Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture - CMIESIcmiesi.ma/acmiesi/file/notes/fatima-sadiqi_2.pdf · Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture FATIMA SADIQI Culture may be broadly defined

Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture

FATIMA SADIQI

Culture may be broadly defined as a system of practices, rituals, beliefs,

values, and ways of meaning of a community. All cultures control their members, but they differ in the degree of the control they impose on individuals. Moroccan culture is of a type that strongly constrains the behavior of men and women. The strength of this control comes from the fact that it is channeled through powerful cultural components that closely regulate the lives of Moroccan men and women through the establishment of powerful social institutions. Eight such components have a direct impact on gender perception: History, Geography, Islam, Orality, Multilingualism, Social organization, Economic status, and Political system.

History Moroccan national history has been officially recorded by men. The

images of women in it are created from a male’s point of view. Accordingly, gender, class, and regional differences have been blurred in official accounts. In these views, women’s roles are either ignored or made secondary to men’s, constructing thus Moroccan women’s subordination and supporting patriarchy through centuries. These views justify women’s subordination in the postcolonial societies. Given the quasi-absence of female interpretations of events in the Moroccan recorded history, a rigid gender dichotomy has been adopted across the years and is inherited by the relatively recent generations in the present time. This historical legacy has deepened the gap between the two sexes and its impact has been accentuated by the status of written history as a “venerated” institution in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. The close association between Moroccan national history and written languages1 distances it even further from women, the overwhelming majority of whom are still illiterate, and, thus, largely ignorant of Morocco’s written history. It should, however, be noted that illiterate Moroccan women have had access to the constructions of Moroccan (and Arab-Muslim)

1 Among the languages used in Morocco, Standard Arabic and French are written, but Moroccan Arabic and Berber are largely spoken (see Sadiqi 2003 for more details on this).


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history through radio and TV, including, increasingly, satellite dishes. The Moroccan pre-independence anti-colonialist protest gave way to a

collective awareness that the country needed to create its own identity after independence. This shift was occasioned by the confusion and disillusionment that Moroccans experienced as they realized that the modern West would not go away after independence. In fact, long into the postcolonial era, Moroccans continue to struggle with the impact of colonization. This materialized at the intellectual level in a spectacular flourishing of social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, economy, law, political science, and linguistics. Many Moroccan intellectuals, most of them men, started to pay attention to the status, role, and expectations of Moroccan women in this transitional phase. It is also during this period that the first Moroccan women journalists and writers appeared on the public scene. Further, genres other than the usual written literary ones emerged. Folklore and oral histories attracted not only writers, but also anthropologists and filmmakers. This period witnessed the birth of Moroccan feminism which, among other things, is trying to “recover” women’s roles in the historical construction of Morocco.

Geography

Morocco is the Westernmost of the North African countries; it is situated

at the crossroads between Africa and Europe, a fact which provides it with both African and European characteristics. Although Morocco has always been considered part of the East by Westerners, it is the most accessible to the West; it is the first stop for many Western European travelers who often consider it as the prototypical African, Arab, and Muslim country. Morocco’s geographical position explains three gender-related facts: religious tolerance, cultural heterogeneity and linguistic complexity. Compared to many other Arab countries in the Middle East or even in North Africa, Morocco is more open to cross-cultural exchanges, including a European mainstream perception of gender roles.

It is important to note that Morocco is marginal to both the Arab-Muslim world and the other countries of North Africa, namely Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. Morocco’s appellation al-magrib al-aqSaa (farthest west) refers mainly to its geographical position. Morocco is farther west than any country in Western Europe except Ireland. Many of the customs and foods that are known in all the Eastern countries that fell under the Ottoman Empire are not known in Morocco which resisted Turkish rule. Consequently, Morocco’s culture is more deeply impregnated with both


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African and European components than with Middle Eastern cultures. This situation explains the fact that although Morocco is not home to any holy places of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism and although it has not produced the grand art and literature of the ancient Arab-Muslim era, Moroccan art and literature are recognized as a special “genre” which is, broadly speaking, different from Arab literature of the Middle East.

The permeability of Morocco’s geographical borders and its diverse population has allowed a flexible view of gender roles and a more favourable attitude toward change in these roles. This is linked to Moroccans’ tolerant use of European languages. This flexibility counterbalances the rigid patriarchal views and correlates with modernistic ones. It also explains the fact that Morocco has not experienced severe versions of Islamic radicalism as has neighboring Algeria. Compared to other Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco has always been characterized and blessed by tolerance towards public religious practices.

Islam Like history and geography, Islam is a pillar of Moroccan culture. Islam

was introduced in Morocco in the year 712 and it has ever since been the official state religion1. Morocco is defined in the Constitution as an “Islamic monarchy”. This is symbolized by the King’s status as the head of the executive power and the Amir al-Muminin (the Commander of the Faithful). The official Islamic school in Morocco is the Sunni Maliki2 school, itself based on Shari’a (Islamic law). Shari’a is the sum of judicial “rules” elaborated during the first three centuries of the existence of Islam. These rules are based on a number of Quranic prescriptions and on the ahadith (norms inspired by the behavior and recommendations attributed to Prophet Mohammad which constitute the Sunnah). The end of the third century of the Hegira was marked by the disappearance of Ijtihad (interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah) and legislators, as well as jurists, ceased to adapt the Islamic law to the changing times.

According to recorded history, it was only in the 19th and 20th centuries, and as a result of worldwide industrialization, international trade exchanges, and rapid urbanization that deep reforms in Islamic legislation were brought about and argued for by prominent reformers of Islam such as Jamal Eddine Al-Afghani, Mohammad Abdu, Rachid Ridha, Ali Abderrazak, Qasim

1 Islam was the official religion of both Arab and Berber royal dynasties. 2 The Sunni school is relatively moderate. According to Maier (1996: 15), Sunni Muslims make up officially 99.97% of the Moroccan population.


