Moroccan Women, Activists, and Gender Politics

Sandberg and Aqertit analyze how, over the course of twenty-five years, dedicated, smart, and politically effective Moroccan women, working simultaneously in multiple settings and aware of each other’s work, altered Morocco’s entrenched gender institution of regularized practices and distinctive rights and obligations for men and women. In telling the story of these Moroccan gender activists, Sandberg and Aqertit’s work is of interest to Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area specialists, to feminist and gender researchers, and to institutionalist scholars. Their work operationalizes and offers a template for studying change in national gender institutions that can be adopted by practitioners and scholars in other country settings.

Among the most valuable aspects of Sandberg's and Aqertit's new book is their revealing how very specific Moroccan women became women's rights activists, how they strategized and organized over several decades, and how they pushed the monarchy, male party leaders, judges, and fellow Moroccans to deeply rethink the family, modernization, and democracy., Sandberg and Aqertit combine a sophisticated (and innovative) theoretical framework with nuanced empirical analysis. The Moroccan case is crucial; it is paradoxically unique and similar to other countries. As a result, Moroccan Women, Activists, and Gender Politics will furnish scholars and analysts with valuable insights about an important story of the institutional and societal transformation of gender in Morocco. And their institutional analysis of gender is a framework that can and will be used to investigate other countries that have experienced profound social reform and change.

Eve Sandberg is chair of the Politics Department at Oberlin College.Kenza Aqertit is National Democratic Institute (NDI)-Nepal country director.