Morocco for women – is it getting better?

Danish journalist Astrid Haug gives a vivid account of a meeting between Moroccan and Danish female journalists where both the Danish cartoon crisis and the challenges of women in Morocco was on the agenda

By Astrid Haug, journalist

An old man in a wheelchair sits alone in his living room. He curses loudly in Arabic and spits on the floor. Once he is done, he starts all over again. The film crew is laughing. Apparently the old man is really good. “Cut”. It’s the voice of the Moroccan film director Nour Eddine Lakhmari. He’s in the midst of shooting the follow-up to his successful “Casanegra” about the dark sides of the white city. My host Myriam has taken me to meet Nour Eddine Lakhmari, because he lived in Norway for several years. He greets me in flawless Norwegian: “Hyggelig å møte deg” (nice to meet you). He has returned to Morocco to do movies and explains why:

– It’s getting better here. We no longer need to rely on other countries to make movies about us – we can do it ourselves.

This sense of optimism on behalf of the nation seems to be widespread. 

Women in Morocco

In January I joined an IMS twinning programme between nine Danish female journalists and our Moroccan counterparts. Five days of cultural exchange, intensive career planning and emerging transnational friendships in Morocco. Whereas the Danes had to explain the circumstances that led to the cartoon crisis in 2005, the Moroccan women gave us an understanding of how it is to be a female journalist with rocket-high ambitions in a country that just recently allowed women to  divorce and with a 40 per cent illiteracy rate.

King Mohammed VI is the power centre in Morocco. In comparison to his father, King Hassan II, he is seen as very progressive. In 2004 he reformed the family law known as the Mudawana. Among other things it gave women the right to divorce their husbands and raised the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18.

In his infamous speech in Parliament in 1993, king Mohammed IV said: “How can society achieve progress while women, who represent half the nation, see their rights violated and suffer as a result of injustice, violence and marginalisation?”
In this light it is easy to see why the king seems to be fairly popular.

Less optimistic

Morocco is a land of contrast, between rich and poor, traditional and modern. And it is divided between those who believe that the Moroccan glass is half full and look to a brighter future, and those who believe things are getting worse and see the glass as half empty.

Professor at the Mohammed V University in Rabat, Dr. Maati Monjib, is concerned on behalf of the Moroccan media and women. Only six per cent of the members of parliament, and 25 per cent of journalists are women. At ISIC, the school of journalism in Casablanca, the women dominate admission by 60 per cent in 2011. But women in media still earn 18 per cent less than men.

Dr. Maati Monjib states that the situation for media in Morocco today is worse than 10 years ago:

– We lose our freedom due to the political situation in the country. If you criticise the King or his family, your media will be put under financial pressure and face bankruptcy (read article“Morocco closes crusading magazine”). He sees the Internet as the most free media, because every time a website is closed due to censorship, “there is a worldwide outcry of solidarity”.

There were 10.4 million internet users by December 2009 (Internetworldstats.com).

About the IMS Twinning Programme

The peer-to-peer mentoring programme for women journalists in Morocco and Denmark is part of IMS’s twinning and exchange programme for Danish and Arab media specialists. By partnering Danish and Arab media professionals, the aim is to further understanding and share experience and help journalists produce more multifaceted coverage of one another.

The first meeting and joint activities took place in Morocco in January 2011. Watch this space for more articles about the twinning between Danish and Moroccan female journalists.