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Amin, and Tahar Haddad. These intellectuals and thinkers were pretty close to the eralier reformists. They underlined the “evolutionary” spirit of Islam and the necessity to reflect it in the Islamic law according to changing social and economic eras. The reformists’ names that official recorded history has retained were all male. These reformists were genuinely interested in eradicating the difficulties that the clash between rigid interpretations of Islamic precepts and secular states engendered. It was through the rising voices of these pioneer reformers that “exceptional clauses” and sometimes total changes in the Islamic legislative laws were introduced after centuries of stagnation. In the newly independent Morocco, King Mohamed V, as well as nationalist political leaders and thinkers such as Allal Al-Fassi Hassan Ouazzani were favorable to the spirit of reformism. In practice, this reformism was reflected in modern progressive legislation in all the key societal institutions such as the Constitution, the administration, commerce, and the penal code. It is interesting to note that the spirit of reformism hardly affected the family laws that dealt with women’s behaviour, duties and obligations, as the latter continued to be largely based on the Islamic law (Shari’a).

Islam and Modernity Morocco’s proximity to Europe has promoted a spirit of tolerance in the

way Islam is conceived and practiced in Morocco. For example, of all Arab-Muslim countries, Morocco has always been the most tolerant towards its Jewish population, even during the most critical moments of the tension between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East. This may be due to the fact that in the Moroccan context, Islam has never been daily threatened by the presence of Christianity or Judaism, as has been the case in the Middle East, where Isla m coexists and even “competes” with these two religions1. This might explain the fact that veiling, for example, appeared in the Middle East before it appeared in North Africa, as a means of protecting a ‘‘threatened’’ identity.

When dealing with Islam and modernity, it is crucial to differentiate between Islam as “faith” and Islam as “culture”. Islam as faith is perceived as a personal relationship between an individual and God, and Islam as culture is perceived as part and parcel of the Moroccans’ overall identity (whether they practice or not). The cultural aspect of Islam is apparent in many strong icons of Moroccan social life. For example, almost all aspects

1 It is true, however, that there are Jewish and Christian Moroccans, but these are relatively smaller in number than Muslims.


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of Moroccan social behaviour are religious in origin such as greetings and leave-takings, as well as rituals that accompany the celebration of marriage, birth, circumcision, funerals, etc. The meaning and nature of Islam in Morocco, and indeed throughout the Muslim world, cannot be separated from questions of gender and gender roles.

Islam interacts with other aspects of Moroccan culture. It is perceived and practiced in a way that is peculiar to the Moroccan socio-cultural context in the sense that Islamic principles are translated into the Moroccan local culture and have become impregnated by it. This is attested in the “classical style” of Moroccan Islam, as opposed to the “national style” of Indonesian Islam, for example. As Geertz notes, these differences are exhibited in the shape of the mosques, dress, ritual practices, etc. and are due to the fact that Morocco and Indonesia constitute the farthest geographical limits of the Islamic area. Thus, although Islam is basically the same throughout the Islamic world, it is lived and manifested differently in different cultures. As a religion in a patriarchal society, Moroccan Islam is closely linked to Standard Arabic, rather than Moroccan Arabic or Berber.

Orality Orality is an important component of Moroccan culture which deeply

differentiates it from mainstream Western cultures. In the Moroccan culture, speech carries greater significance in regulating everyday life than writing as communication is mainly channeled through unwritten languages. In Moroccan culture, the views of others count and carry social meaning. For example, oral blessings, profanity, curses, insults, etc. are more consequential in this culture than in Western cultures. These oral ways of expressing the self are not mere words; they carry genuine positive or negative values and regulate behavior in no trivial way. The importance of speech in Moroccan culture is also attested in the fact that conversation is perceived as a means of bonding between people. Speech in Moroccan culture is inherently dependent on the private and public dichotomy: public and private speeches are two distinct acts: whereas the former is geared towards keeping appearances and, thus, is far from reflecting facts, the latter is more personal and direct.

The unique place of orality in Morocco is largely due to the fact that the two mother tongues used in this country (that is, Moroccan Arabic and Berber) are mainly oral. The tight link between non-written mother tongues and orality positions the latter at the center of the Moroccan speech community’s sensory experience. As such, orality becomes a powerful


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system of communication that deeply shapes the way visual and non-visual representations of cultural roles, among which gender roles, are constructed, maintained and perpetuated. Being related to seeing and hearing, orality is a valuable source of information and constitutes a strong vehicle of cultural values.

Orality is also closely related to illiteracy and to women as the vast majority of the latter are illiterate and do not have access to print and electronic texts. These women express their inner self, transmit various types of knowledge to their children, and communicate with the world outside home exclusively through the oral medium. The written medium is generally perceived by these women as alien; and even when the written languages (that is, Standard Arabic and French) are used orally in the audio-visual media, these women do not readily identify with these languages; they generally do not understand movie broadcasts on TV and television programs. Most women in Morocco identify with Egyptian films because the latter are channeled through the typically oral Egyptian dialect.

Orality has a dual status in Morocco: it is simultaneously perceived as a “degenerate”, “vulgar” and “lower class” medium of expression and a powerful symbol identity and authenticity. The negative attitude to orality resides in the fact that it is transmitted by non-prestigious mother tongues: Berber and Moroccan Arabic. As for the positive attitude to orality, it resides in the fact that it characterizes Moroccan culture and differentiates it from Western literate cultures, for example. The power of lkelma (the oral word) is attested in many deep aspects of the Moroccan culture, such as marriage contracts, business deals, and even legacies after death. These contracts were, up to relatively recent times, based exclusively on the oral medium. In present-day Moroccan society, lkelma “the oral word”, more precisely lkelma d rrajel “the oral word of a man” still holds sway and has authority, especially in rural areas.

Multilingualism Like orality, multilingualism is a defining component of Moroccan

culture. An understanding of gender role conception in Moroccan culture necessitates a prior understanding of the overall linguistic situation in this country, as well as the way languages are used by men and women. The linguistic situation in Morocco is complex as it not only involves a variety of languages but also highlights the social meanings of oppositions such as mother tongue/learned languages, oral/written languages, prestigious/non-prestigious languages, etc. The complexity of this linguistic situation is the


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result of Morocco’s historical background and geographical position. The languages used in Morocco neither have the same status nor the same symbolic value in the local linguistic market.

Unlike in the Middle Eastern cultures where multilingualism is often considered a threat to Arab unity and identity, multilingualism is perceived in the Moroccan culture as a positive identity-builder. It is highly respected and generally perceived as a way of increasing the individual’s potential for communication and for social ascension. Indeed, the mastery and use of more than one language brings social power to language users in Morocco. In the private sector, knowledge of French and/or English is an absolutely necessary requirement. As for intellectuals, they generally perceive multilingualism as a means of knowing better oneself and one’s own language(s) and culture.

