It is the beard in which all power lies - Molière (1662)
The COVID-19 Virus and the Liberation of Women
It seems not much has changed in almost 400 years since Molière wrote these words in his comedy The school for wives. Male dominance, God-like characters, known as men, united in inexcusable discrimination, sexism, gender inequality, infallible men forever trying to rule the world. “A wife who writes, knows more than can be good for her”, Molière’s main character sighs in the play, insisting that female brightness as a rule “is a bad omen/And I know men, who’ve undergone much pain because they married girls with too much brain…”. Who would dare argue that Molière’s scenario of machismo is the past? A woman manages the European Union and female astronauts have ventured to the space station. Yet women are not equal in the minds of millions of insolent, incorrigible machos.
It is time to change. Today robots are exploring Mars, almost 500 million kilometers away, while on Earth rulers still debate, in Saudi Arabia for example, whether women can be allowed to drive cars. Others question the rights of women to work, to live alone, and to wear trousers. We have to move away from yesterday’s illusions and approach tomorrow’s reality, departing from a world in which the yelling of a man at home is accepted as a sign of authority, while the angry screams of his wife are considered to prove her madness. Men, wherever they may live, or to whichever God they give their souls, are not lifelong, undisputed owners of their wives. As Kamala Harris, the U.S. Vice President, declared in a speech at the United Nations, “the status of democracy…depends fundamentally on the empowerment of women, not only because the exclusion of women from decision making is a marker of flawed democracy, but because participation of women strengthens democracy”.
Toxic Misogyny and Sexism
Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile and now United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, echoed Harris’s concern, reminding our societies, “we cannot airbrush reality—women’s equal representation in political life is advancing very slowly”. At the current rate, gender parity in national legislatures would not be reached before 2063, and parity in the number of women and men in government would not be achieved before 2050,
Bouchra Rahmouni’s Policy Brief for the Policy Center for the New South, titled “Autonomisation économique de la femme marocaine au-delà du mode compassionnel”, is therefore timely. Its front page notes: “All leaders, decision-makers, experts, men and women, agree on one fact:without women we cannot face the challenges of the millennium and we cannot overcome the impacts of COVID-19 and the revolutionary upheavals it is generating”. A cynic could point to the sorry state of our world, which needs a devastating virus to recognize that without the participation of women—all women—our troubled globe might have no future. Bouchra Rahmouni’s study reads as a subtle reminder to the leaders of government in Rabat that despite all good intentions, the constitutional changes of 2011, suggesting equality of men and women in the Kingdom, have not been as effective as planned: “We must enable mentalities and behavior to evolve and create the right framework that will allow advancement”. The author herself symbolizes the advancement of Moroccan women, willing and able to overcome the subtle opposition of male academics to become an acclaimed professor, with teaching assignments at the prestigious Mohammed VI Polytechnique near Marrakech, as well as in New York and Southeast Asia. She was also director of Research, Partnerships and Events at the Policy Center, one of the leading think tanks of Africa. The institution itself is an example of how young Moroccan women, who are well-educated, motivated, and determined, are not only accepted as equals to men, but are partners alongside their equally young male colleagues, willing to advance ideas together, searching for answers to the continuing question of inequality between men and women in their country.
The question remains: is a younger generation of men ready to surrender some, if not all, of their self-imposed power, giving women a more equal role and growing influence? Is the internet, questionable as a tool for tolerance, opening the world to them, showing that women are needed to resist the global march towards annihilation? Will the women of Morocco finally insist on their right of equality, pressuring their leaders to move the laws of the land in their favor, allowing them, for example, to claim their children in case of a divorce? In 2019, Bouchra Rahmouni reveals, only 18.6% of Morocco’s women were employed, compared to65.5% of men. About50% of the estimated 37 million Moroccan citizens are women, often ordered by their husbands not to look for work. Some industrious and alert female students are not supported by their families in their attempts to progress to higher education.
Same Education, but not the Same Opportunities
Women argue on social media that male and female students at universities receive the same education but after graduation not the same opportunities. The majority of Morocco’swomen are literate, but a 2020 Global Gender Gap report ranked the kingdom 115thin the world in women’s education. In the categories of “economic participation” and “access of opportunities”, Morocco was in a depressing 143rd place. As the government and related institutions do not really answer the fundamental question of what women’s role in society should be, Professor Rahmouni seems to suggest in her Policy Brief a more radical, fundamental solution: “to overcome the compassionate mode in which women find themselves today”. The narrative on leadership should be changed, “moving from male leadership to female leadership”. For Ms. Rahmouni “it goes without saying that the transition from one leadership model to another can only come as a shock. Indeed, it is essential to think of the shock of parity as a shock of growth”. How will established political powers react to such a (almost)revolutionary suggestion? How is such change possible when the focus is solely on male-dominated powers, when their political traditions and power plays are encrusted, almost fossilized, unable and unwilling to accept a fundamental reversal of the normalized exclusion of millions of women?Will Moroccan men revolt if their assumed superiority is finally threatened, their wives and daughters daring to challenge traditions that keep them in a suppressed state—just as Molière described almost 400 years ago: “Matrimony …is no joke.The position of a wife calls for strict duties”.
“Times have changed and the time for change is now”, texted my 29-year-old, university-educated Moroccan friend, Oumama B. in a message from Tangiers, after reading Ms. Rahmouni’s Brief: “The idea behind feminine leadership is truly genuine if not genius in its nature. In a world which has for hundreds of years mainly known one group of leaders, men, it is time to question the status quo”. In her conclusion, Bouchra Rahmouni suggests: “Men and women must work together for the better integration of women. We must not lose sight of the fact that Morocco is part of a global context and that according to the World Economic Forum, parity will not be achieved before 2277”. The COVID-19 health crisis “could represent the opportunity to improve the access of women to employment through the emergence of digital and technological tools”.