CAES Morocco: Leading Across Differences

While traveling across Morocco, I have seen many different kinds of people and have observed that there are different expectations for women in regards to the law. In the US, coming from personal experience, I have observed that women can do anything and have the same level of representation as men in the law [up until recently but that can be said not to be related]. According to an article from the Freidrich Naumann Foundation (2024), Morocco is one of the most progressive countries for women where they can enjoy access to political and economic life, and single women [with no guardian] can travel freely. That ends at criminal and civil law. There is one of particular intrest called the inheritance law. According to Islam, women are only entitled to 1/3 of the property left to them.  In contrast, the United States has laws that are generally based on gender equality in inheritance. Women and men have equal legal rights to any property left to them by parents or spouses. According...

  The identity I am choosing that is different from my own is that of a person with a physical disability. Our time in Fes made me curious about how a physically disabled person would be able to go about and travel in their daily lives in Morocco. After doing some research, I found that “in Morocco, 727,833 people live with a disability, representing 5.5% of the population,” ( United Nations Development Programme ). Although that is a large number, there are many obstacles, like social acceptance and access to services, that disabled people face everyday. As a result, UNDP Morocco has begun to make strives to combat this. They have constructed wide passages with ramps to make places more accessible to people in wheelchairs. They have also been creating parking spaces specifically for the disabled. Morocco also has an inclusive recruitment policy which prevents discriminatory recruitments practices in places of work and school. Along with all of these physical improvements, the UNDP...