Sanaa Wright: Sexual Orientation or Gender Roles

 I feel that my time in Morocco challenged me to think beyond my initial perceptions of things and to approach each experience from a different perspective. Before this trip, I did not know that this country was a predominantly Islamic nation, but I did have previous conceptions about what an Islamic country might be like. Apart from the rules of modesty, I believed that women were seen as more like property, not given the same rights as men. The first day I landed in Morocco, and had the opportunity to walk around, I was with a small group of girls. As we walked around, we began to notice how many men lined the streets, occupied cafes, drove in their cars— we saw strikingly few women and began to feel somewhat uneasy. When we did see a few women, they were often accompanied by men, with a few exceptions of tourists, and we immediately began to draw conclusions about the country’s politics and values. We suspected that there were so few women because they were simply not allowed out of the house, or socially, it wasn’t acceptable for them to be walking the streets alone. 

However, the very next day, these initial findings were challenged as we had the opportunity to tour the city with a female tour guide. As she told us about the passion she had for her beautiful country, she began to speak lightly on politics, and how the King, Mohammed VI, had been reforming the country for women specifically. Over the past few years, the country has intentionally been supporting its women through subsidies to provide labor for women so that they are able to support themselves without the help of a man. Additionally, the country’s morals have become much more liberal when it comes to modesty, and although there are still some stigmas, like how single mothers are still negatively viewed, there have been slow and steady improvements over the years. She went on to tell us that women in the morning are usually very busy and don’t usually go out until later in the day, which explained why the streets were so void of them when we initially went out. Overall, this trip encouraged me not to draw conclusions so quickly and to view everything with a grain of salt.