Moroccan Women, Activists, and Gender Politics

An Institutional Analysis

By (author) Eve Sandberg, Kenza Aqertit

Publication date:

26 September 2014

Length of book:

186 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739182093

Sandberg and Aqertit analyze how, over the course of twenty-five years, dedicated, smart, and politically effective Moroccan women, working simultaneously in multiple settings and aware of each other’s work, altered Morocco’s entrenched gender institution of regularized practices and distinctive rights and obligations for men and women. In telling the story of these Moroccan gender activists, Sandberg and Aqertit’s work is of interest to Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area specialists, to feminist and gender researchers, and to institutionalist scholars. Their work operationalizes and offers a template for studying change in national gender institutions that can be adopted by practitioners and scholars in other country settings.

Chapter 1: Institutional Theories, Feminist Theories, and Moroccan Women Activists
Chapter 2: Creating Morocco’s Post-Independence Gender Institution
Chapter 3: The Agency of Moroccan Women
Chapter 4: Changing Rules and Paths within Institutions within Institutions and the Creation of Discursive Initiatives to Alter Morocco’s Gender Discourses
Chapter 5: Resources
Chapter 6: The Sum is Greater Than Its Parts
Chapter 7: Conclusion

Among the most valuable aspects of Sandberg's and Aqertit's new book is their revealing how very specific Moroccan women became women's rights activists, how they strategized and organized over several decades, and how they pushed the monarchy, male party leaders, judges, and fellow Moroccans to deeply rethink the family, modernization, and democracy.