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“IT'S TOO MUCH!”: VICTIMS OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE ENCOUNTER THE MOROCCAN STATE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2020

Katja Žvan Elliott
Katja Žvan Elliott*
Affiliation:
Katja Žvan Elliott is an associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco; email: [email protected]
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Abstract

By using the narrative approach and linking it to feminist research ethics and critical race methodology, this article seeks to understand how non-literacy and poverty hinder low-income women's access to justice and how these women experience the Moroccan state. The state here acts as an oppressive and marginalizing entity in women's lives, but also offers the potential for empowerment. This ethnographic study tells the stories of three victims of gender-based violence to demonstrate that the state needs to (1) set up an efficient and responsive infrastructure for those lacking know-how and money; (2) institute proper training of state agents for implementation of laws and to prevent them from acting on personal opinions and attitudes with regard to women's rights; and (3) strengthen procedures so that state agents can respond expeditiously to the needs and grievances of citizens.

Keywords

critical race methodologyfamily lawgender-based violencelow-income womenMorocco
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 49 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

1 Throughout the article I use the term victim of violence, rather than survivor. At the beginning of my fieldwork, I felt uncomfortable with the NGOs use of term. However, as time passed, I realized that women I met were victims. Although literacy classes, TV shows, and NGOs speak about women's rights, urging women to demand them, these women's knowledge of legal reforms and active pursuit of what the state deems as just only reminds them of the nonexistence of alternatives for low-income women.

2 Bordat, Stephanie Willman and Kouzzi, Saida, USAID/Morocco Gender Analysis (Final) 2018 (Washington, DC: Banyan Global for USAID, 2018)Google Scholar, 30, accessed May 2018, https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00SWQ6.pdf.

3 Hajare Elkhaldi, “103–13: Women's Associations Challenge Empty Legislation,” Morocco World News, February 19, 2018, accessed January 2019, https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/02/240953/103-13-women-law-against-women-empty-legislation.

4 Desmond, Matthew, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016), 316, 317Google Scholar. See also Michael Lipsky, Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010). I am using Lipsky's term and definition of street-level bureaucrats working in “police and welfare departments, lower courts, legal services offices and other agencies whose workers interact with and have wide discretion over the dispensation of benefits or the allocation of public sanctions” (xi). Although Lipsky was writing about American street-level bureaucrats, many of their qualities—exercise of discretion and lack of resources, such as time and information—apply to what I observed in the Moroccan context, as will be discussed. I thank Nadia Sonneveld for drawing my attention to this work.

5 Ackerly, Brooke and True, Jacqui, Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Solórzano, Daniel G. and Yosso, Tara J., “Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 8, no. 1 (2002): 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ackerly and True, Doing Feminist Research, 7, 37.

7 Solórzano and Yosso, “Critical Race Methodology,” 38.

8 Ibid., 23.

9 Ackerly and True, Doing Feminist Research, 25.

10 Solórzano, Daniel G., “Critical Race Theory, Race and Gender Microagressions, and the Experience of Chicana and Chicano Scholars,” Qualitative Studies in Education 11, no. 1 (1998): 122–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hsain Ilahiane, “al-Hogra—A Time of Injustice: Portraits of Moroccan Muslim Men in Search of Dignity and Piety in the Informal Sector,” in Arab Masculinities: Anthropological Reconceptions, ed. Marcia Inhorn and Konstantina Isidoros (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

12 Ibid.

13 For NGO workers, see Elliott, Katja Žvan, Modernizing Patriarchy: The Politics of Women's Rights in Morocco (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015)Google Scholar. For researchers, see, for example, Belhorma, Souad, “‘Two Months of Marriage Were Sufficient to Turn My Life Upside Down’: Early Marriage as a Form of Gender-Based Violence,” Gender & Development 24, no. 2 (2016): 219–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chafai, Habiba, “Contextualising Street Sexual Harassment in Morocco: A Discriminatory Sociocultural Representation of Women,” Journal of North African Studies 22, no. 5 (2017): 821–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ennaji, Moha, “Women's NGOs and Social Change in Morocco,” in Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of Change, ed. Sadiqi, Fatima and Ennaji, Moha (London: Routledge, 2011), 79–88Google Scholar. For comparison, see Stephanie Willman Bordat and Saida Kouzzi, “Legal Empowerment of Unwed Mothers: Experiences of Moroccan NGOs,” (working paper, Legal Empowerment Working Papers, International Development Law Organization [IDLO], 2009), 4, accessed May 2018, http://www.wluml.org/sites/wluml.org/files/LEWP_BordatKouzzi.pdf.

14 Nadia Guessous, “Genealogies of Feminism: Leftist Feminist Subjectivity in the Wake of the Islamic Revival in Contemporary Morocco” (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 2011), accessed May 2018, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8JH3T41; Newman, Jessica Marie, “Aspirational Maternalism and the ‘Reconstitution’ of Single Mothers in Morocco,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 14, no. 1 (2018): 45–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Donnell, Megan, “Safe Havens and Social Embeddedness,” in Women and Social Change in North Africa: What Counts as Revolutionary? ed. Gray, Doris H. and Sonneveld, Nadia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 45–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also of interest in this debate, from a comparative perspective, is article, Marnia Lazreg's, “Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 81–107Google Scholar.

