Blog 4
In my last blog post, I talked about my assumptions of gender roles before I arrived to Morocco compared to the reality of what I'd seen here so far. In this post I am going to talk about the social status of female agricultural workers, and what comes with cultivating the land as a woman.
Women usually get stuck with the hardest, most labor intensive tasks. An example that we didn't get to actually see, but that Dr. Navarro mentioned was about the female argan workers. She explained that women are the ones who produce the oils. Not only is it time consuming, but shelling the nuts is difficult, tedious, and painful. Women have smaller hands than men, so its considered to be more efficient for them to do the work. The method of making argan oil was started by Berber women, and that same method has been around for centuries. Today, the fruit of their own labor has decreased over time. This is because more than 90% of Morocco's argan oil export is in international bulk, which leaves little room for the locals to capitalize on the upstream of the value chain (Louhine Bennana). Most of the women today now work for cooperations, and big businesses dominate their return value. This typical marginalization of female workers is also seen in other smaller sectors of ag. We were told that the women of the orange farm in Meknes (I think?) made 10 dirhams a day. I found this odd, because I was told the domain was not only women operated, but women owned as well, and yet men were the ones that toured us around. I can't help but think of the large amount of work women in ag do, yet are barely recognized for it. It seems that men are usually the ones at the face of conversation about agriculture, whether they are directly a part of it or not. I have noticed a mindset or attitude among men in any field actually, that indicates a superiority of knowledge, compared to a woman (regardless of her expertise or experience compared to his).
I'm sure women feel the effects of being overlooked, and are tired of being treated as if they were invisible in the process of agriculture work. They have what "Leadership on the Line" calls an adaptive problem at hand. An adaptive problem requires a change in attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and a great amount of learning. It's a process that must make people give up what they know ( their habits) and move to something new.
https://www.unido.org/news/value-added-argan-oil-increasing-womens-independence-rural-morocco
Karlyn, I appreciate you writing about this. I also wondered why we were being shown around a “women owned and women operated” domain by two gentlemen? Maybe they were more comfortable sending out the men who do the majority of the physical labor than themselves, since the two ladies both seemed to have offices? I also appreciated that Dr. Navarro shared with the ladies, “you’re really the boss here,” to which they responded well. I also wondered if those two ladies were workers as well and the ladies who own the domain were not present? Regardless, the last two farms we visited, especially the last one, was so good for my heart! It was evident that the lady at Ferm Ecologique et Pedagogique de Settat knew her farm inside/out and was very well connected to every stage – from planting to cooking for guests. What a beautiful and operational retreat she has created. And my hat goes off to the woman at Terre et Humanisme – Maroc for being such a knowledgeable farmer and passionate instructor. I hope these two are more of the norm for agriculture in Morocco versus what we saw more of in the first half of the trip.
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