Gender Roles in Education

         Education is one of the key factors in economic development and improving standards of living in communities. In Morocco, education is prioritized in many urban cities with high enrollments, and improving rates of educated adults in more rural areas. Access to education for Moroccans over the last several decades has also improved, especially with women. Women are increasingly attending universities and secondary educations in Morocco right alongside men and making up large percentages of class enrollments. In fact, the engineering field is dominated by women in Morocco and many universities now have higher rates of enrollment with women than men, something other African countries have yet to experience with gender gaps minimizing. 

       Since coming to Morocco, we have visited several universities and gone on several tours/meetings that dove into a little more on social development in Morocco, including explaining the current role gender plays. When we visited AUI, I was pleasantly surprised to see that more than half of the enrollment is women, and then at the next the university, ENA, they also had a higher female enrollment! I hadn't expected to hear that women dominate certain fields or make up large secondary school enrollments in Morocco since I had thought that Morocco would be similar to other African countries who are still attempting to minimize gender gaps. Morocco appears to be quite progressive in the way of eliminating gender gaps and offering equal education opportunities to women, something that the citizens clearly appreciate with the large numbers of women now attending more school as a result. 

         I think that Moroccan women being a power in the education system is something still new and emerging when compared to other African countries. While I believe that women dominating certain fields and achieving higher education rates should be celebrated and embraced, there is still push back in some areas and barriers to women in rural areas receiving similar opportunities to study. This is something that more initiatives could be put in place to encourage and support women in those areas without as many resources that would help to decrease gender gaps. Morocco is an example of the beginning of more African and Middle East countries hopefully offering greater equality in education to women. 

References: 

Roudi-Fahimi, F., & Moghadam, V. M. (2022, March 25). Empowering women, developing society: Female education in the Middle East and North Africa. Al. http://alraidajournal.com/index.php/ALRJ/article/view/221