15 Stephanie Willman Bordat and Saida Kouzzi, “Capturing Change in Legal Empowerment Programs in Morocco and Tunisia: Shared Challenges and Future Directions,” in Gray and Sonneveld, Women and Social Change, 33–36.

16 Willman Bordat and Kouzzi, “Capturing Change”; Guessous, “Genealogies of Feminism.”

17 Newman, “Aspirational Maternalism”; O'Donnell, “Safe Havens.”

18 Newman, “Aspirational Maternalism,” 56.

19 Ackerly and True, Feminist Research, 22.

20 Ibid., 30.

21 Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique and Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1, (1989): 154.

22 Compare to Menon, Nivedita, “Is Feminism about ‘Women’? A Critical View on Intersectionality from India,” Economic & Political Weekly 50, no. 17 (25 April 2015): 37–44Google Scholar.

23 Sandelowski, Margarete, “Telling Stories: Narrative Approaches in Qualitative Research,” IMAGE: Journal of Nursing Scholarship 23, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 161–62Google ScholarPubMed.

24 For comparison, see Bryman, Alan, Social Research Methods, 4th ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 584Google Scholar.

25 Ibid.

26 From the promotional material of the Association.

27 All personal names are pseudonyms.

28 Sarah gave me permission to use her notes and the capstone that was the result of her internship and fieldwork. I am grateful to her for this and also for conversations about issues raised at the Association.

29 I also offered a small amount of money to compensate them for giving me the time to do the interview and to cover their travel expenses.

30 Unless otherwise stated, all statistics in this section are taken from Morocco's 2014 census, which is available on the governmental Haut Commissariat au Plan's website, www.hcp.ma.

31 I use Aomar Ibourk's definition of informal economy as “employment in which the worker is not a member of any social insurance scheme,” from “Contribution of Labour Market Policies and Institutions to Employment, Equal Opportunities and the Formalisation of the Informal Economy: Morocco” (Employment Working Paper No. 123, Employment Sector, International Labour Organization, 2012), 23, accessed 16 February 2018, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_191244.pdf.

32 The private sector, as the public one, is on paper regulated by the Moroccan labor law. However, anecdotal evidence demonstrates that many private employers (in hospitality, agricultural business, and industry alike) are exploiting poverty, high levels of unemployment, and lack of literacy and circumventing (i.e., violating) regulations by not giving workers contracts, keeping them on one-year contracts before sacking them, forbidding them to unionize, etc. In areas such as El Hajeb, where the adult population is starved for any kind of employment, many employers do not have any problem finding a constant flow of people “willing” to work for low daily wages.

33 Ibourk, “Labour Market Policies,” 13.

34 Bourhaba, Othmane and Hamimida, Mama, “An Estimation of the Informal Economy in Morocco,” International Journal of Economics and Finance 8, no. 9 (2016): 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ahmed Lahlimi Alami, “Introduction de Monsieur Ahmed Lahlimi Alami,” accessed June 2018, https://www.hcp.ma/INTRODUCTION-DE-MONSIEUR-AHMED-LAHLIMI-ALAMI-HAUT-COMMISSAIRE-AU-PLAN-A-LA-PRESENTATION-DES-RESULTATS-DE-L-ENQUETE_a1810.html.

36 Bourhaba and Hamimida, “Estimation.”

37 The family code is silent on women as breadwinners. Article 51 requires spouses to comanage the household; however, article 194 obliges the husband to assume financial maintenance of his wife once marriage is consummated.

38 Fathers and families not registering their newborns in the Family Booklet was one of the most frequent issues encountered at the Center.

39 Willman Bordat and Kouzzi, “Legal Empowerment,” 5.

40 Despite removal of the stipulation requiring a wife's obedience to her husband and his family from the Family Code in 2004, many families continue to demand obedience from brides. See Žvan Elliott, Modernizing Patriarchy, for further discussion of this issue.

41 Her mother also must work to make ends meet.

42 It is important to note that most agricultural workers work ten or more hours a day and are not paid by the hour. Morocco's minimum wage in the agricultural sector is 69 MAD (Moroccan dirham; $7) per day (or 13.46 MAD/hour, that is, $1.41/hour), although the government-mandated minimum wage in the public sector is 3,000 MAD ($313) per day and 2,570.86 MAD ($268) in the private sector. OJRA Blog, “Gestion de la Paie Maroc: Valeur du SMIG au 01 Janvier 2018,” accessed June 2018, http://blog.ojraweb.com/gestion-de-la-paie-maroc-valeur-du-smig-au-01-janvier-2018.