Being a power-related factor in Morocco, multilingualism has social meaning and is important in gender perception and construction. Its importance stems from its correlation with class and level of education: the more economically privileged and more educated a person is the more likely s/he is likely to be multilingual, and the poorer and uneducated one is, the less likely one is likely to be multilingual.

So far as Moroccan women are concerned, the most economically privileged ones are likely to be bilingual, if not multilingual. Women who speak only Berber and/or Moroccan Arabic usually belong to the lower classes and are at a disadvantage at the level of communication in comparison to middle and upper class women. As for monolingual women who speak either Berber or Moroccan Arabic, they are illiterate in the majority of cases. Monolingual Berber women usually live in remote rural villages. Within the overall Moroccan social context, monolingual women are socially perceived as constituting the most disadvantaged portion of the Moroccan population. However, these women are very sucessful in the local communities where they live: they work inside their homes and in the fields, they support families and move easily between local villages.

Given this overall state of affairs, Moroccan women are fully aware that mastering more than one language is a means of improving their personal and social conditions. Educated women are conscious that it is only through knowledge of written languages that they can compare their conditions with those of other men and women, reflect critically on their situation within society, and extend their cognitive and functional knowledge. They know that multilingualism broadens women’s horizons and allows collective emancipatory action. They also know that literacy and social advancement in Morocco depend greatly on the knowledge and use of the more prestigious languages, namely Standard Arabic and French. As a result, Moroccan


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women make specific empowering choices of language according to circumstances and situations: if they are illiterate, they use an oral language to express themselves through poetry, folktales, or songs, and if they are educated, they use the strategy of code-switching to score gains in conversation and force positive attitude. These uses are used as strategies of communication which aim at valorizing women on the social level.

Social organization Of all the components of Moroccan culture, it is social organization that

has the strongest impact on gender perception and gender construction. Men and women in Morocco evolve within the same social and cultural context. Cultural discourses constantly circulate and affect their speech and behaviour. These discourses are not internalized and reproduced mechanically; they filter through an “active” reproduction mechanism where social organization plays a key role. Moroccan society is built on clear role assignments for men and women. These roles guarantee the structure and functioning of society. Control over men’s and women’s behavior is ensured through a set of three substantive designata: rituals, the codes of honor and morality, and the concept of “collective self”. These three designata are “created”, “fostered” and “perpetuated” in the unit of the Moroccan social organization: the family. The family in Morocco is in most cases agnatic and patriarchal. Moroccan family structure is generally headed by the father and the father’s male lineage and is legally founded on blood relations; “natural” affiliation (that is, cases where women, usually very young, give birth to a child whose father is not known) and adoption are strictly prohibited. However, there are adoptions within extended families at least, where a barren couple will raise a niece (or more likely a nephew) as their own.

The Moroccan patriarchal system is built on the exclusion of women from spaces of public power and by the sanction of all forms of physical and moral violence against them in these spaces. Women’s freedom is seen as a challenge to the patriarchal social fabric and men’s status quo. It is in the family that women are initiated into their role of guardians of social organization. This initiation is channeled through a rigid system of kinship relations, a battery of traditions and rituals, and taboo.

Rituals

Rituals may be defined as the sum of patterned actions and utterances


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that characterize meaningful cultural events. They are usually remnants of past practices or symbols of socially significant acts and words. Being relatively fixed and less resistant to change than everyday interaction, rituals often explain the historical and actual meanings of social practices.

Rituals are inherently oral and culture-bound. As culture is the sum of values, symbols, and norms which differentiate one society from another, rituals are a means of preserving these values, symbols, and norms and transmitting them from generation to generation. As such, rituals have an integrating role and because they are often surrounded by superstition, they have power on the individual. Schneider qualifies the rituals that accompany cultural events as “enchanting” not only for anthropologists, but also for the members of the community which produce them. They operate profoundly through gestures, words, and exchanged icons in special events. They are crystallized in the rites around which social life and life cycles are articulated. Rituals are usually celebrated in family and social feasts which both enchant people and generate meanings. The power of these meanings resides in the fact that they carry a practical ideology which operates through daily activities. For example, in ritualized settings, the way one dresses, eats, celebrates an event, etc. is part of culture and constitutes a channel through which the fundamental norms regulating the status of each sex are rigidly respected. They dictate ways of being man or woman on the body, on the memory, and in the imagination of individuals. The most significant rituals in the Moroccan socio-cultural context are the ones that accompany three important family events: marriage, birth, and circumcision of male children.

The codes of honor and morality Gender-related customs and traditions in the Moroccan society are based

on the two codes of honor and morality. The code of honor consists in preserving the public reputation of a family, and the code of morality consists in preserving a socially accepted public conduct. Both codes rest on girls’ and women’s “good conduct”: good upbringing, chastity, hard work, obedience, and modesty. The codes of honor and morality have been institutionalized by recorded history and religion and are inculcated in the family through everyday verbal and non-verbal “teaching” and behavior. This explains the close relation between family honor and the behavior of girls and women. A woman’s sexual purity is related to the honor of her family, especially her male kin, whereas a man’s sexual purity is related to his own honor, not to that of his family or his female kin. Consequently, in the Moroccan collective perception, a woman’s “mistake” affects the whole


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family whereas a man’s does not: huta wahda txannaz chwari (one filthy fish spoils a whole bag), lbent bhal lhlib, lli darti fih iban (girls are like milk, anything you put in bulges out). This collective view of the codes of honor and morality puts a great psychological and social pressure on girls and women, has a negative impact on them, and creates gender inequities in society. Both the structure of the family and the socialization of Moroccan boys and girls are, thus, clearly crucial in gender construction. This construction is largely conducted through language. The terminology used to refer to girls and women is significant. Adjectives like mahkuma “governed”, mziyyra “controlled”, taht lahkam “under control”, mrat rrajel “woman of a man”, as opposed to bent zzenqa “girl of the street”, and the Berber expression ddaw ufus “under the hand, controlled”, acquire very positive connotations when associated with girls and women. These adjectives become very funny and ridiculous when associated with men. It is ingrained in the Moroccan collective imagination that women need to be controlled. Controlling girls and women has always been considered a way of controlling society and making the application of political decisions easy because women are the ones who will transmit these values to future citizens. Moroccan culture is deeply dualist as it is based on a rigid gender dichotomy and personal relationships in the family and other institutions like school contain a strong hierarchical element.

