Essay by Nora Koutoupes Guessous

She looked up and her expression changed. Her nose scrunched up, her eyebrows pulled together, her lip began to tremble, and her eyes glistened as the tears swelled. She looked down. "He said I didn't get the job." she said. My grandma answered her silent cry. “Aw, Habibti." My love. The sweet smell of mint tea and the vivid colors of our traditional Moroccan couch suddenly faded. I observed silently as the scene unfolded beside me: the hand holding, the words of sympathy and the weak explanation took place just as they had the previous few times. It was all too familiar. It wasn’t the first time a woman was told she couldn't pursue her career. 

I began to wonder why my cousin was turned down. Was she underqualified? No, I told myself. She was the most hardworking and studious member of our family. Was she too young? I doubted it. It was probably something else. Maybe it was because she was married and the interviewer just assumed she would soon be wanting a baby. Or was it simply that it would have just been weird, for him, to have a woman holding such a position, seeing that it was so uncommon. We would never know. All we could be sure of is that Moroccan society makes it more difficult for women to access professional jobs. 

Morocco is a traditional Muslim society in which distinct gender roles exist and are greatly abided by. As most women are strongly expected to marry young and have children shortly thereafter, they are faced with the challenges of motherhood and the constraints it poses on their professional career. In contrast to Western societies, where the average woman enters motherhood later, after having managed to prove herself within her workplace and therefore gained the credibility to negotiate her position and maternity leave, Moroccan women are confined to the role of homemaker before even thinking about the job search. The social repercussions for straying away from this predetermined life-path are great. Women often have to make a choice prioritizing their families before their careers, facing the risk of being ostracized from their circles. 

But the problem posed by gender expectations in Morocco is greater than just opportunity for women in the workforce. It starts with access to education. Indeed, the poor public school system combined with legislation mandating attendance at school only until fifteen years old, notwithstanding many children in rural areas that do not attend, makes for a population that lacks the knowledge to lead lives and make decisions for themselves outside the traditional sphere they grew up in. Young girls then, are already barred from the workforce due to their lack of education, and for the minority who do manage to pursue higher education, cannot even get hired and put their skills to practice. 

Morocco must begin to promote education for young girls and teach traditional families of the benefits of raising a more independent woman. Once more girls start completing secondary education, more women will be qualified to join the workforce and social norms will slowly start to change as it will be seen as more acceptable to hire a woman since it won't be as rare. Today, though, women are underrepresented in the professional industry and therefore cannot act as mentors to aspiring girls, thus creating a cycle in which Moroccan women don't know about what more they can do with their lives, therefore cannot get jobs, and finally cannot inspire others and break the stigma of working outside the home. 

In retrospect, I now realize that my cousin was lucky to have cried over the rejection. She was lucky to have had the privilege to grow up in a family where men and women alike are pushed to value academia, and to have been supported in her will to look for a job rather than stay home and have children. However, this is not the case for the majority of women in my country. Too many women stay bound to outdated norms and remain financially dependent on the men in their lives, sometimes keeping them in unhealthy marriages and/or families. We must begin to educate girls in order to give them theresources to hold their own jobs and empower them. We must change a system that is built to dissuade women from becoming independent.