Gender roles in Morocco

     Gender roles seem to be very much imposed in Morocco. Moroccan culture is heavily, if not mainly, influenced by Islam. Islamic culture says that men provide everything in exchange for their wives’ total support. This system was not designed to be one of subservience by women, but powerful and/or loud men have bastardized the equal give and take that it was meant to be. For generations women have been put down and silenced and abused. They couldn’t have their own money or land or home or family or identity without a husband or a father, and to the rest of the world that is how they are and have always been.             However, on our very first tour in Casablanca, our guide educated us on how far Morocco has come in the fight for women’s autonomy. She said it was thanks to their current king Mohammed VI. He has been reigning since 1999, and is beloved country-wide. King Mohammed VI has made known his stance on women’s rights, and has made strides in the direction of it. For example, the King pushed to have a rewrite of the family code which was achieved and rectified by parliament in 2004. This rewriting granted “a woman’s right to file for divorce, greater freedom to travel, and the right to self-guardianship (2024)”.               Throughout our time in Morocco it was a pleasure to see all different kinds of jobs that women were holding. At iBerry, women were in every position from the line workers, to our guide, to plant pathologists. Women on the street wore all kinds of clothing. A lot of them wore more rational Muslim dress, but some wore a Hijab with pants and a graphic tee, and some didn’t wear one at all. We never saw a difference in treatment on the street based on what women wore, and I never felt out of place in my American clothes. Morocco still has moves to make in the direction of women’s writes, but the country is pleasantly not at all what I thought it would be like. 

https://globalhumanrights.org/stories/reforming-the-moudawana/