In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, the laws that dictate the roles inside the family codify the relationships between the two sexes and reinforce social norms that make a clear difference between the two sexes through the establishment of a hierarchy where women are kept in a lower position than men. Women give their tacit consent to the power of the husband because this power is legitimized: the husband is the provider for the family (wife and children), whereas the wife is the nurturer. This power is also supported by the law, which gives the husband legal authority in the family, and by culture, which welcomes this legitimization and uses religion to maintain it. Religion sanctions this through adapting male interpretations of the Quranic texts. Further, expressions, proverbs, sayings, attitudes, and behaviors, reinforce cultural values. Thus, the notion of Sbbara (very patient) which is associated with the wife’s success in marriage, prepares girls to endure their lot, however harsh it may be, with patience. A very derogatory proverb expresses this idea: lmra w lhmara ma kayddayfuch “literally: ‘women and mules should not be treated as guests’”, meaning that women, like donkeys, need to be kept busy all the time’. This “virtue” is transmitted from mother to daughter and is often used indirectly to secure gains in the family. Patient wives may ‘get away’ with things more easily than non-patient ones. The same is true of the notion of lmaktub, literally


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‘fate’, which is strong in the Moroccan culture and which precludes women from questioning their lot. Sometimes, women consciously invoke the authority of the husband to justify an act or gain credibility in a specific public context even if the husband has not issued a judgment. The public authority of men, like their loud voice in public settings, and the submission of women, like their “hushed” voice in these contexts, are behaviours that society and family reinforce and perpetuate. According to Ait Sabbah, women are silent in the Islamic unconscious; they are more trained for self-sacrifice and altruism; they don’t have “the right to be sure” for they lack authority. They are considered “irrational” and “gullible”, and are more associated with superstition and unscientific beliefs than men.

The family is where these views and values are accepted as natural. Everyday linguistic interaction inside the family both reflects and affects the power structure in society. The Moroccan family is based on a strong hierarchy along the lines of sex and age. This hierarchy is established and maintained through the use of language: only adult males have access to the strong types of discourse which verbally set the rules of behavior in the family. It is the father or, in his absence, the eldest son, who gives orders, rebukes, and admonishes. He exercises power over the other members of the family, especially girls, through the use of language. Only elderly women, that is, post menopausal, may have particular kinds of power in certain contexts. However, in general, men dominate the “official” discourse in the Moroccan family; they openly discuss serious matters like politics; they are the “publicly recognized” voices of the family, etc. In the presence of outsiders, it is natural for men or male children to initiate conversation hold the floor, and interrupt interacts. Women and girls are rather “given” the right to speak; their words are carefully watched. As for males in the family, they constitute the dominant group which exercises power over women as a subordinate group by preventing them from reaching the powerful discourse in the family. In society, the topics that women generally discuss, that is, children and household matters, are not given public importance and are perceived as “trivial”. Further, people in general do not have a positive attitude towards households run by women without men such as spinsters, widows, or divorced women.

The fact that women have a subordinate status in the family explains the other fact that they tend to depend on men at home and in society at large. Consequently, women’s chances of engaging in powerful types of discourse in and outside the family is very small, if not non-existent. Moroccan women do not contribute in the same way as men in mixed-sex conversations because they are not given the same right to speak about the same topics as men: they are more easily interrupted and silenced in the family and in


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society. Men have the lion’s share of speech in family and social mixed-sex contexts, and they tend to deprive women from their share of speech in these settings. This means that in many social contexts, women are not given an opportunity to express their thoughts and succeed in attracting attention to them. The fact that women are relegated to less powerful types of discourse in the family and in society may appear in the small, or micro, level of interaction as simple silence on the part of women, but at the macro level of interaction, it reflects the weak position of women in the family and in society. The power structure inside the family and society are heavily male-biased as the male voice is privileged over the female one in both settings.

The roles for which women are socialized are closely linked to the private space. Women’s association with private space is not only exhibited in their appearance (the way they dress) but also reproduced in the architectural organization of the traditional family compound: the high (often unpainted and undecorated) walls are meant to shield the private space, home and the inner rooms from the public gaze. This is congruent with the cultural association of women with property: both need to be protected from the public gaze. Even inside the household, a private domain, men are associated with the “public” and women with the “private”. A woman may be the chief decision-maker in the household, but usually this power is hidden and seldom displayed in front of children, let alone strangers. The concepts “public” and “private” are deeply ingrained in the Moroccan socio-cultural collective imagination.

The concept of the collective self The concept of self (or personhood) is constructed in the Moroccan

socio-cultural context in a way that is different from the way it is constructed in Western cultures. Whereas the Western concept of “self” is based on the individual, the Moroccan concept of self is based on the community (jama’a) and is, thus, inherently plural. C. Geertz defines the Western concept of personhood as an “atomistic individual”:

[The person is] a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background.

By contrast, in the Moroccan culture, the notion of self is not an easily “delineatable” or autonomous concept; it is deeply embedded in and defined by society. In this culture, individuality as a concept is not freely expressed and when it is, it is generally shunned and automatically categorized as “lack


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of modesty”. This vision of the self is epitomized in the popular expression? ana wa ?aςudu billah min qawlat ?ana (I and may God forgive me for saying ‘I’). It is also revealed in expressions such as ςabdu rabbih (God’s slave) and had lςabd DDaςif (this weak slave) which speakers often use to refer to themselves in public. Interestingly, the feminine counterparts of these expressions (that is, hadihi lbda DDaςifa and ςabdatu rabbiha) are not used. The reason is that women do not usually use public discourse. Another token of collective self in Moroccan culture is the difficulty that people have in Morocco, and probably the Arab-Muslim world, to introduce and talk about themselves and their own experiences in public. Introducing and talking about oneself in public is often accompanied by emotion and uneasiness. The reason for this difficulty is mainly due to the fact that talking about oneself in public is generally considered in Moroccan culture as “lack of modesty”.

