized in the rites around which social life and life cycles are
articulated. Rituals are usually celebrated in family and social feasts which
both enchant people and generate meanings. The power of these meanings
resides in the fact that they carry a practical ideology which operates through
daily activities. For example, in ritualized settings, the way one dresses, eats,
celebrates an event, etc. is part of culture and constitutes a channel through
which the fundamental norms regulating the status of each sex are rigidly
respected. They dictate ways of being man or woman on the body, on the
memory, and in the imagination of individuals. The most significant rituals
in the Moroccan socio-cultural context are the ones that accompany three
important family events: marriage, birth, and circumcision of male children.

The codes of honor and morality

Gender-related customs and traditions in the Moroccan society are based

on the two codes of honor and morality. The code of honor consists in
preserving the public reputation of a family, and the code of morality
consists in preserving a socially accepted public conduct. Both codes rest on
girls’ and women’s “good conduct”: good upbringing, chastity, hard work,
obedience, and modesty. The codes of honor and morality have been
institutionalized by recorded history and religion and are inculcated in the
family through everyday verbal and non-verbal “teaching” and behavior.
This explains the close relation between family honor and the behavior of
girls and women. A woman’s sexual purity is related to the honor of her
family, especially her male kin, whereas a man’s sexual purity is related to
his own honor, not to that of his family or his female kin. Consequently, in
the Moroccan collective perception, a woman’s “mistake” affects the whole

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family whereas a man’s does not: huta wahda txannaz chwari (one filthy
fish spoils a whole bag), lbent bhal lhlib, lli darti fih iban (girls are like milk,
anything you put in bulges out). This collective view of the codes of honor
and morality puts a great psychological and social pressure on girls and
women, has a negative impact on them, and creates gender inequities in
society. Both the structure of the family and the socialization of Moroccan
boys and girls are, thus, clearly crucial in gender construction. This
construction is largely conducted through language. The terminology used to
refer to girls and women is significant. Adjectives like mahkuma
“governed”, mziyyra “controlled”, taht lahkam “under control”, mrat rrajel
“woman of a man”, as opposed to bent zzenqa “girl of the street”, and the
Berber expression ddaw ufus “under the hand, controlled”, acquire very
positive connotations when associated with girls and women. These
adjectives become very funny and ridiculous when associated with men. It is
ingrained in the Moroccan collective imagination that women need to be
controlled. Controlling girls and women has always been considered a way
of controlling society and making the application of political decisions easy
because women are the ones who will transmit these values to future
citizens. Moroccan culture is deeply dualist as it is based on a rigid gender
dichotomy and personal relationships in the family and other institutions like
school contain a strong hierarchical element.
In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, the laws that dictate the roles
inside the family codify the relationships between the two sexes and
reinforce social norms that make a clear difference between the two sexes
through the establishment of a hierarchy where women are kept in a lower
position than men. Women give their tacit consent to the power of the
husband because this power is legitimized: the husband is the provider for
the family (wife and children), whereas the wife is the nurturer. This power
is also supported by the law, which gives the husband legal authority in the
family, and by culture, which welcomes this legitimization and uses religion
to maintain it. Religion sanctions this through adapting male interpretations
of the Quranic texts. Further, expressions, proverbs, sayings, attitudes, and
behaviors, reinforce cultural values. Thus, the notion of Sbbara (very
patient) which is associated with the wife’s success in marriage, prepares
girls to endure their lot, however harsh it may be, with patience. A very
derogatory proverb expresses this idea: lmra w lhmara ma kayddayfuch
“literally: ‘women and mules should not be treated as guests’”, meaning that
women, like donkeys, need to be kept busy all the time’. This “virtue” is
transmitted from mother to daughter and is often used indirectly to secure
gains in the family. Patient wives may ‘get away’ with things more easily
than non-patient ones. The same is true of the notion of lmaktub, literally

