‘The role of women in Islamist movements in Morocco: negotiating new gender roles between the official political sphere and street protests.’

Over the last decade the Moroccan political system has been profoundly re-structured by the ruling Monarchy. Mohammed VI has embraced the rhetoric of liberal-democracy and promoted a number of liberal reforms to acquire renewed domestic and international legitimacy for his executive role, including reforms in favour of his female sujets. Specifically, he played a vital role in pushing through the controversial reform of the Family code, which granted women significant rights (Cavatorta and Dalmasso, 2009), and it is for this reason that he is now known as “le roi des femmes.” Despite this royal commitment to gender equality and women’s rights which should theoretically favour the diffusion of liberal progressive Western norms, the majority of women ‘interested in politics’ seem to prefer to engage in Islamist political parties and associations in order to participate to the public sphere. In a context in which the different forms of Political Islam have been progressively marginalised, female participation in Islamist political parties or associations has dramatically increased (Pruzan-Jørgensen, 2011). Moving beyond explanations from false consciousness (Meyerson, 1991), this paper seeks to address the paradox whereby Moroccan Islamist movements, known for their social conservatism on gender issues, have a larger female representation in their ranks than their secular liberal counterparts. The analysis of women’s participation in two Islamists movements, The Justice and Development Party (PJD) and the Al Adl Wal Ihsane association, provide a better understanding of the reasons why women tend to participate more in conservative parties than in secular liberal ones. Such reasons are linked not only to culturally specific norms that are present in Moroccan society, but are also based on rationalistic choices about how to best advance the presence of women in the public sphere and wider critiques of Western liberal norms. The latter in particular motivates a type of activism that might have parallels with women activism in European and Anglo-Saxon conservative parties. Moreover this kind of analysis offers the opportunity to shed some light on the differences between the gender roles that female members of al Adl and the PJD respectively inhabit This allows us to address a second paradox whereby al Adl female members display an understanding of gender ‘roles’ that are much less conservative than those of their counterparts in the PJD. This research is based on extensive field-work conducted in Morocco between 2008-2011.