These ways of expressing the self shows the strong way in which the Moroccan culture “shuns” anything related to “self” and, by implication, explains the fact that privacy is not publicly emphasized in Moroccan culture. Instead of the self, the notion of nasab (kinship) and lasl (root) are far more important than the individual, as these terms invoke relationship to others and affinity connections which situate the individual in the overall social network. In fact, Moroccans are linguistically identified by reference to contexts such as region, tribes, religion, sects, etc. According to Geertz, nisba (family) adjectives are used as terms of reference and address in Morocco.

Given these facts, it is more appropriate to use the expression “collective self” instead of “self” when referring to individuality in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. This notion of collective self has its roots in the Islamic notion of jama’a (community/group) as the basic unit of society. This concept is so deeply knitted and pervasive in the Moroccan social fabric that it continuously materializes in language use, behavior, daily actions, and ways of thinking and perceiving reality. As such, this concept is crucial in defining and explaining gender relations in Moroccan culture. For example, it explains the deep-rooted notion of complementarity of the sexes instead of the Western notion of equality of the sexes. It also explains the fact that more than men, and because of social pressure, Moroccan women are made to feel more accountable to the standard codes of honour and morality of their community than men. Indeed, the concept of collective self is so pervasive in the Moroccan psyche that it regulates family, in-group and out-group relations. An individual’s self-image is not cultivated internally, but derives from others’ opinions and attitudes. For example, an individual’s honor and dignity are not disassociated from the honour and dignity of his or her


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family. This is manifested clearly in the concept of hchuma (shame) which may be defined as the “loss of face in front of others”. This loss of face may be occasioned behaviour that contravenes social norms, breaks Islamic precepts, or abrogates personal obligations inside or outside the family. In such contexts, the protection of one’s honour, name, and dignity becomes the most cherished possession, and social censure becomes the worst punishment. This explains the heavy pressure within the Moroccan family to protect all its members because misbehavior from one member jeopardizes the reputation of all. The concept of hchuma is fundamentally different from the Western notion of “guilt”: whereas guilt is related to one’s conscience telling him/her that something is wrong, the concept of hchuma is related to one’s awareness that others know that something is wrong. To avoid hchuma, Moroccan men and women may refrain from admitting blatant realities in public if these involve a loss of face. Thus, whereas mainstream Western culture is guilt-oriented, Moroccan culture is shame-oriented. In Moroccan culture, an individual’s private views may be embarrassing or even socially damaging if divulged in public. This view of the self explains the excessive aggressiveness that characterizes public behavior in Moroccan culture. In fact, by emphasizing the role of the community to the detriment of the individual, Moroccan culture is different from mainstream Western culture: whereas the latter is monochronic as it emphasizes the role of the individual, the former is inherently polychronic in the sense that focus is never put on individuals as individuals, but on individuals as inherent parts of a community to which they are accountable.

The three components of social organization in the Moroccan culture, namely rituals, the codes of honour and morality and the concept of collective self are deeply inter-wined. They all emphasize individuals’ accountability to the community within a strictly hierarchical gender system and put strong pressure on women as the custodians of the culture’s defining ingredients.

Economic Status

Morocco’s developing economic status is another component of

Moroccan culture. Before and during the colonization by France which lasted from 1912 to 1956, Morocco’s economy was typically rural and traditional as it relied mainly on agriculture. After Morocco’s independence, the country started its process of modernization which materialized in the emergence of modern-type cities and sustained rural exodus to urban areas. This dramatic transition deeply upset traditional Moroccan social


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organization and resulted in relatively “abrupt” gender-related transformations. Two aspects of these transformations are relevant here: a reorganization of space with the advent of women’s salaried work and he problem of illiteracy especially in rural areas. Both aspects existed before modernization, but their social meanings changed with modernization. For example, with the emergence of salaried work, the notions of “public space” and “private space” changed, and with the emergence of a liberal urban female elite, illiteracy acquired new meanings.

Women’s salaried work

The strict public space/private space dichotomy has been significantly disrupted ever since women started to take jobs outside home from the 1960s onward. This significant change in women’s lives was a result of poverty and education: poor women worked as domestics or in low-paid sectors of industry and educated women secured jobs that their education allowed them. As a consequence of women’s salaried work, the public space/private space dichotomy started to be reorganized. The first cause of this space reorganization is the transition from the tribal mode of production to a structure of dependence which was brought about by colonialism and later modernism. As a result, the large-scale family which included grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other members of kin started to shrink to a nucleus of parents and children, especially in urban areas, as a result of women’s work outside home. The Moroccan Arabic expression for women working outside the home is xarjat txdam “she went out to work”. “Going out” expresses “going” from one space to another. The verb xarjat (she went out) further marks the “going out” as a movement from the private/interior to the public/exterior. Although in the West, much is made of World War II and Rosie the Riveter, the representative of women who worked in factories since men, in the military, were unable to do so, many women - especially those of modest means – were alredy working in factories, and the overwhelming majority of teachers (in elementary and secondary education) were women as were all nurses, haidressers, steamstresses, etc. In Morocco, the first women who took paid jobs were either rural women who emigrated to urban areas or women who lived in the suburbs of big cities. Most of these women were poor (divorced women or widows) and were not proud of their jobs. Although upper and middle social classes encouraged the education of girls, they considered the work of women, and hence their money, as a dishonor to the family. For these, women’s education aimed at producing good housekeepers and child rearers, not money-earners. The public space


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was seen as a “dangerous” space where women might meet with men who are not part of the family.

In spite of the fact that women have started to invest the public space, their traditional function in the private space is maintained. In the private space, women have power (over who marries who, how much to spend on what, etc.) but they do not have authority (power sanctioned by society). Indeed, men are “inserted” in the private space to satisfy their needs (food, rest, procreation) and some of men’s most important life experiences, such as circumcision and marriage, take place in the private space. Thus, Moroccan men have “official” power over both the public and private spaces which they direct and control. This control is supported by the law which still allows polygamy. Thus, men not only dominate and manage the private space, but also control their wives’ movement in public space. It is true that in modern times, polygamy has decreased as economic and social conditions are changing; however, the fact that polygamy still has legal sanctioning makes it a powerful social weapon of subordinating women.

