Progress Amid Resistance

MOROCCO 333running water, and schools are still luxuries for most of the countrysideof Morocco. The poverty rate in rural areas dropped from 36 percent in2004 to 21 percent in 2007, according to the findings of a survey by theHigh Commissioner for Planning, but work to alleviate poverty is stillsorely needed. 45RecommendationsF The government should allocate more funds to meet women’s healthneeds, particularly by improving the health care infrastructure in ruraland other underserved areas.F The government should establish equitable welfare programs for singlemothers and female heads of households, including those who havenever married. NGOs should provide services that assist women inobtaining the state benefits for which they are eligible.F Existing welfare payments should be supplemented by microcredit services,financial literacy training, and employment skills for women inimpoverished rural and semi-urban areas.F The government should sponsor media programs that fight negativestereotypes of women.F The media sector should partner with women’s rights NGOs to createcontent that would provide the youth with positive female role models,valorize women’s impact on society, and lend credibility and stature towomen’s initiatives of all kinds.AUTHORFatima Sadiqi is Senior Professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies atthe University of Fes and director of the Isis Centre for Women andDevelopment. She is a former Fulbright scholar and recipient of a Harvardfellowship. Sadiqi has written extensively on Moroccan languages andMoroccan women’s issues. She is the author of Women, Gender, andLanguage in Morocco (Brill, 2003), Grammaire du Berbère (L’Harmattan,1997), Images on Women in Abdullah Bashrahil’s Poetry (Beirut Institute,2004). She has also edited and co-edited a number of volumes, includingMigration and Gender in Morocco (Red Sea Press, 2008) and WomenWriting Africa: The Northern Region (Feminist Press, 2009). Her co-editedvolume Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of Change willbe published by Routledge in May 2010.