The bloggers, both male and female, foreign and Moroccan, offer a variety of perspectives on the issue. Sexual harassment is defined by intimidation, bullying, or coercion of a sexual nature and is, by all accounts, something that happens the world over.

Liz, a Fulbright scholar working in Agadir, in southern Morocco, compares her experiences in the United States, Egypt, and Morocco in this excellent blog post. Of her experiences in Morocco, she remarks:

My experiences with sexual harassment in Morocco have been 99.9% verbal. Unlike in Cairo, where I was often physically grabbed on the street, here the harassment comes mainly in the form of catcalls. It can be anything from a man whispering “Ca va?” as I pass on the street, to a glue-sniffing teenage boy in my old neighborhood shouting broken vulgarities at me, to a man following me and a friend for 15 minutes, asking us all the way if he can practice his English with us. In more escalated cases, men in cars will follow women, commanding them to get in, or will use a crowded city bus as an excuse to grope and fondle.

Patriarchy in Morocco

The blogger notes her realization that sexual harassment is about power struggle rather than sex itself, linking to another excellent post on the matter and, assessing how the paradigm relates to her country of residence, states:

How do these ideas apply to the Moroccan context? Firstly, it’s hard to argue with the assertion that Arab states, Morocco included, are patriarchal. Family is perhaps the paramount social institution (often, multiple generations live together under one roof), and within the family roles and authority are clearly defined: Younger members defer to older ones, women defer to men. Women are, first and foremost, wives and mothers, roles which relegate women to the home, whereas men have freedom of mobility. This structure leads to what Kandiyoti refers to as the “patriarchal bargain”: younger women buy into a social structure that restricts and subordinates because someday, as older matriarchs, they will be able to restrict and subordinate the wives of their sons.

Experiences of prejudice

Bisahha is a blog written by a Dutch anthropologist living in Rabat, Morocco’s coastal capital. In a lengthy post documenting her feeling of otherness, the blog’s author assesses how that otherness affects her treatment on the street as a woman:

All women receive attention on Moroccan streets, but I doubt a Moroccan woman is told in syrupy slick English that she is “very niiiiiice,” or that he “likes your size.”

Peace Corps volunteer Duncan, writing about racism in Morocco, touches on a similar theme. He notes that foreign women who look Arab are often subject to different treatment than other foreign women:

If a woman appears Moroccan, different dress and behavior is expected of her. White female volunteers certainly receive harassment, but with my limited experience I would argue that it is of a different sort. Because of her appearance, the volunteer who (sort of) appears Moroccan was held to the standard expected of Moroccan women, exposing the double standard. Dressed conservatively by American standards, but with her hair uncovered, the volunteer received lots of vulgar sexual harassment from Moroccans – harassment that a white woman would probably not get in the same situation. Swimming in the ocean, the volunteer received vulgar invitations that a white volunteer probably would not receive in the same situation. In her site, the volunteer was assaulted in public, in plain view of several people. When asked, after the fact, why they didn’t come to her assistance, the people said, “Because she looked Moroccan.” The volunteer speaks Arabic well, making it easier to confuse her as Moroccan. She says that she sometimes intentionally makes mistakes so that people will be more likely to perceive her as American.

Men’s view of women

The discussion comes full circle in a blog post by Moroccan Abdelilah Boukili, whose blog is based on questions asked on BBC World’s Have Your Say. Asking the question, “do men need protecting from themselves?” the blogger assesses various dress codes and clothing traditions across the Arab world, noticing the emphasis on women’s modesty. He concludes:

Men should have control over themselves. They shouldn’t be controlled by instinct and fantasy. Women should dress for self-respect, not by wearing a burqa and also by not wearing clothes that reveal too much when they are sure they can be seen just as a sex object and not as persons whose personality should be respected.

Sexual harassment in Morocco

Although the four bloggers quoted above offer excellent perspectives on sexual harassment in Morocco, each person’s experience is unique and none of these should be taken for gospel. Those interested in further reading on gender issues in Morocco might be interested in Fatima Sadiqi’s excellent book, Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco, or in the following blogs, which regularly cover such topics: 760 Days in Morocco: the experiences of an American Muslim in Morocco and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: a blog by Moroccan-American Sarah Alaoui.

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on September 1, 2009.

Image by Hisham G., photo by Opus

Aicha Ech Chenna has just been awarded the world’s largest faith-based prize for entrepreneurship, the Opus Prize. Her work focuses on unwed mothers

Extramarital sex in Morocco is taboo, technically punishable by imprisonment, though the law is rarely enforced. Unwed motherhood then, is the ultimate taboo, and women who get pregnant out of wedlock are often shunned from their communities. That’s where activist and social worker Aicha Ech Chenna comes in: In 1980, after witnessing an unmarried mother give up her child, Ech Chenna formed a social work practice with the sole purpose of helping unwed mothers.

Now, nearly 25 years after its official inception, Solidarité Féminine employs women at two restaurants, a bakery, four small shops, and a hammam (bath), and provides them with health care, child care, and job skills. The organization also provides women with legal assistance, helping them to officialize surnames for their children (in Morocco, women lack authority to give their children a surname, and without a surname, it is nearly impossible to get an ID card).

And so, in Solidarité Féminine’s 24th year, 68-year-old Aicha Ech Chenna has just been awarded the world’s largest faith-based prize for entrepreneurship, the Opus Prize. The prize will provide the organization with 1 million USD (over 750,000 MAD). The Moroccan-American board, based in Washington DC, held an event for Ech Chenna, capturing the event on video and sharing it via YouTube:

Moroccan blogger Hisham of The Moroccan Mirror started his career as a doctor in Morocco, and has seen the plight of unwed mothers in Morocco firsthand. He writes of the experience, and lauds Ech Chenna for her efforts, saying:

We heard terrible stories about some unwed pregnant women being rejected from clinics by doctors or nurses, and about newborns being abandoned near the gates of hospitals and clinics, and we saw those same abandoned babies and infants (“ben X” they were called, or “son of X”) being brought to the maternity unit, malnurished and dehydrated.

To be fair, those women were reasonably well treated, though one could sense the coldheartedness with which their cases were addressed. It was then that I first heard of organizations like “Solidarité féminine,” “Association enfance espoir Maroc” or “Bayti,” and of wonderful people like Aicha Ech Chenna who took upon themselves the burden of helping those young mothers and abondened children, in a society that continues to put the responsibility of extra-marital relationship, mainly on women. A terrible stigma that only people like Ech Chenna might help erase.

This story was originally published at www.globalvoicesonline.org