Progress Amid Resistance

★•moroccoby Fatima SadiqiPOPULATION: 31,495,000GNI PER CAPITA: US$2,276COUNTRY RATINGS 2004 2009NONDISCRIMINATION AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE: 3.0 3.1AUTONOMY, SECURITY, AND FREEDOM OF THE PERSON: 3.1 3.2ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY: 2.7 2.8POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIC VOICE: 3.0 3.1SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS: 2.9 2.9(COUNTRY RATINGS ARE BASED ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 5, WITH 1 REPRESENTING THE LOWEST AND 5 THEHIGHEST LEVEL OF FREEDOM WOMEN HAVE TO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS)INTRODUCTIONThe Moroccan feminist movement can be traced back to 1946, when theSisters of Purity Association publically issued a set of demands includingthe abolition of polygamy, full and equal political rights, and increasedvisibility of women in the public sphere. These demands were taken upby female journalists, academics, and civil society in the decades afterMorocco gained independence from France in 1956. During this period,through journalistic and academic discourse, feminists started to questiongender divisions, examine historical and ideological roots of genderinequality, and promote the recognition of women’s labor. They depictedwomen’s condition not as a “natural state,” but as a state that stems fromhistorical practices, and women’s work, not as merely reproduction, but asproduction.The women’s movement was bitterly disappointed by the first Moudawana,or personal status code regulating all matters pertaining to familylife, enacted in 1957. It was based on the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence,whereas other laws, such as the penal code and the constitution,were based on civil law. 1 Women obtained the right to vote in 1956 andhad the right to a free education under the constitution, but even femalecabinet members and entrepreneurs were considered the dependants of311