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‘fate’, which is strong in the Moroccan culture and which precludes women
from questioning their lot. Sometimes, women consciously invoke the
authority of the husband to justify an act or gain credibility in a specific
public context even if the husband has not issued a judgment. The public
authority of men, like their loud voice in public settings, and the submission
of women, like their “hushed” voice in these contexts, are behaviours that
society and family reinforce and perpetuate. According to Ait Sabbah,
women are silent in the Islamic unconscious; they are more trained for self-
sacrifice and altruism; they don’t have “the right to be sure” for they lack
authority. They are considered “irrational” and “gullible”, and are more
associated with superstition and unscientific beliefs than men.
The family is where these views and values are accepted as natural.
Everyday linguistic interaction inside the family both reflects and affects the
power structure in society. The Moroccan family is based on a strong
hierarchy along the lines of sex and age. This hierarchy is established and
maintained through the use of language: only adult males have access to the
strong types of discourse which verbally set the rules of behavior in the
family. It is the father or, in his absence, the eldest son, who gives orders,
rebukes, and admonishes. He exercises power over the other members of the
family, especially girls, through the use of language. Only elderly women,
that is, post menopausal, may have particular kinds of power in certain
contexts. However, in general, men dominate the “official” discourse in the
Moroccan family; they openly discuss serious matters like politics; they are
the “publicly recognized” voices of the family, etc. In the presence of
outsiders, it is natural for men or male children to initiate conversation hold
the floor, and interrupt interacts. Women and girls are rather “given” the
right to speak; their words are carefully watched. As for males in the family,
they constitute the dominant group which exercises power over women as a
subordinate group by preventing them from reaching the powerful discourse
in the family. In society, the topics that women generally discuss, that is,
children and household matters, are not given public importance and are
perceived as “trivial”. Further, people in general do not have a positive
attitude towards households run by women without men such as spinsters,
widows, or divorced women.
The fact that women have a subordinate status in the family explains the
other fact that they tend to depend on men at home and in society at large.
Consequently, women’s chances of engaging in powerful types of discourse
in and outside the family is very small, if not non-existent. Moroccan women
do not contribute in the same way as men in mixed-sex conversations
because they are not given the same right to speak about the same topics as
men: they are more easily interrupted and silenced in the family and in

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society. Men have the lion’s share of speech in family and social mixed-sex
contexts, and they tend to deprive women from their share of speech in these
settings. This means that in many social contexts, women are not given an
opportunity to express their thoughts and succeed in attracting attention to
them. The fact that women are relegated to less powerful types of discourse
in the family and in society may appear in the small, or micro, level of
interaction as simple silence on the part of women, but at the macro level of
interaction, it reflects the weak position of women in the family and in
society. The power structure inside the family and society are heavily male-
biased as the male voice is privileged over the female one in both settings.
The roles for which women are socialized are closely linked to the
private space. Women’s association with private space is not only exhibited
in their appearance (the way they dress) but also reproduced in the
architectural organization of the traditional family compound: the high (often
unpainted and undecorated) walls are meant to shield the private space,
home and the inner rooms from the public gaze. This is congruent with the
cultural association of women with property: both need to be protected from
the public gaze. Even inside the household, a private domain, men are
associated with the “public” and women with the “private”. A woman may
be the chief decision-maker in the household, but usually this power is
hidden and seldom displayed in front of children, let alone strangers. The
concepts “public” and “private” are deeply ingrained in the Moroccan socio-
cultural collective imagination.

The concept of the collective self

The concept of self (or personhood) is constructed in the Moroccan

socio-cultural context in a way that is different from the way it is constructed
in Western cultures. Whereas the Western concept of “self” is based on the
individual, the Moroccan concept of self is based on the community (jama’a)
and is, thus, inherently plural. C. Geertz defines the Western concept of
personhood as an “atomistic individual”:
[The person is] a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational
and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment
and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both
against other such wholes and against its social and natural background.
By contrast, in the Moroccan culture, the notion of self is not an easily
“delineatable” or autonomous concept; it is deeply embedded in and defined
by society. In this culture, individuality as a concept is not freely expressed
and when it is, it is generally shunned and automatically categorized as “lack

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of modesty”. This vision of the self is epitomized in the popular expression?

