Since independence, Morocco has come a long way in promoting the status of women, their access to rights as well as equality and parity between the two genders. However, obstacles seem to persist and pierce these developments, especially on the professional level, experts said.
As part of the commemoration of International Women’s Rights Day, the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences (UM6P), the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (ADFM ) and the Moroccan Network of Women Mediators organized a series of two-day events, on March 9 and 10, consisting of panel discussions and workshops under the theme ” Women, agents of change“.
This Friday was devoted to the session on the theme: “Women in the development process: For better socio-economic inclusion”, in which several representatives of civil society, women’s rights activists, but also also researchers and experts in the field.
For Mounia Boucetta, Senior Fellow at the PCNS, the objective of this event is to develop a new narrative concerning women’s rights and to involve young people even more in this process. ” We have seen that these issues are more or less not taken into consideration. We know that if there is a change, if women are to be agents of change, we will have to involve young people more, since they bring new ideas and new dynamics that can contribute to the interest of society. empowerment of women but also to the development of the country“, she noted.
The researcher explained, in a statement to MoroccoLatestNews, that “ we have focused on economic and social inclusion, because for us, although we have made a lot of progress in various areas, the subject of inclusion, women’s empowerment remains very weak“.
She specifies that, over the past twenty years, this question has experienced a regression. ” When we do the analysis, we see that there are territorial disparities which contribute to this decline, even if we see a small improvement in activity in urban areas“, indicates Boucetta, adding that it is the decline in rural areas and the observed fragility that does not absorb this development.
Beyond that, there are obstacles in particular at the level of society, continues our interlocutor. According to the researcher, the legislative framework must evolve and entrepreneurship must be further encouraged, especially with these new information technologies. ” The most important thing for us is to bring young people into this debate so that they get involved in this process of improving the rate of inclusion of women.“, she concludes.
For her part, Amina Lotfi, president of the ADFM-Bureau of Rabat, said she was very happy to participate in this meeting, because ” I consider that March 8 is above all a judgment call. We must take stock of what we have achieved, identify what our problems are, we must project ourselves into the future in the presence of students, in the presence of young people who represent our present and our future.“.
The activist points out that the obstacles are many, while the achievements have slowed down, insisting that it ” is the time to roll up our sleeves and concretely implement the constitutional provisions“. She told MoroccoLatestNews that this involves harmonizing all laws with Morocco’s constitution and international commitments.
” This also concerns public policies which are mutually converging, in addition to a national policy with sectoral policies. This implies intersectorality, because no department, alone, can develop a strategy because there is automatically the intervention of other sectors.“, she let know.
Lotfi continues: “ And that also involves the culture of equality, the promotion of the culture of equality, because people keep telling us, yes the population is conservative, but what is the state doing to improve the mentality of the population? ? This also requires a deconstruction strategy, an information and awareness strategy“.
The president of ADFM-Rabat notes that this process, overall, requires an evaluation system, ” it requires that each year, for March 8 for example or October 10, that we do a real assessment and that we stop repeating “we have done”, but that we talk about the results that we have obtained, that we identify the problems and that we can review our public policies accordingly“.
” And there, really, with these four components, this global vision, this vision which has a results approach and this vision which is intersectoral, I think that we can gradually move towards universal women’s rights, because without women’s rights, there is no economic and social or sustainable development“, observes the activist.