Ifda dossier 47, May/June 1985

crease unless more adequate opportunities are given for the
rual group as a whole. He also called for the establishment
of small industries in the countryside offering job oppor-
tunities as a means to improve the standard of life for both
women and men. Arab governments, he contended, should gua-
rantee women access to training programs and protect them
against complete relegation to the lowest paying jobs.
Having wider options open to them, Arab women will have the
opportunity to utilize their creative energies for goals
other than motherhood, and learn that they are capable of
controlling their own lives.
Consequently, one can observe that in spite of the predominance
of the structural inequalities at the global level,
and their replication at the national levels of individual
countries, the re has always been a sharp indigenous consciousness
and scholarship, as exemplifies in the Arab context.
aware of the threats and ramifications of deoendence
relationships established by the West, and ready to denounce
them as forms of manipulation and exploitation of countries
striving for self-reliance. Nevertheless, awareness of dependence
modes and structural inequalities, although vital
for cultural identity and survival, are hardly sufficient.
Like most Third World countries, Arab countries need a holistic
conceptual framework of development combined with the
building of an endogenous infrastructure leading to genuine
development.
THE MOROCCAN CONTEXT
How does Morocco, as a specific example of Arab-Muslim con-
text, enlarge, diffuse and realize the opportunities of its
citizens leading to endogenous development? Although Morocco
is an Arab muslim country and has the common generic charac-
teristics described in the Arab world, it can be distin-
guished by its own cultural idiosyncrasies, especially when
dealing with women's integration in development. Understand-
ing the Moroccan context resides in exploring the socio-
economic, cultural and political structures unique to
Morocco and its history.
Like its counterparts in the Arab world, Morocco's spontane-
ous drive to fight economic backwardness and for indepen-
dence was born during colonial times (French and Spanish
Protectorates, 1912-1956). After independence, however, the
kind of modernization started in the country was mainly ac-
culturative due to the imitation by Moroccan policy makers
at the time of patterns of analysis and models of develop-
ment acceptable to the West and not necessarily consonant
with their own cultural heritage.
The Moroccan historian, Abdallah Laroui, argues that the
creativity of the Nationalist Movement as a producer of ge-
nerative ideas of change receded before independence, name-
ly, during 1930-1932. Moreover, the most important groups in