CAES Morocco: Advanced Leadership Theories, Ethics, and Culture

 I read an article about Fatima, a young woman who started a cooperative to support the growing of herbs in her community. Fatima received funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This funding and training allowed Fatima to expand her business, but the purpose of the cooperation was not just for profit. It is a way to get women in her community into the workforce. The IFAD article mentions that women needed permission from their husbands to work. Many of the husbands opposed the women working until they realized the significant amount that the women earned. I find it very interesting that women need permission to work. It is common to have a two-income household where both women and men work here in the US. The fact that the women working with Fatima needed permission did not surprise me, but it made me realize that gender roles affect household finances and well-being. Women not being allowed to work limits the amount of income generated for a house...

     As we have observed and been exposed to many differences between gender, we have not been intentionally exposed to topics relating sexual orientation.  As we traveled to the organic farm in the Sahara, Lauren used this time to inquire about the topic with Hamid.  Lauren, Sophia and I had the chance to learn about tradition, progression and acceptance of homosexuality in the Islamic culture according to Hamid. While homosexuality is still illegal in Morocco and can be punished through imprisonment and fines, the tourism minister is calling for decriminalization of homosexuality (Lahrichi, 2016). Sexuality, in the conservative country of Morocco, is not a public conversation and is considered a private matter amongst the two (or more) individuals who choose to engage with one another. Morocco is the more progressive of the Arab countries in terms of accepting or working towards accepting with the first step is acknowledgement of existence. This is where we ar...

 For this blog, I wanted to focus on the gender role of men in jobs that women do not participate in. I wanted to focus specifically on the leather tanneries that we visited in Fes. Leather making involves preparing the animal skins by dehairing them (this is where the stench comes from), refining the animal skins in a mixture that removes the flesh and remaining hair, removing the fat, softening the leather by soaking it in tannic acid, skiving (buffing and polishing) the leather, and finally dying it. According to Angela and Graham (2021), writers for Mowgli adventures, there is a hierarchy among those who work in the tannery as a guild, and women are not allowed to work there (it's not just a choice they get to choose against). Bejarano (2021) tells us in his article that leathermaking has been around since the 9th century and most tanners start because their fathers were also in the business (possibly the hierarchy). It's interesting to me that this tradition of men only ha...

       Gender roles in Morocco are very different than in America. One topic that stuck out to me greatly was the concept of the house being a woman’s sacred place. Throughout the trip, I have noticed that men tend to be the majority of people hanging out in parks, coffee shops, or benches in the afternoon. I figured this was just because they were taking a break after work, or catching up with friends.       Hamid explained why this was happening. The house in Islam is the sacred place for the woman (“harem”). He explained that whenever the woman wants the house to herself to have her friends or family over, she can ask her husband to leave. The man’s place is outside, while the inside of the house is the woman’s.        I found this so interesting because the man is the head of the household, so I was surprised to hear that the woman is able to “kick him out” whenever she wants. In America, the house tends to be a shared plac...

  In Morocco traditionally we only see men at the face of a business. When at a restaurant, coffee shops, or most businesses you are typically served by men. They are the face of businesses while traditionally women are the back scenes. They are the ones who clean, meal prep, and assemble most of the goods. In Morocco they do not view it as sexism rather than gender roles. Men will do more physical labor that a woman may not want to do and the woman would do handy work a man may not wish to do. They are viewed to each have their own “territory” and the other is not to infringe upon it. During the day this is why we see men out in the streets having tea or coffee and not women. They are not allowed to be home during the day because that is the woman’s space. The woman’s space is called harim. A harim is where women gather and share gossip, news or whatever interests them typically over tea. This is a sacred meeting space. From my American outside perspective however I would by no me...