ana wa ?aςudu billah min qawlat ?ana (I and may God forgive me for
saying ‘I’). It is also revealed in expressions such as ςabdu rabbih (God’s
slave) and had lςabd DDaςif (this weak slave) which speakers often use to
refer to themselves in public. Interestingly, the feminine counterparts of
these expressions (that is, hadihi lbda DDaςifa and ςabdatu rabbiha) are not
used. The reason is that women do not usually use public discourse. Another
token of collective self in Moroccan culture is the difficulty that people have
in Morocco, and probably the Arab-Muslim world, to introduce and talk
about themselves and their own experiences in public. Introducing and
talking about oneself in public is often accompanied by emotion and
uneasiness. The reason for this difficulty is mainly due to the fact that
talking about oneself in public is generally considered in Moroccan culture
as “lack of modesty”.
These ways of expressing the self shows the strong way in which the
Moroccan culture “shuns” anything related to “self” and, by implication,
explains the fact that privacy is not publicly emphasized in Moroccan
culture. Instead of the self, the notion of nasab (kinship) and lasl (root) are
far more important than the individual, as these terms invoke relationship to
others and affinity connections which situate the individual in the overall
social network. In fact, Moroccans are linguistically identified by reference
to contexts such as region, tribes, religion, sects, etc. According to Geertz,
nisba (family) adjectives are used as terms of reference and address in
Morocco.
Given these facts, it is more appropriate to use the expression “collective
self” instead of “self” when referring to individuality in the Moroccan socio-
cultural context. This notion of collective self has its roots in the Islamic
notion of jama’a (community/group) as the basic unit of society. This
concept is so deeply knitted and pervasive in the Moroccan social fabric that
it continuously materializes in language use, behavior, daily actions, and
ways of thinking and perceiving reality. As such, this concept is crucial in
defining and explaining gender relations in Moroccan culture. For example,
it explains the deep-rooted notion of complementarity of the sexes instead of
the Western notion of equality of the sexes. It also explains the fact that more
than men, and because of social pressure, Moroccan women are made to feel
more accountable to the standard codes of honour and morality of their
community than men. Indeed, the concept of collective self is so pervasive in
the Moroccan psyche that it regulates family, in-group and out-group
relations. An individual’s self-image is not cultivated internally, but derives
from others’ opinions and attitudes. For example, an individual’s honor and
dignity are not disassociated from the honour and dignity of his or her

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family. This is manifested clearly in the concept of hchuma (shame) which

may be defined as the “loss of face in front of others”. This loss of face may
be occasioned behaviour that contravenes social norms, breaks Islamic
precepts, or abrogates personal obligations inside or outside the family. In
such contexts, the protection of one’s honour, name, and dignity becomes
the most cherished possession, and social censure becomes the worst
punishment. This explains the heavy pressure within the Moroccan family to
protect all its members because misbehavior from one member jeopardizes
the reputation of all. The concept of hchuma is fundamentally different from
the Western notion of “guilt”: whereas guilt is related to one’s conscience
telling him/her that something is wrong, the concept of hchuma is related to
one’s awareness that others know that something is wrong. To avoid
hchuma, Moroccan men and women may refrain from admitting blatant
realities in public if these involve a loss of face. Thus, whereas mainstream
Western culture is guilt-oriented, Moroccan culture is shame-oriented. In
Moroccan culture, an individual’s private views may be embarrassing or
even socially damaging if divulged in public. This view of the self explains
the excessive aggressiveness that characterizes public behavior in Moroccan
culture. In fact, by emphasizing the role of the community to the detriment
of the individual, Moroccan culture is different from mainstream Western
culture: whereas the latter is monochronic as it emphasizes the role of the
individual, the former is inherently polychronic in the sense that focus is
never put on individuals as individuals, but on individuals as inherent parts
of a community to which they are accountable.
The three components of social organization in the Moroccan culture,
namely rituals, the codes of honour and morality and the concept of
collective self are deeply inter-wined. They all emphasize individuals’
accountability to the community within a strictly hierarchical gender system
and put strong pressure on women as the custodians of the culture’s defining
ingredients.

Economic Status

Morocco’s developing economic status is another component of

Moroccan culture. Before and during the colonization by France which
lasted from 1912 to 1956, Morocco’s economy was typically rural and
traditional as it relied mainly on agriculture. After Morocco’s independence,
the country started its process of modernization which materialized in the
emergence of modern-type cities and sustained rural exodus to urban areas.
This dramatic transition deeply upset traditional Moroccan social

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organization and resulted in relatively “abrupt” gender-related

transformations. Two aspects of these transformations are relevant here: a
reorganization of space with the advent of women’s salaried work and he
problem of illiteracy especially in rural areas. Both aspects existed before
modernization, but their social meanings changed with modernization. For
example, with the emergence of salaried work, the notions of “public space”
and “private space” changed, and with the emergence of a liberal urban
female elite, illiteracy acquired new meanings.

