During my senior year in college, I had to take a number of gender courses not by choice but because they were the only ones I could fit into my full-time work schedule while staying on track for graduation. In one class I was one of three guys in a class of 30 and in another much bigger class I would estimate that we were a just a little over 10%. It was a real drag to go to some of the classes because often the subject matter focused on how men continued to oppress women in every facet of society. One class went segment by segment showing statistics on the disparity in education, income, occupations, media, and sports just to name a few. It was tough to show up day in and day out to hear how we men conspire on a regular basis to keep women down. I promised my female friends that I did not meet in dark, shady rooms to discuss strategies on how to ensure women could continue to earn 20-30% less than what a man makes. The classes began to sound like a broken record. Then, towards the end of gender course, there was an interesting development that made everything click for me.
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Back in 2003, Annika Sorenstan, the number one golfer on the LPGA tour, requested to play in a PGA tour event. At first, I didn't think much of it. I thought that it was a bold move to attempt to compete with the best male golfers. I was surprised to read that some male golfers did not want Annika to participate. I thought, "Why would they object, did they feel threatened, and what is it really that they're objecting to?" Vijay Singh, the number two golfer in the PGA at the time, dropped out of the event and said she had "no business" playing with men and others said it was a publicity stunt.
Many female organizations supported Annika's move and began exposing a side of golf that I had not really been aware of. Several organizations built campaigns pushing for changes to the many all-male membership policies of many golf country clubs. The organizations claimed that the policies of these exclusive establishments were discriminatory. The campaigners pointed to the advertising that goes on during golf events to demonstrate how important it is to gain access to the country club. The sponsors of the marquee events are usually some of the biggest and most prestigious corporations in the world: Rolex, Accenture, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE, Audi, Polo, and upscale spirits companies round the list. To the women organizations, the country club is a place where the CEOs of some of these sponsors gather to iron out a merger, secure venture capital investments, or decide to launch their IPO while playing out a round of 18 holes. Women CEOs or women who want to climb the corporate ladder, unable to join the boys, miss out on the wheeling and dealing that may take place.
I slowly began to understand why my gender class professors kept repeating the same tune. It was not to bash men, but to expose how the oppression is systematic. It was to show how both men and women sometimes discriminate or perpetuate oppression upon one another sometimes deliberately and sometimes without even thinking. We all do a number of things as second nature for a number of reasons: sometimes because mom said so, tradition, culture, or perhaps religion. Before Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, or Ghandi, the thought that certain rights or privileges belonged only to a select few was widely accepted and adhered to by a vast majority in both the oppressors and oppressed camp. Both camps content with the status quo or scared of change would have probably justified their stance by saying that things are simply the way they are and that things would likely remain the same so why fight it? Why not just adapt to it? These revolutionaries did not believe that premise and boldly began to expose the injustice and to preach the gospel of self-determination, and over time a number of people began to see their point of view and joined their cause. It took guts to stand out there despite what seemed like an insurmountable resistance, but their audacity brought about change and a new way of thinking about what's right and wrong.
So when Annika made the choice to give the PGA a shot, some people were, not surprisingly, upset with her decision because she was confronting a norm that a number of folks in the golf community had grown accustomed to and just felt her appearance ran contrary to the way things were. She did not get political on her decision. The women organizations did. The story of the the all-male country club as a discriminatory franchise got more attention in the media. Some of the women organizations reiterated that the all-male country club did indeed reinforce the glass ceiling. The golfers that stated that her move was a publicity stunt perhaps did not want their environment exposed and did not want it described like the women organizations were describing it. They probably did not feel the same way that the women organizations did and maybe thought having grown up under the all-male franchise that their tradition was reverent. Annika's move was not revolutionary, but it was noteworthy for how it made some folks in the golf community a little uncomfortable.
The all-male country club and restaurants still exist today in the good ol' US of A. Women organizations are challenging some of them in court (You can catch up on some of the recent developments at the
Discrimination and Country Clubs blog). With more pressure, they may become a fixture of the past, but for now they will continue to welcome some very wealthy and well connected male patrons who simply feel more comfortable in a room full of dudes because it's what they know and how they've grown up and who may be oblivious to how their actions affect others or there may be others who could be conspiring in the darkest and shadiest of rooms on ways to further the oppression.
