Women's Employment - United Nations Research Institute for Social ...

Gender and employment in Moroccan textile industries
disintegration of the traditional family and the frequency of
repudiations forced women to look for work in the factories (Adam,
1972). These women had little education or training and were often
illiterate. The lack of skills was characteristic of the first women to
enter wage employment in significant numbers (a trend that has
continued to the present day, as we see below). Although women
were obliged to work for economic reasons, their aspirations appeared
to lie elsewhere: the ideal was a position of economic and social
security provided by a breadwinning husband. Even though they
worked, these women would have gladly given up employment if
their ideal could be met (Adam, 1972).
While there have been changes in the size and composition of
the female workforce, its status and its aspirations since Moroccan
independence, economic necessity still drives women into the job
market, and their lack of skills still determines their tasks in the
industrial textile sector. The feminization of the industry, for garments
(79 per cent), knitwear (71 per cent) and carpets (42 per cent) (Belghazi,
1996), has determined the choice of our sample, which is composed
of 87.6 per cent women. Because of the overwhelming presence of
women in this industry, a straight comparison between men and
women in the production process is difficult, as men and women do
not always occupy the same jobs. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring
gender differences apparent in management practices and authority
structures as well as in attitudes about women and work.
2. Family livelihood strategies
The industrial zone of Rabat-Salé, where most of this survey
was carried out, is near the poorer districts that receive constant
inflows of rural migrants. Even though most of the men and women
workers were born in Salé, more than a quarter of them originate
from the rural areas. This zone began its urban expansion in the 1980s
when it increasingly attracted the region’s rural population, who came
Table 4:
Place of birth by gender
Women Men Total
Number % Number % Number %
Town 143 73 19 68 162 72
Rural area 54 27 9 32 63 28
Total 197 100 28 100 225 100
67