Women’s salaried work

The strict public space/private space dichotomy has been significantly

disrupted ever since women started to take jobs outside home from the 1960s
onward. This significant change in women’s lives was a result of poverty
and education: poor women worked as domestics or in low-paid sectors of
industry and educated women secured jobs that their education allowed
them. As a consequence of women’s salaried work, the public space/private
space dichotomy started to be reorganized. The first cause of this space
reorganization is the transition from the tribal mode of production to a
structure of dependence which was brought about by colonialism and later
modernism. As a result, the large-scale family which included grandparents,
uncles, aunts, cousins, and other members of kin started to shrink to a
nucleus of parents and children, especially in urban areas, as a result of
women’s work outside home. The Moroccan Arabic expression for women
working outside the home is xarjat txdam “she went out to work”. “Going
out” expresses “going” from one space to another. The verb xarjat (she went
out) further marks the “going out” as a movement from the private/interior to
the public/exterior. Although in the West, much is made of World War II
and Rosie the Riveter, the representative of women who worked in factories
since men, in the military, were unable to do so, many women - especially
those of modest means – were alredy working in factories, and the
overwhelming majority of teachers (in elementary and secondary education)
were women as were all nurses, haidressers, steamstresses, etc. In Morocco,
the first women who took paid jobs were either rural women who emigrated
to urban areas or women who lived in the suburbs of big cities. Most of these
women were poor (divorced women or widows) and were not proud of their
jobs. Although upper and middle social classes encouraged the education of
girls, they considered the work of women, and hence their money, as a
dishonor to the family. For these, women’s education aimed at producing
good housekeepers and child rearers, not money-earners. The public space

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was seen as a “dangerous” space where women might meet with men who
are not part of the family.
In spite of the fact that women have started to invest the public space,
their traditional function in the private space is maintained. In the private
space, women have power (over who marries who, how much to spend on
what, etc.) but they do not have authority (power sanctioned by society).
Indeed, men are “inserted” in the private space to satisfy their needs (food,
rest, procreation) and some of men’s most important life experiences, such
as circumcision and marriage, take place in the private space. Thus,
Moroccan men have “official” power over both the public and private spaces
which they direct and control. This control is supported by the law which
still allows polygamy. Thus, men not only dominate and manage the private
space, but also control their wives’ movement in public space. It is true that
in modern times, polygamy has decreased as economic and social conditions
are changing; however, the fact that polygamy still has legal sanctioning
makes it a powerful social weapon of subordinating women.
The reorganization of space which followed women’s access to jobs has
been greatly enhanced by continuous changes in the economic and
educational levels of families. In urban areas, women have had more and
more access to power-related public spaces; they have special types of dress
for public and private spaces. In rural areas, women do not have access to
power-related public spaces and do not have special types of dress for public
and private spaces. Further, rural women are quasi-exclusively excluded
from the administration, and do not usually go to the mosque, and are
generally poorly educated in religion. The last point explains the fact that the
spread of the Islamist movements is a typically urban phenomenon. It is only
recently that rural women have started to cover their heads. The notion of
ħijab “veil” is differently perceived in rural areas: there it is a token of
modesty, not political affiliation.
Thus, rural and urban women differ as to the degree of access to the
powerful public space. If rural women are relatively absent from the mosque,
administration, they are present in the fields and the market place. As for
urban women, their access to jobs has individualized them in the sense that it
has offered them a space where they are called by their own names, and not
associated with their fathers, husbands, or sons. Most women who work
have not, however, given up their domestic duties. Moroccan women are
conscious that housework valorizes them inside the house, that is, in the eyes
of their husbands and children; they generally cling to their status as
“homemaker” even when they are wealthy and have domestics. Working
women usually shun praising their domestics in front of their husbands, out
of fear of loosing control over the household. Housework also valorizes

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women in their larger family as well as in society. It is in accordance with