Anytime I wish to speak about an aspect of a society different than my own, I first take a look at how my society is doing with regards to that particular aspect. For example, in my last blog, I wrote about the segregation of the sexes when it comes to the outdoor cafe in Morocco. It would be easy to point fingers at Morocco's almost exclusive male establishments and regard them as discriminatory and perhaps oppressive, but the U.S., despite its many advances in bringing parity between genders, it still has places like the all-male country clubs and upscale restaurants much like Morocco that are exclusively male. Morocco has no law preventing women from going to cafes, but it has social norms that are widely accepted especially in more rural areas where men are generally expected to interact with other men outside while women have their home as their conference space. I wrote that my host mother and sisters were not disheartened by not being able to visit the cafe because they were not drawn to the large screen televisions showing football games, did not like the cloud of cigarette smoke that hovers idly in some cafes, and did not go because their friends were not going there. Their responses made sense, but then I thought about what the women organizations had said about how the country club is the de facto board room for many CEO's.
Much like the all-male country club, work and politics is often a topic of conversation at the cafe. Personally in many occasions, I've expressed a difficulty in finding an association or an individual that could help me with a specific task or project, and in some instances my cafe friends have been able to point me to people they know that could help. I am pretty confident that in many cases this networking goes on at the cafe among government officials and business owners—a dear friend of mine once said that because the marquee cafes are better lit, have heating and AC, and have more comfortable chairs than the municipal offices, the cafe becomes the default city hall. Also, because at times men travel distances to find employment, knowledge of the country and the economic environment of other areas is exchanged. Thus, because women are absent, this wealth of information and any negotiations rest with the male cafe goers. In this regard, the country club and the Moroccan cafe seem to be on par.
So how do you remedy the situation? How can Moroccan women entrepreneurs succeed without this wealth of information or exchange? Back in November of last year, a Seattle-based NGO called
The Center for Women and Democracy brought a delegation of women CEOs, lawyers, community leaders, and students to hold a forum to identify some of the obstacles facing Moroccan female leaders and to provide a place where ideas could be exchanged. At the event I met a number of remarkable women who were trying to fill the information exchange void that exists among Moroccan women.
One association was led by Ilham Zhiri, Vice-President of AFEM, Association des Femmes Chefs d’Entreprise du Maroc. Some of objectives of Ms. Zhiri's organization are to orient, inform, and assist women entrepreneurs in their search for a competitive advantage for their businesses, create a network of women business owners, encourage entrepreneurship among women, promote the image of women business owners, and organize forums and seminars for women to learn and to network with one another. Another was a consortium of women who had pooled funds to invest in women-owned enterprises. And in the political front, a few women who were part of the
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs were providing campaign training for women interested in running for elected office. These are just a few examples of many exemplary women leaders I met who I believe will change the business, political, and perhaps the social environment of Morocco.
But will all Moroccan women benefit from their efforts? After the event, I spoke to my counterpart, Amina Yabis, who I accompanied to the event and asked her what she thought about the different women she networked with. She was skeptical that many of the initiatives by these dynamic organizations would ever reach the rural parts of Morocco. She explained that some of the city women would never inconvenience themselves by going out to a remote part of the country where amenities are sometimes non-existent to hold their seminars. Rural women, on the other hand, generally do not have funds to travel to the capital or another major city or they may be discouraged from traveling by their family or community especially if they are to travel on their own for safety reasons as most travelers are men and verbal and sometimes physical harassment is common.
My counterpart also noted that many city women cannot relate to the lives of rural women. Some of the city women having traveled or studied abroad may act a little more pompous than usual and that attitude is sometimes reflected in their language when they make fun of the tough living conditions some of the women face on a daily basis. Given this huge divide in lifestyles, it seems that the efforts of the Moroccan women in the urban hubs may take a while to reach a large swath of women who could seriously use the help.
My counterpart's remedy has been her association's community outreach work. Through the
Golden Buttons Association she organized a number of women to demand literacy courses from the Ministry of Education for adult women. With the help of
Office of Development and Cooperation (ODCO) and
Sefrou Delegation of Artisana, she was also able to get training on how to establish a cooperative and to get weaving training for herself and a few other ladies. This collective action was later converted to a cooperative named the
Cherry Buttons Cooperative that now represents 40 women in the almost exclusively women-produced djellaba button handicraft. Peace Corps helped her in the development from an association to a cooperative and they continue to collaborate with her on the formation of empowerment camps for young girls. I will expand a bit more on the philosophy of the camp in a later blog, but basically the camp's target group is rural young women who for some reason or another dropped out of school, may be illiterate, and may not have access to resources or other women to connect to that could lend support to their micro-enterprise idea.