The reorganization of space which followed women’s access to jobs has been greatly enhanced by continuous changes in the economic and educational levels of families. In urban areas, women have had more and more access to power-related public spaces; they have special types of dress for public and private spaces. In rural areas, women do not have access to power-related public spaces and do not have special types of dress for public and private spaces. Further, rural women are quasi-exclusively excluded from the administration, and do not usually go to the mosque, and are generally poorly educated in religion. The last point explains the fact that the spread of the Islamist movements is a typically urban phenomenon. It is only recently that rural women have started to cover their heads. The notion of ħijab “veil” is differently perceived in rural areas: there it is a token of modesty, not political affiliation.

Thus, rural and urban women differ as to the degree of access to the powerful public space. If rural women are relatively absent from the mosque, administration, they are present in the fields and the market place. As for urban women, their access to jobs has individualized them in the sense that it has offered them a space where they are called by their own names, and not associated with their fathers, husbands, or sons. Most women who work have not, however, given up their domestic duties. Moroccan women are conscious that housework valorizes them inside the house, that is, in the eyes of their husbands and children; they generally cling to their status as “homemaker” even when they are wealthy and have domestics. Working women usually shun praising their domestics in front of their husbands, out of fear of loosing control over the household. Housework also valorizes


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women in their larger family as well as in society. It is in accordance with the concepts of being lħadga “hard-working” and Sbbara “very patient” which are venerated in Moroccan society.

In the reorganized space, working women have to accommodate two types of work: domestic and salaried work. The former is learnt in childhood and the latter acquired through education and training. This accommodation imposes new habits and new time management on Moroccan women. Not only do these women have to be at their jobs at specific times of the day, but they also have to mix with male colleagues. This is bound to engender new social representations of women in society, as well as new behaviours and attitudes. Outside the home, women fulfill themselves as individuals, as Moroccan citizens with rights and responsibilities, and inside the home, they fulfill themselves as housekeepers and rearers of children. A type of dialectical relationship is established between Moroccan women’s public and private spaces. Women talk about their “private space” worries (domestics, marriage problems, children, cooking, etc) in public spaces and about their “public space” worries (promotion, politics, etc.) in private spaces. In this way, Moroccan women who work do not occupy the whole range of public space; the zones in which they inhabit are quickly transformed into private space, as private topics are discussed in public space, and the logic of private space is transposed into it. For some, wearing the veil allows greater movement in public space, because veiled women have access to public space while symbolically remaining in private space. The veil is regarded by many Moroccan women as a means to accede to the outside while remaining inside. This is particularly true for women who sell on the street or perform jobs where they are in direct contact with male strangers when working as cashiers, bus drivers, cinema ushers, and businesswomen. As a result, contemporary urban Moroccan women hardly dissociate between their roles as wives from their roles as mothers and agents of production, all of which constituting their multiple identities. This situation may fulfill some women, but it may also render some of them stressed and disillusioned.

In spite of the great benefits that working women derive from their jobs, the reorganization of space in Moroccan culture did not bring about equality of sexes. Colonization and modernism in Morocco established the “work-money-modernity” order, and brought about new techniques of exploitation, such as the division of the Moroccan society into traditional (rural) and modern (urban) sectors. The newly independent Morocco reintroduced differences in the name of a re-establishment of equilibrium.


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Illiteracy The extent and meaning of illiteracy in Moroccan culture needs to be

understood within the overall educational system in Morocco. If various systems of education produce culturally specific socio-pedagogical practices, these systems then influence the process of knowledge production, as well as the relations between individuals and groups in a culture. The formal/informal structure of Moroccan education maintains an elitist delivery system of learning and scientific practice in terms of class and gender. As a result, women suffer from culture and class positions in education and scientific practice.

According to UN data, illiteracy among women (and men) s decreasing. In Morocco, women have had access to schooling since immediately after Independence in 1956 and significant progress has been made to narrow the gender gap in education. However, Moroccan society is still faced with the problem of illiteracy. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is attested statistically and sociologically. Statistically, women constitute the largest illiterate portion of the Moroccan population. The illiteracy rate among Moroccan women in general is 60%1, 48% in urban areas and 95% in rural areas2). The rural population represents around 48.6% of the Moroccan population according to the latest official statistics.

Sociologically, women’s illiteracy is basically due to their low-income socio-economic status. Moroccan women’s illiteracy is also a result of a trans-cultural inequality whereby men’s educational achievement is privileged over women’s. Moroccan illiterate women are aware of this condition of subordination and resent it, but the patriarchy has offered them few alternatives.

The great majority of illiterates in Morocco are women, the pools of women that are still illiterate are older and frequently rural women. Illiterate women generally originate from rural areas where girls and women suffer most from lack of schooling: 82% of the rural female population is illiterate3. Rural girls are more exposed to their parents’ opposition to sending their children, especially female children, to school. As for women, the majority of illiterate ones (69.60%) are young (between 12 and 40 years of age). This age span constitutes the most active age span. As for women aged 40 up, most of them are illiterate.

Female illiteracy in Morocco has many causes, including poverty, socio-cultural beliefs and traditions, lack of infrastructure in rural areas, parents’

1 Cf. Bureau des Statistiques, Rabat, Morocco. 2002. 2 Cf. Bureau des Statistiques, Rabat, 2002. 3 Cf. Department of Statistics, Rabat, Morocco. 2002.


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attitude, and the nature of the Moroccan educational system. Consequently, dropping out of school is very frequent in rural areas. Having to repeat grades, failure, non-adaptation, distance, socio-economic reasons, etc. explain this frequent dropping out. As primary school education does not give immediate access to the workforce (no economic return), drop-outs are able to do unskilled jobs or remain unemployed, a state which encourages these drop-outs to relapse into illiteracy1.

The major reasons which push parents to oppose their daughters’ education in rural areas are: first rural parents tend to prefer to keep their daughters in the duars (villages) because girls contribute much to the family’s upkeep at this tender age. They supply the household with water and wood by hauling them from a distance, they take care of the smaller children, and they become a source of revenue by working as domestics in urban areas, sometimes at the age of four or five. Second, as mentioned earlier, schools in rural areas are often very far from homes, and parents are more concerned with the security of girls than with the security of boys, not because girls are preferred to boys, but because the sexual purity of girls is a matter of family honor as explained earlier in this chapter. Third, teachers in rural schools are almost exclusively male, another source of anguish for parents. Fourth, the fact that classes include boys and girls is another discouraging factor for parents, as people in rural areas are much more conservative than people in towns and cities.