the concepts of being lħadga “hard-working” and Sbbara “very patient”
which are venerated in Moroccan society.
In the reorganized space, working women have to accommodate two
types of work: domestic and salaried work. The former is learnt in childhood
and the latter acquired through education and training. This accommodation
imposes new habits and new time management on Moroccan women. Not
only do these women have to be at their jobs at specific times of the day, but
they also have to mix with male colleagues. This is bound to engender new
social representations of women in society, as well as new behaviours and
attitudes. Outside the home, women fulfill themselves as individuals, as
Moroccan citizens with rights and responsibilities, and inside the home, they
fulfill themselves as housekeepers and rearers of children. A type of
dialectical relationship is established between Moroccan women’s public
and private spaces. Women talk about their “private space” worries
(domestics, marriage problems, children, cooking, etc) in public spaces and
about their “public space” worries (promotion, politics, etc.) in private
spaces. In this way, Moroccan women who work do not occupy the whole
range of public space; the zones in which they inhabit are quickly
transformed into private space, as private topics are discussed in public
space, and the logic of private space is transposed into it. For some, wearing
the veil allows greater movement in public space, because veiled women
have access to public space while symbolically remaining in private space.
The veil is regarded by many Moroccan women as a means to accede to the
outside while remaining inside. This is particularly true for women who sell
on the street or perform jobs where they are in direct contact with male
strangers when working as cashiers, bus drivers, cinema ushers, and
businesswomen. As a result, contemporary urban Moroccan women hardly
dissociate between their roles as wives from their roles as mothers and
agents of production, all of which constituting their multiple identities. This
situation may fulfill some women, but it may also render some of them
stressed and disillusioned.
In spite of the great benefits that working women derive from their jobs,
the reorganization of space in Moroccan culture did not bring about equality
of sexes. Colonization and modernism in Morocco established the “work-
money-modernity” order, and brought about new techniques of exploitation,
such as the division of the Moroccan society into traditional (rural) and
modern (urban) sectors. The newly independent Morocco reintroduced
differences in the name of a re-establishment of equilibrium.

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Illiteracy

The extent and meaning of illiteracy in Moroccan culture needs to be

understood within the overall educational system in Morocco. If various
systems of education produce culturally specific socio-pedagogical practices,
these systems then influence the process of knowledge production, as well as
the relations between individuals and groups in a culture. The
formal/informal structure of Moroccan education maintains an elitist
delivery system of learning and scientific practice in terms of class and
gender. As a result, women suffer from culture and class positions in
education and scientific practice.
According to UN data, illiteracy among women (and men) s decreasing.
In Morocco, women have had access to schooling since immediately after
Independence in 1956 and significant progress has been made to narrow the
gender gap in education. However, Moroccan society is still faced with the
problem of illiteracy. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is attested statistically
and sociologically. Statistically, women constitute the largest illiterate
portion of the Moroccan population. The illiteracy rate among Moroccan
women in general is 60%1, 48% in urban areas and 95% in rural areas2). The
rural population represents around 48.6% of the Moroccan population
according to the latest official statistics.
Sociologically, women’s illiteracy is basically due to their low-income
socio-economic status. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is also a result of a
trans-cultural inequality whereby men’s educational achievement is
privileged over women’s. Moroccan illiterate women are aware of this
condition of subordination and resent it, but the patriarchy has offered them
few alternatives.
The great majority of illiterates in Morocco are women, the pools of
women that are still illiterate are older and frequently rural women. Illiterate
women generally originate from rural areas where girls and women suffer
most from lack of schooling: 82% of the rural female population is illiterate3.
Rural girls are more exposed to their parents’ opposition to sending their
children, especially female children, to school. As for women, the majority
of illiterate ones (69.60%) are young (between 12 and 40 years of age). This
age span constitutes the most active age span. As for women aged 40 up,
most of them are illiterate.
Female illiteracy in Morocco has many causes, including poverty, socio-
cultural beliefs and traditions, lack of infrastructure in rural areas, parents’

1
Cf. Bureau des Statistiques, Rabat, Morocco. 2002.
2
Cf. Bureau des Statistiques, Rabat, 2002.
3
Cf. Department of Statistics, Rabat, Morocco. 2002.

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attitude, and the nature of the Moroccan educational system. Consequently,

