Blog 3
While in the desert yesterday traveling above the oasis, our tour guide said that if you walk through the oasis and into the villages all you will see are women working (Mouline et al, 2022). He said, “I do not know what the men do, all I see are women working and when I go into the cafes in town, I see only men sitting around.” I found this to be contrasting of all Fez when we traveled through the Medina and saw only men selling items and working in each stall. He also said that in stores you will only find women shopping and making purchases for the household because “men do not know how to bargain.”
Throughout this trip to Morocco, it seems that women do most (if not all) of the behind-the-scenes work while the men led tours and do more interactive tasks with tourism or business that requires multilingual communication skills (Mouline et al, 2022). I don’t think I have seen one woman talk to us, provide information, or sell items. The only women we have seen speak to us are the girls that our age or younger. As Hamid has said, women seem to be the leaders of the household and essentially “own” the house, while men have to abide by their rules.
Outdoors, however, we were informed before this trip started that women needed to dress more conservatively. When talking to Dr. Navarro before the trip started, we discussed adapting to the Moroccan culture of being more conservative. I think that it is hard for tourist women to adjust to these leadership norms of indoors vs outdoors leadership divisions because we will never see what is happening in a normal day to day life (Mouline et al, 2022). We only spend time outdoors interreacting with the men and their lives. It makes for a difficult paradox to navigate because the women have power, but it is just not visible to us.
https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/big-step-forward-womens-leadership-morocco
The presence of women seen and men is vastly skewed and you would guess the country is predominantly men based on the people we have seen and spoken to. It makes me interested to speak to a woman of older age however I do not know if this would be possible as most women do not know english. The only women seen to know english have been women with PhDs such as a professor we met in a school or the organic farmer. These highly educated women also see a much different way of life than the average would as well.
ReplyDeleteEmma Kate, I also talked about the concept of women being in charge of the home. After reading your post and reflecting, I do think there are several complexities that could make it difficult for us to hear 1st hand accounts from older, more traditional women here. Accessibility & language barriers are large obstacles in this pursuit. These thoughts coupled with your post made me realize how so much of my perceptions of Morocco are being formed by one group (men).
ReplyDeleteIn your post, you spoke briefly about our group interacting with younger women. It made me wonder, what ways do you see gender relations evolving as these young women really lean into their power? What leadership qualities will be necessary to break the mold for future generations?