WUNRN
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace - Arab Reform Bulletin
MOROCCO - A LEGISLATED VICTORY FOR
WOMEN
In the June 2009 local elections, women entered the municipal councils in force for the first time in Moroccan history.
Some
3,406 women were elected, making up over 12 percent of the total winning
candidates, compared to less than 1 percent in 2003. Women made up 16
percent of the overall candidates, compared to less than 5 percent in the last
elections in 2003.
These results reflect a strong desire on the
part of the political elite to correct the huge gender imbalance within elected
institutions more than a social and cultural development in Moroccan society at
large. Nearly all (98 percent) of the women elected won within the districts
set aside for women, in accordance with a change in law that took effect in
January 2009. The number of women elected in the regular districts was a mere
71, or only 0.3 percent of the total number of winning candidates. Women still
occupy a low status in the realm of Moroccan mass politics, as shown by
objective measurements by international institutions; the UN Development
Program Gender-related Development Index for 2008 placed
Does this mean that the government decision
to strengthen women’s presence in the Council of Deputies in 2002, and in
municipal councils in 2009, is insignificant? Certainly not. Women’s visible
presence in politics may well have a long-term modernizing and democratizing
impact, as citizens gradually grow accustomed to seeing women managing public
affairs.
Uneven Progress
Moroccans who want to change gender relations
are turning to politics partly because other strategies have not worked so far.
Despite the prominent role of women in pushing for Moroccan independence,
whether in the nationalist movement (such as Malika al-Fassi, who struggled for
Moroccan self-rule and signed the independence charter in 1944) or in the ranks
of the resistance (such as Fatma al-Sakim, who played a pivotal role in the
Moroccan resistance movement after the French colonial power forced Sultan
Mohammed V into exile in 1953), women disappeared from political life during
the first four decades after independence. Though educational and economic
factors also can have a positive effect on women’s status, this impact appears
to be slow-acting and limited. In any case, Moroccan women’s economic
independence remains difficult to achieve, with their rate of integration into
the labor market remains among the lowest in the world
The Moroccan elite appear to be wagering now
on politics as a means to improve gender relations and equality. The idea is
that a systemic approach has a higher likelihood of success, because the
various elements governing women’s social status (political marginalization,
social dependency and submissiveness, economic discrimination, and the symbolic
belittling of their value) overlap to form an integral whole. This means that
if one of these elements changes noticeably, a crisis will take place within
the overall system and it will accommodate and raise women’s status. That is
the theory, but it is also to be expected that there will be attempts to stifle
change and preserve the dominant status quo.
Maati Monjib is a lecturer and researcher
at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Mohammed V, in
Sousi-Rabat,
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