The obvious result of all this is more and more disparity between the two sexes in rural areas and, consequently, between women in rural areas and women in urban areas. The picture becomes alarming if we add early marriages (the average marriage age in rural areas is 20 as opposed to 27 in urban areas) and poor life expectancy (63 in rural areas as opposed to 72 in urban areas), multiple pregnancies, polygamy and lack of hygiene – all factors that do not favor development, hinder access to school, and drastically reduce the possibility of rural women leading a decent a life, let alone finding a job. In sum, it is difficult to envisage any genuine intellectual development of Moroccan women in a society where no less than 78% of women are illiterate (51% of men are) according to the most recent report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Human Rights in Morocco.

Illiteracy is gender-sensitive in Morocco: for example, a number of wealthy rural illiterate Moroccan men have had access to the Parliament, but no illiterate woman, regardless of class, could ever aspire to this position. Being literate in Morocco does not mean being literate in one’s mother tongue, but in Standard Arabic and French. Compared to Western women,

1 According to the UNESCO Report of 1998, primary schooling rate in Morocco has decreased by 20%.


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Moroccan women are ‘doubly’ illiterate: historically, they have not had the chance to become literate in Standard Arabic and nowadays they miss literacy in their mother tongues. Within the Moroccan socio-cultural context, literacy presupposes knowledge of a written language and Moroccan Arabic and Berber are not considered “languages of literacy”. The fact that Standard Arabic is a written language distances Moroccan women even further from literacy. Moroccan mothers do not usually coo at their babies in Standard Arabic or French.

Lack of schools only partially explains Moroccan women’s illiteracy. Another important factors is men’s attitude in a patriarchal society: men are generally reticent to encourage women’s literacy as the latter is synonymous to ‘emancipation’ which is believed to make women less compliant and more independent. Illiteracy is a powerful means of perpetuating the gender gap between women and men, as well as a means to subdue women. Illiterate women are associated with the primitive for the West where universal education is written in the very idea of intelligence, but not in the Moroccan culture where women’s intelligence is not always valued and certainly not a public asset. In the Moroccan socio-cultural context, literacy may be defined as the ability to use more than one or two languages (Standard Arabic and/or Frecnh), as the two mother tongues, Berber and Moroccan Arabic, are not used in education. By implication, illiteracy would be defined as lack of an ability to use a language other than one’s mother tongue.

The relationship between Moroccan women and literacy raises many important issues such as women’s relation to their daily environment and the issue of the collective (masculine) representation of women. Raising such issues lead to the fundamental question: how can a Muslim society represent women in the Umma (nation) and in civil society (in human terms) when what determines the relationship (education, reading, writing) is considered unnecessary for women? The debate is promising only if it starts from this contradiction. Illiteracy is ‘played off’ differently by liberal and religious feminists in Morocco. For religious feminists, offering literacy is a type of ‘charity’ that constitutes part and parcel of what the entire Islamic movement is supposed to provide (the wealthy need to help the poor). For liberal feminists, women’s education is the key to emancipation and educating rural women, whom they see as easy prey for fundamentalists. The concept of illiteracy and the status of literacy texts in general in Morocco needs, thus, to be put within larger political contexts.

From a postmodernist perspective, illiteracy problematizes the issue of literate women speaking for the illiterate ones, who, thus, appropriate the latter’s voices. Pushed a littel further, this view would advocate that both


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literate and illiterate women are creative, albeit in different ways. Literate women have more choices than illiterate women an illiteracy does not exclude knowledge and wisdom. Illiterates are members of an oral subculture with their own values and beliefs. Empirical research has shown that the illiterate mind is a construct. History and research have underlined the genius of oral traditions and their role in a ‘‘too pragmatic’’ world.

Political system

The Moroccan political system is another important component of

Moroccan culture. An attempt to understand gender dynamics within the political system of a country is by definition a larger approach to gender than a social or an economical approach as the former approach englobes the latter ones. The Moroccan political system is relevant to the understanding of two major aspects of gender perception in the Moroccan context: the rigid dichotomization of gender in the public sphere and the role of monarchy in promoting women at the political level.

Political structure and gender dichotomization in the public sphere

The domain of politics is a strong site of public power which is closely linked to men in the Moroccan society. Men are the ones who make politics and discuss political issues inside and outside the family. This association of politics with men has its roots in the Moroccan culture where the notion of jamaςa (group), which constitutes the basis of the Arab-Islamic tradition of ruling, is perceived as containing men only. By implication, citizenship is culturally assumed to be first and foremost male because in the Moroccan cultural imagery, men are the ones who are supposed to rule over women and children. The cumulative effect of this state of affairs has created a ‘political culture’ where the hierarchical superiority of men over women is deeply inscribed in the public sphere.

Women are quasi-absent from the political sphere of decision-making as the history of Morocco shows. Before Morocco’s independence, the conservative ideology of the French Protectorate blocked women’s entrance to politics. Even nationalists have never encouraged women to enter the political scene in spite of the presence of some “prestigious” women in the Moroccan national liberation movement. A few nationalist male leaders such as Allal Al-Fassi, who expressed positive attitudes towards women’s emancipation, but they remained an isolated minority as their ideas did not


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correspond to the immediate goals of the newly independent political elite whose priorities did not include women’s emancipation. This elite capitalized on the preservation of ‘Moroccan identity’ and the appointment of women as its guardians. The first female political figures who played a great role in the face of the colonizers, such as Touria Seqqat, Rqia Lamrania, Zhor Zarqa, and Malika Al-Fassi (who was the only woman to sign the Independence Manifesto on January 11th, 1944), were trapped in the nationalist propaganda. The fact that almost all Moroccan women were illiterate precluded any real demand for emancipation by women.

After independence, the transition from the ideology of liberation to the ideology of state-building and the maintenance of an Arab-Islamic identity pushed the issue of women’s participation in politics to the background. In fact, until the end of the 1970s, all Moroccan women’s problems were treated under the socio-cultural rubric. Their status was not considered an important political issue in spite of the fact that the problematic of ‘Moroccan women and politics’ was not ignored. At the beginning of the 1980s, literacy, the increassing importance of the job-market, the emergence of democratic values in Moroccan politics made women more visible on the public scene. In the 1990s, the democratization process brought the issue of women to the limelight. Islamism, the Beijing Conference, civil society, and feminist research were factors that further enhanced public attention to women’s issues. But it is only very recently that a handful of women appeared on the public scenes of decision-making. It should be stated here that Moroccan women’s emancipation owes a great deal to the ‘largesse’ of men.