dropping out of school is very frequent in rural areas. Having to repeat
grades, failure, non-adaptation, distance, socio-economic reasons, etc.
explain this frequent dropping out. As primary school education does not
give immediate access to the workforce (no economic return), drop-outs are
able to do unskilled jobs or remain unemployed, a state which encourages
these drop-outs to relapse into illiteracy1.
The major reasons which push parents to oppose their daughters’
education in rural areas are: first rural parents tend to prefer to keep their
daughters in the duars (villages) because girls contribute much to the
family’s upkeep at this tender age. They supply the household with water
and wood by hauling them from a distance, they take care of the smaller
children, and they become a source of revenue by working as domestics in
urban areas, sometimes at the age of four or five. Second, as mentioned
earlier, schools in rural areas are often very far from homes, and parents are
more concerned with the security of girls than with the security of boys, not
because girls are preferred to boys, but because the sexual purity of girls is a
matter of family honor as explained earlier in this chapter. Third, teachers in
rural schools are almost exclusively male, another source of anguish for
parents. Fourth, the fact that classes include boys and girls is another
discouraging factor for parents, as people in rural areas are much more
conservative than people in towns and cities.
The obvious result of all this is more and more disparity between the two
sexes in rural areas and, consequently, between women in rural areas and
women in urban areas. The picture becomes alarming if we add early
marriages (the average marriage age in rural areas is 20 as opposed to 27 in
urban areas) and poor life expectancy (63 in rural areas as opposed to 72 in
urban areas), multiple pregnancies, polygamy and lack of hygiene – all
factors that do not favor development, hinder access to school, and
drastically reduce the possibility of rural women leading a decent a life, let
alone finding a job. In sum, it is difficult to envisage any genuine intellectual
development of Moroccan women in a society where no less than 78% of
women are illiterate (51% of men are) according to the most recent report of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Human Rights in Morocco.
Illiteracy is gender-sensitive in Morocco: for example, a number of
wealthy rural illiterate Moroccan men have had access to the Parliament, but
no illiterate woman, regardless of class, could ever aspire to this position.
Being literate in Morocco does not mean being literate in one’s mother
tongue, but in Standard Arabic and French. Compared to Western women,

1
According to the UNESCO Report of 1998, primary schooling rate in Morocco has
decreased by 20%.

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Moroccan women are ‘doubly’ illiterate: historically, they have not had the
chance to become literate in Standard Arabic and nowadays they miss
literacy in their mother tongues. Within the Moroccan socio-cultural context,
literacy presupposes knowledge of a written language and Moroccan Arabic
and Berber are not considered “languages of literacy”. The fact that Standard
Arabic is a written language distances Moroccan women even further from
literacy. Moroccan mothers do not usually coo at their babies in Standard
Arabic or French.
Lack of schools only partially explains Moroccan women’s illiteracy.
Another important factors is men’s attitude in a patriarchal society: men are
generally reticent to encourage women’s literacy as the latter is synonymous
to ‘emancipation’ which is believed to make women less compliant and
more independent. Illiteracy is a powerful means of perpetuating the gender
gap between women and men, as well as a means to subdue women.
Illiterate women are associated with the primitive for the West where
universal education is written in the very idea of intelligence, but not in the
Moroccan culture where women’s intelligence is not always valued and
certainly not a public asset. In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, literacy
may be defined as the ability to use more than one or two languages
(Standard Arabic and/or Frecnh), as the two mother tongues, Berber and
Moroccan Arabic, are not used in education. By implication, illiteracy would
be defined as lack of an ability to use a language other than one’s mother
tongue.
The relationship between Moroccan women and literacy raises many
important issues such as women’s relation to their daily environment and the
issue of the collective (masculine) representation of women. Raising such
issues lead to the fundamental question: how can a Muslim society represent
women in the Umma (nation) and in civil society (in human terms) when
what determines the relationship (education, reading, writing) is considered
unnecessary for women? The debate is promising only if it starts from this
contradiction. Illiteracy is ‘played off’ differently by liberal and religious
feminists in Morocco. For religious feminists, offering literacy is a type of
‘charity’ that constitutes part and parcel of what the entire Islamic movement
is supposed to provide (the wealthy need to help the poor). For liberal
feminists, women’s education is the key to emancipation and educating rural
women, whom they see as easy prey for fundamentalists. The concept of
illiteracy and the status of literacy texts in general in Morocco needs, thus, to
be put within larger political contexts.
From a postmodernist perspective, illiteracy problematizes the issue of
literate women speaking for the illiterate ones, who, thus, appropriate the
latter’s voices. Pushed a littel further, this view would advocate that both

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literate and illiterate women are creative, albeit in different ways. Literate
women have more choices than illiterate women an illiteracy does not
exclude knowledge and wisdom. Illiterates are members of an oral
subculture with their own values and beliefs. Empirical research has shown
that the illiterate mind is a construct. History and research have underlined
the genius of oral traditions and their role in a ‘‘too pragmatic’’ world.

Political system

The Moroccan political system is another important component of

Moroccan culture. An attempt to understand gender dynamics within the
political system of a country is by definition a larger approach to gender than
a social or an economical approach as the former approach englobes the
latter ones. The Moroccan political system is relevant to the understanding
of two major aspects of gender perception in the Moroccan context: the rigid
dichotomization of gender in the public sphere and the role of monarchy in
promoting women at the political level.

