Gender Roles in Agriculture

         Before we started our journey in Morocco, I was curious about the gender roles within Moroccan society and if women were treated equal to their male counterparts. I had heard rumors about the “Muslim way” of treating women as property to be owned; In all reality, I soon learned that is the farthest thing from the truth. I believe that most Americans have a very skewed view of Islamic cultures and their beliefs because of our limited view of radical groups loosely connected to the religion. While the common stereotype I had heard was proven to be vastly blown out of proportion, I did learn that the gender roles they live by are fairly different than our own. 

When visiting ag operations across the country, I noticed Moroccan culture has specific roles for each gender within the labor/service sectors. Focusing on agriculture, I surprisingly found that about 57% of the agriculture labor force is female (1994). In these roles, they emphasize the way that women are “detail oriented” and work best with tasks that highlight that. For example, in the packing houses (pictured below), women are the only ones that inspect the belt lines of citrus while the men are tasked with loading the heavy boxes and preforming the manual labor such as moving crates with the . When asked if men operated the large conveyer belts, most management explained that “men wouldn’t be trusted with such a task.” The common consensus was that they do not feel men are responsible enough to work such powerful tasks. These seemed to be blanket assumptions throughout the industry. The only exception to these to these gender focused roles seemed to be in upper-level management where education and experience is required. 

Role of women in agriculture. Fact sheet: Morocco - Women, agriculture and rural development. (1994). https://www.fao.org/4/V8195E/v8195e01.htm#:~:text=Women%20are%20primarily%20engaged%20in,in%20the%20area%20of%20processing.