Even with the advent of modernity and women’s salaried jobs, the strong patriarchal hold still prevails and is reflected in the structure and ruling system of almost all the political parties although political science has firmly established the concepts of citizenship and participation for all the members of a society. The Moroccan electoral system does not facilitate women’s mobility in politics, women’s eligibility depends on specific parties, and women’s issues are discussed within the political platform of each political party. In sum, women are mainly ‘used’ by political parties as a ‘token’ of democracy and voters; their voices are bought, their illiteracy is used, an their poverty is manipulated. In rural and some urban areas, men vote on behalf of their women.

Another factor which distances women from politics in Morocco is their negative attitude towards politics. Moroccan women do not generally see politics as a ‘woman’s thing’ because the majority of them are not acquainted with public affairs and the way in which authority is structured. This ignorance of how authority is constructed makes politics alien to


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women and serves the status quo of men. There is an absence of political will to really integrate women in decision making. As a result, there is a weak representation of women at all elected offices. This situation is mainly due to political parties the majority of whose members are conservative, and as a consequence rarely appoint female candidates for local and regional elections. In 1972, 1086 women were candidates to the regional elections out of a total of 93.773, that is, 1.1%, and only 75 were elected. Only two women reached the vice-president position in local and regional committees. In spite of the fact that the Moroccan party system is plural and in spite of the fact that some of the Moroccan political parties are progressive, women do not hold decision-making roles in the political pyramid; they do not generally sit on the executives committees of the parties. In fact, almost all parties have created ‘subordinate’ organization dealing with female issues, but these do not have a say in decision-making apart from making recommendations to the executive committees.

Although four women were appointed ministers in the so-called ‘‘government of transition’’1 in 1998, few women were candidates in local ‘‘communes’’, very few were elected, and only two reached the parliament. More than that, in March 1998, a regression in women’s political representation was noted as two women only were in the government. This number shrank to one in 2000. What do these facts mean? The obvious meaning is that there is strong resistance and negative attitude to the presence of women in representative institutions and a shy claim of women for this representation. The facts also show that there is a long path for Moroccan women to cross before they can have an impact on Morocco’s public affairs.

Paradoxically, women’s agency in civil society is growing steadily, and this is having a great impact on the Moroccan political landscape by: allowing women greater access to public discourse and by enhancing public activism/action. Such figures show the long path that Moroccan women have to cross before they can have an impact on Morocco’s public affairs.

The role of the monarchy in promoting women at the political level Morocco’s political system is based on a constitutional monarchy and

several political parties. The king holds the supreme executive power as well as the supreme religious power (he is amir al-muminin ‘‘Commander of the Believers’’). The Moroccan Constitution has a double reference: it is based

1 That is, transition from right wing to left wing government.


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on both the Shari’a (Islamic law) and the international (human rights) conventions.

Monarchy is highly viewed in the Moroccan culture. It is associated with both religious sanction and modernity. Monarchy has had a very significant impact on the political status of women in Moroccan society. It was not political parties or civil society which foregrounded women on the political scene, but monarchs. The last three Moroccan kings openly encouraged the integration of women in the social and economic developments by adopting a view that reconciles ‘tradition’ with ‘modernity’. King Mohamed V, who ruled from to, was the first king in the history of Morocco to ‘unveil’ his own daughter in public and make her ambassador to Great Britain. King Hassan II, who ruled from 1961 to 1999, nominated the first four women Secretaries of State. King Mohamed VI, who became king in 1999, is the first Moroccan monarch to nominate a female personal counceller. He further constantly refers to giving wider opportunities and more integration of women in decision-making and special attention to the eradication of female illiteracy in rural and urban areas.

These women know that they are exploited and know they will be as long as they are poor and do not participate in public political power. The situation of Morocco is not different from most of the third world or even the developed countries. The political sphere is a sphere of power that men consider as one of their strongholds. It is the most important facet of the patriarchal order. The cultural and ideological foundations of male supremacy have never been questioned in Morocco.

Monarchy has also played a leading role in ‘cooling off’ the tension between the liberal and religious feminists as mentioned earlier in this chapter. The status of the King as Amir Al-Muminin bestows on him the power to mediate between the views of liberal secularists and rigid Islamists on sensitive issues relating to the legal status of women. As this legal status is largely based on the Islamic law (a∫-∫arςa), its slightest modification needs the sanction of the highest authority in Morocco, the King. One such modification was initiated in September 1993 by the late King Hassan II as stated earlier in this chapter. Only the supreme authority of the king made the amendment possible. A second mediation project has been started by the present King Mohamed VI in April 2001. In this second endeavor more substantial changes are expected to take place. Again, without the authority of the king, such a dialogue would not have taken place without social uproar. On a larger level, the mediations show that there is a growing awareness among Moroccans that the legal side should reflect women’s socio-economic agency.


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Conclusion

The major purpose of this paper has been to highlight the components

that influence gender perception in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. They highlight the fact that there are historical, geographical, religious, social, economic and political conditions for the creation of divided interests between men and women in the Moroccan context. These components are also meant to show how power is naturalized and geared towards reproduction of gendered ideologies and how agency is gendered in a male-biased context. In spite of the fact that these cultural components have a strong symbolic value for Moroccan women and men, women both reproduce and subvert gender roles within a context where factors of economic status, class, level of education, etc. carry power and interact with gender. Only a dynamic and constructionist approach to the variables that produce change can help unravel these workings and show that gender coherence can be achieved only within a specific cultural system.

By implication, feminist concerns and strategies need to be grounded in the Moroccan cultural specificities because gender conception is constructed within Moroccan culture, and it is only within this culture that they can be deconstructed. The components of Moroccan culture attest to the fact that Morocco is plural by its ethnicities, histories, and languages, and one can theorize about the language and gender reality only within the context of Moroccan culture because it is the specificities of the latter that explain the making and remaking of gender in this part of the world.

Documents

Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture - CMIESIcmiesi.ma/acmiesi/file/notes/fatima-sadiqi_2.pdf · Gender Perception in Moroccan Culture FATIMA SADIQI Culture may be broadly defined