Political structure and gender dichotomization in the public sphere

The domain of politics is a strong site of public power which is closely

linked to men in the Moroccan society. Men are the ones who make politics
and discuss political issues inside and outside the family. This association of
politics with men has its roots in the Moroccan culture where the notion of
jamaςa (group), which constitutes the basis of the Arab-Islamic tradition of
ruling, is perceived as containing men only. By implication, citizenship is
culturally assumed to be first and foremost male because in the Moroccan
cultural imagery, men are the ones who are supposed to rule over women
and children. The cumulative effect of this state of affairs has created a
‘political culture’ where the hierarchical superiority of men over women is
deeply inscribed in the public sphere.
Women are quasi-absent from the political sphere of decision-making as
the history of Morocco shows. Before Morocco’s independence, the
conservative ideology of the French Protectorate blocked women’s entrance
to politics. Even nationalists have never encouraged women to enter the
political scene in spite of the presence of some “prestigious” women in the
Moroccan national liberation movement. A few nationalist male leaders such
as Allal Al-Fassi, who expressed positive attitudes towards women’s
emancipation, but they remained an isolated minority as their ideas did not

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correspond to the immediate goals of the newly independent political elite

whose priorities did not include women’s emancipation. This elite
capitalized on the preservation of ‘Moroccan identity’ and the appointment
of women as its guardians. The first female political figures who played a
great role in the face of the colonizers, such as Touria Seqqat, Rqia
Lamrania, Zhor Zarqa, and Malika Al-Fassi (who was the only woman to
sign the Independence Manifesto on January 11th, 1944), were trapped in the
nationalist propaganda. The fact that almost all Moroccan women were
illiterate precluded any real demand for emancipation by women.
After independence, the transition from the ideology of liberation to the
ideology of state-building and the maintenance of an Arab-Islamic identity
pushed the issue of women’s participation in politics to the background. In
fact, until the end of the 1970s, all Moroccan women’s problems were
treated under the socio-cultural rubric. Their status was not considered an
important political issue in spite of the fact that the problematic of
‘Moroccan women and politics’ was not ignored. At the beginning of the
1980s, literacy, the increassing importance of the job-market, the emergence
of democratic values in Moroccan politics made women more visible on the
public scene. In the 1990s, the democratization process brought the issue of
women to the limelight. Islamism, the Beijing Conference, civil society, and
feminist research were factors that further enhanced public attention to
women’s issues. But it is only very recently that a handful of women
appeared on the public scenes of decision-making. It should be stated here
that Moroccan women’s emancipation owes a great deal to the ‘largesse’ of
men.
Even with the advent of modernity and women’s salaried jobs, the strong
patriarchal hold still prevails and is reflected in the structure and ruling
system of almost all the political parties although political science has firmly
established the concepts of citizenship and participation for all the members
of a society. The Moroccan electoral system does not facilitate women’s
mobility in politics, women’s eligibility depends on specific parties, and
women’s issues are discussed within the political platform of each political
party. In sum, women are mainly ‘used’ by political parties as a ‘token’ of
democracy and voters; their voices are bought, their illiteracy is used, an
their poverty is manipulated. In rural and some urban areas, men vote on
behalf of their women.
Another factor which distances women from politics in Morocco is their
negative attitude towards politics. Moroccan women do not generally see
politics as a ‘woman’s thing’ because the majority of them are not
acquainted with public affairs and the way in which authority is structured.
This ignorance of how authority is constructed makes politics alien to

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women and serves the status quo of men. There is an absence of political
will to really integrate women in decision making. As a result, there is a
weak representation of women at all elected offices. This situation is mainly
due to political parties the majority of whose members are conservative, and
as a consequence rarely appoint female candidates for local and regional
elections. In 1972, 1086 women were candidates to the regional elections out
of a total of 93.773, that is, 1.1%, and only 75 were elected. Only two
women reached the vice-president position in local and regional committees.
In spite of the fact that the Moroccan party system is plural and in spite of
the fact that some of the Moroccan political parties are progressive, women
do not hold decision-making roles in the political pyramid; they do not
generally sit on the executives committees of the parties. In fact, almost all
parties have created ‘subordinate’ organization dealing with female issues,
but these do not have a say in decision-making apart from making
recommendations to the executive committees.
Although four women were appointed ministers in the so-called
‘‘government of transition’’1 in 1998, few women were candidates in local
‘‘communes’’, very few were elected, and only two reached the parliament.
More than that, in March 1998, a regression in women’s political
representation was noted as two women only were in the government. This
number shrank to one in 2000. What do these facts mean? The obvious
meaning is that there is strong resistance and negative attitude to the
presence of women in representative institutions and a shy claim of women
for this representation. The facts also show that there is a long path for
Moroccan women to cross before they can have an impact on Morocco’s
public affairs.
Paradoxically, women’s agency in civil society is growing steadily, and
this is having a great impact on the Moroccan political landscape by:
allowing women greater access to public discourse and by enhancing public
activism/action. Such figures show the long path that Moroccan women have
to cross before they can have an impact on Morocco’s public affairs.