Last summer a university student that came to Morocco to study Arabic came to my hometown to find out about some of the work that I had been doing. I explained that I was helping a women's coop that wishes to become a major vendor of the djellaba button handicraft, a craft that is almost entirely produced by women but sold by men. I was so entranced by my zeal to help these women gain parity that I failed to recognize the societal implications of my activities. She asked, "By helping these women over the men bazzarist, aren't you going to be putting some men out of work?" That very well could be and by putting some of these middlemen out of work, I may be messing with the established Moroccan fabric making it difficult for the men to bring home the Halal bacon and adding more to the homemaker than she can handle.
When I feel I may be messing with the fabric of Moroccan society, I am encouraged, however, by a book I read and
also blogged about titled Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen. In this book, the author states and I'm paraphrasing to the max here that an increase in women's literacy has the effect of reducing infant mortality, reducing the number of births because women who continue going to school put off marriage and child rearing for a later age, changes the dynamics of the home as women who earn an income feel more empowered by their economic independence, and creates a more representative democracy as more women run for political office or participate in the process. In a country where
women's illiteracy stands at over 50% nationwide and even higher in rural areas, I feel it is absolutely necessary to try to work with women.
One time I saw my host father get chewed out by my host mother for bringing something for dinner (don’t know exactly what because my Arabic was still pretty rough at the time) that did not please her. I was surprised by the outbreak, but rather happy to see that she didn’t hold back. My host father was speechless. Noticing that I had witnessed the entire ordeal, he turned to me and said in Spanish, “
Yo soy el Ministro del Exterior y ella la Ministra del Interior”(I am the Minister of Exterior and she is the Minister of Interior). That statement I think is very true of the understanding that each sex has of its role in some parts of
Morocco today. He doesn't infringe on her territory and she on his. When either does, then naturally a scolding is due.
Morocco has made great strides over the last ten years to change the perception of the gender roles that my host dad has grown up under and probably wholeheartedly upholds. The advent of the
Moudawana, Morocco's new Family Code, gave women more rights in the case of divorce, custody of children, and inheritance issues. In addition, the Kingdom put in a place a quota reserving 12% of all municipality seats for women. These two measures are a step forward towards opening a path to women. These early pioneers who have filled these inaugural posts will hopefully pass on their knowledge and experience to younger women and hence recreate their own support network thereby supplanting the need to join the boys at the cafe. While I think it is necessary for women to gather to create a collective front, I do hope that at some point in time there will be a fusion of the interior and exterior ministries like there has been in the states.
The U.S. still has a ways to go in terms of bridging the gap between the sexes, but with more women attaining higher levels of education, joining the workforce or managing their own enterprise, and running for political office, the line between what is solely male and female has become blurry. I am not advocating for a U.S. style work and household environment. There are a lot of things about the U.S. lifestyle that I find dysfunctional. I am only suggesting that there may be women who may not wish to fill a certain gender role and may wish to fulfill the dream of becoming the next industry leader and could probably be a better minister of exterior than her husband and that aspiration should be supported.
The country club is a great example that shows that many U.S. Americans are still working out territorial issues between the sexes. Discrimination still persists. Oppression is still in place and we sometimes do it without even thinking. I'm not sure if Moroccan colleges and universities include gender courses in their curriculum. These courses are helpful because at some point a Moroccan Annika may presents herself and with the help of women organizations a student may then finally see how a seemingly harmless and culturally accepted all-male environment that only a few seem to question could also be a place that is reinforcing the glass-ceiling in Moroccan society.
In my one year and a half of Peace Corps service, I have witnessed an amazing transformation in my community. I speak of the work of my Moroccan counterpart and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Mrs. Amina Yabis who just ten years ago thought to herself that it wasn't right that the women of Sefrou, makers of some of the finest djellaba buttons in all of Morocco, gained so little from the sale of their handicraft. In an effort to counter the middlemen, Amina and a group of women decided to take the leap of faith and form a cooperative with the goal of taking ownership of their handicraft. With the help of Peace Corps volunteers, Amina and nine other women wrote the bylaws and secured a micro-credit loan, and just like that, the Cherry Buttons Cooperative was born. As the coop gained notoriety for its distinctive selection of buttons, the coop began to grow. Another volunteer arrived and helped the coop diversify its product line by providing weaving and other professional development training. Then I arrived and began working with Amina and a former volunteer to help the coop secure a spot in the 2009 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She went, sold nearly everything in dollars, and came back with a good chunk of capital that was then applied towards the construction of a building for the cooperative. In March of 2010, the cooperative moved all their looms to their new center and celebrated the completion of their new home. 
