CAES Morocco: Advanced Leadership Theories, Ethics, and Culture

     Going to school everyday was a fairly unstressful experience for me growing up. I never truly struggled in my studies, there was rarely any pressure to meet certain grades, and I always had a way to get to school. I've had it easy. The one thing always purveying my mind throughout the years was the one expectation placed on me by my parents: I was going to go to college, and that was non-negotiable. This was the attitude of the United States in the 2000's after all: educate the youth and leave no child left behind. Even when this cultural attitude to college suddenly flipped in my high school years in response to the shortage of graduates going to trade schools, the measure of success was still codified in my mind. I was going to graduate high school, go get an associate's degree to save money, then transfer and walk across the stage after getting my bachelor's degree from the University of Washington.      About 4 years later, plans obviously changed....

Ability and Social Status - Linguistic Abilities in Morocco One thing that impressed me the most about the Moroccan people I encountered on this study-abroad trip was their ability to speak multiple languages. As a monolingual person, I am both intrigued and envious of bilingual or multilingual persons. I can only imagine what the amalgamation of words spinning around in their heads must be like! In Morocco, I have learned that there are three main languages spoken including Moroccan Arabic, French, and Berber. Our host for the trip, Dr. Richidi, has been a wonderful translator for us throughout this experience and has interpreted many of these languages for us. It was quite surprising to me to see that in so many Moroccan stores and restaurants each of these languages would often be represented in text on signs or menus. However, while it seems that most Moroccans are multilingual, this is not always the case, and sometimes these language skills can be an indicator of social class. Ac...

During our recent tours of a few packaging factories in Morocco, I was struck by how deeply rooted gender roles are in the workplace. Most of the factories we visited made it a point to emphasize that specific jobs were designated for men and others for women. This division of labor was evident in how they described the roles women played compared to men. According to the article below, only 21% of the female population in Morocco was in the workforce as of 2019. This comes with a significant rural-urban divide, with only around 17% of women joining the labor force in urban areas. At these packaging factories, I noticed that women were often assigned tasks that required a keen eye for detail, such as selecting products based on specific criteria, which demanded precision and patience. These tasks, while hands-on, were not as physically demanding as the roles assigned to the men, who were given more labor-intensive tasks like heavy lifting and driving motorized forklifts or pallet jac...