The role of the monarchy in promoting women at the political level

Morocco’s political system is based on a constitutional monarchy and

several political parties. The king holds the supreme executive power as well
as the supreme religious power (he is amir al-muminin ‘‘Commander of the
Believers’’). The Moroccan Constitution has a double reference: it is based

1
That is, transition from right wing to left wing government.

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on both the Shari’a (Islamic law) and the international (human rights)
conventions.
Monarchy is highly viewed in the Moroccan culture. It is associated with
both religious sanction and modernity. Monarchy has had a very significant
impact on the political status of women in Moroccan society. It was not
political parties or civil society which foregrounded women on the political
scene, but monarchs. The last three Moroccan kings openly encouraged the
integration of women in the social and economic developments by adopting
a view that reconciles ‘tradition’ with ‘modernity’. King Mohamed V, who
ruled from to, was the first king in the history of Morocco to ‘unveil’ his
own daughter in public and make her ambassador to Great Britain. King
Hassan II, who ruled from 1961 to 1999, nominated the first four women
Secretaries of State. King Mohamed VI, who became king in 1999, is the
first Moroccan monarch to nominate a female personal counceller. He
further constantly refers to giving wider opportunities and more integration
of women in decision-making and special attention to the eradication of
female illiteracy in rural and urban areas.
These women know that they are exploited and know they will be as
long as they are poor and do not participate in public political power. The
situation of Morocco is not different from most of the third world or even the
developed countries. The political sphere is a sphere of power that men
consider as one of their strongholds. It is the most important facet of the
patriarchal order. The cultural and ideological foundations of male
supremacy have never been questioned in Morocco.
Monarchy has also played a leading role in ‘cooling off’ the tension
between the liberal and religious feminists as mentioned earlier in this
chapter. The status of the King as Amir Al-Muminin bestows on him the
power to mediate between the views of liberal secularists and rigid Islamists
on sensitive issues relating to the legal status of women. As this legal status
is largely based on the Islamic law (a∫-∫arςa), its slightest modification needs
the sanction of the highest authority in Morocco, the King. One such
modification was initiated in September 1993 by the late King Hassan II as
stated earlier in this chapter. Only the supreme authority of the king made
the amendment possible. A second mediation project has been started by the
present King Mohamed VI in April 2001. In this second endeavor more
substantial changes are expected to take place. Again, without the authority
of the king, such a dialogue would not have taken place without social
uproar. On a larger level, the mediations show that there is a growing
awareness among Moroccans that the legal side should reflect women’s
socio-economic agency.

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Conclusion

The major purpose of this paper has been to highlight the components
that influence gender perception in the Moroccan socio-cultural context.
They highlight the fact that there are historical, geographical, religious,
social, economic and political conditions for the creation of divided interests
between men and women in the Moroccan context. These components are
also meant to show how power is naturalized and geared towards
reproduction of gendered ideologies and how agency is gendered in a male-
biased context. In spite of the fact that these cultural components have a
strong symbolic value for Moroccan women and men, women both
reproduce and subvert gender roles within a context where factors of
economic status, class, level of education, etc. carry power and interact with
gender. Only a dynamic and constructionist approach to the variables that
produce change can help unravel these workings and show that gender
coherence can be achieved only within a specific cultural system.
By implication, feminist concerns and strategies need to be grounded in
the Moroccan cultural specificities because gender conception is constructed
within Moroccan culture, and it is only within this culture that they can be
deconstructed. The components of Moroccan culture attest to the fact that
Morocco is plural by its ethnicities, histories, and languages, and one can
theorize about the language and gender reality only within the context of
Moroccan culture because it is the specificities of the latter that explain the
making and remaking of gender in this part of the world.

189