WUNRN
MOROCCO - WOMEN CALL FOR MORE
LITERACY, EQUALITY, RIGHTS +
"We have waited enough.
Women now are out to say it is time for justice to be made," Safaa
Ferradi, a local activist, told IPS.
"The great majority of women present in our movement are of a high
cultural and academic level," Rabah Nouami, a local leader of the 20th
February movement in Casablanca, told IPS. "It is so honourable to see
that most of the spokespersons on behalf of the movement are women. But women
are not still influential at the level of decisions within the movement."
In spite of the efforts made by the State and by civil society, women remain
victims of violence and discrimination.
An official study by the government High Planning Commission showed that four
forms of violence are still inflicted on Moroccan women - "physical,
sexual, psychological, and economic."
The new family code in this country of 32 million people came into effect in
2004. It gave women the right to divorce, to marry without paternal permission,
as well a right to alimony in the case of divorce. The new code did not give
women equal inheritance rights.
The problem, it seems, is not the legal texts "but the implementation of
these texts," Fatima Bouhraka, a writer on women issues, told IPS. The
strongest resistance to women’s rights is cultural, according to Bouhraka.
Moroccan culture considers "the man as the one who commands and who must
be always obeyed."
This culture is strengthened by other factors "like poverty and the
ignorance of everyone’s rights and duties," Taoufiki Belaid, a member of
Amnesty International (AI), told IPS. Women who are victims of violence, as
well as their attackers, "ignore their rights and duties," Belaid
said.
This does not mean that there are no actions being taken to increase awareness
about women and their rights. Abderrahim Messoudi, who has been organising
workshops about the issue in universities with a group belonging to the
Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH), told IPS that the problem is the
minimal participation of women themselves in such activities.
Women’s indifference towards the actions of civil society is due, according to
independent feminine activists, to the perception that these actions are
biased. "There is no real civil society. Everybody tries to manipulate the
feminine cause according to his own interests," Ferradi said.
But many disagree with this view. "Civil society has achieved in a few
years what political parties were unable to do for decades," Bouhraka
said. But it is necessary, according to her, to completely separate civil
society associations from political parties. "The more an association is
independent, the more it is trusted."
In Morocco, unhappiness with political parties is not a new thing. Only 37
percent of the electorate participated in the last general election in
September 2007.
New electoral measures in Morocco call for women to occupy at least 30 of the
326 seats in parliament. But this does not satisfy Moroccan activists.
"The parliament and the government will both stay mainly masculine,"
Bouhraka said.
According to a study by the High Planning Commission carried out in 2010, women
represent only 25 percent of the working population. Women are also
disproportionately illiterate - more than 50.8 percent of Moroccan women cannot
read and write.
Violence, economic and social discrimination have led women to the streets to
protest under the colours of the Arab Spring. "Our demands are freedom,
equality, and human dignity," Ferradi said. "In our movement demands
are equal for both women and men," Nouami explained.
The new Moroccan constitution, approved Jul. 1, calls for a project to create
equal sharing between men and women. But, "in Morocco, the brandished
slogans are a one thing, reality is another," Bouhraka stressed.
"There are discreet hands which hinder any law favourable to the country
and to the people."