43 The Moroccan Family Code, article 194, states, “The husband shall be obligated to pay maintenance to his wife the moment their marriage is consummated, as well as if she has bidden her husband to consummate their marriage once it has been duly concluded.” Article 195 continues: “Maintenance for the wife shall be awarded by judicial decision starting from the date the husband has ceased to pay the maintenance expenses incumbent upon him, and the wife does not lose her right to maintenance unless she has been ordered to return to the conjugal home and has refused.”

44 There is a notice board at the entrance to the Association with a number of lists posted, containing information about what documents women need to ask for financial maintenance, to register children in the Family Booklet in the absence of a marital contract, to file for a discord divorce, to apply for the Support Fund for Widows and for Divorced Women, etc. The request is usually written by a public scribe, who is found in many low-income neighborhoods; depending on the scribe, women pay between 20 and 30 MAD ($2–$3) for the service.

45 In order to bring assault charges of sexual or physical nature to court, the Penal Code, article 401, requires a medical report demonstrating that the victim of violence was incapacitated for more than twenty days as a result of the assault. The 103.13 law also recognizes sexual, moral, and economic violence, but this law did not exist at the time of my fieldwork. Women still need a medical certificate, however, to prove assault.

46 The burden of proof is on the woman. For other cases where the burden of proof falls on the wife or woman, see Sonneveld, Nadia, “Seeking Portia and the Duke: Male and Female Judges Dispensing Justice in Paternity Cases in Morocco,” in Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Study of Discourse and Practice, ed. Sonneveld, Nadia and Lindbekk, Monika (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2017), 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 A muqaddam is a Ministry of Interior employee overseeing the life of an urban (or provincial) administrative section. The state relies on these employees to provide information such as who is married to whom, how many children were born in a marriage, who is related to whom, etc. This information is requested by public prosecutors and courts to verify people's claims, like those of Douaa. Muqaddams thus act as professional witnesses.

48 This remark demonstrates a clear class difference if not the public prosecutor's complete lack of awareness of the daily economic struggles of women like Douaa. Although the 150 MAD ($15.70) needed to obtain a new ID may not be much for the prosecutor, for Douaa it is more than a week's salary.

49 A qaid is a state official who is responsible for issuing permits and licenses.

50 Official working hours during Ramadan in recent years, when Ramadan falls within summer months, are 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

51 This reflects the culture in which handling of documents and contracts is done by men. It is men who are authorized to deal with such papers, representing not only themselves but also unmarried women (daughters, sisters) and their wives and children.

52 This document established important facts regarding the timing of her husband's (lack of) financial support after Douaa was first sent back to her mother.

53 Article 490 of the Penal Code punishes sexual relations between unmarried people of the opposite sex with imprisonment ranging from one month to one year.

54 Unofficial translation of the Family Code; accessed 5 May 2018, http://mrawomen.ma/wp-content/uploads/doc/Moudawana-English_Translation.pdf.

55 During my fieldwork experience, I observed that, particularly when non-literate women in rural contexts do not have to deal with official paperwork, they may not have a reason to learn and remember details such as addresses and birth dates. Moreover, official addresses may differ from addresses or names of houses that people know them under. It is also expected and sometimes required that men (as fathers or husbands) deal with official documents, which further dis-incentivizes women from memorizing such details. Although on the surface it may seem that a person denies or omits knowledge of such information, the reality is much more complicated and often reflects the person's socioeconomic background and gender.

56 Merry, Sally Engle, Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 188Google Scholar. Merry reports about how the system in Hawaii pigeonholes women victims of domestic violence as “good” or “bad” victims. The latter are not deserving of legal help because they “act in violent and provocative ways or refuse to press charges or testify.” Douaa did not act physically violent, but by trying to deceive the state and acting “troublesome and difficult” (Ibid.) she lost the support of the official.

57 Ilahiane, “al-Hogra”.

58 For an excellent analysis of the legal and societal status of unwed mothers, see Willman Bordat and Kouzzi, “Legal Empowerment.”

59 Ibid., 5. As stated in the Family Code, article 161, “only the father may acknowledge paternity.” Without his acknowledgement mothers are not allowed to use the name of the biological father when registering their children but have to come up with a fictional one. The circular interprets articles 54 (on the rights of children) and 146 (on establishing the filiation of a child of unknown paternity) of the 2004 Family Code as taking precedence over article 16 (on recognition of marriage and pregnancy from the conjugal relationship). It has to be kept in mind that a circular is not as binding as a law. I do not have data that would demonstrate whether or not Civil Status officers have followed the revised practice of this circular. I would like to thank Kouzzi and Willman Bordat for alerting me to this circular.

60 For an excellent analysis of a recent court case regarding a single mother proving paternity, see Zaynab El Bernoussi, “DNA Tests in Morocco: Marking a Historic Turn in Islamic Law,” Sharia Source at Harvard Law School, 20 August 2018, accessed January 2019, https://beta.shariasource.com/documents/3369.

61 See the Family Code, articles 153–154 (conjugal bed), articles 160–162 (father's acknowledgment), and articles 155–158 (sexual relationship by error). For another excellent study of how Moroccan judges generally deal with paternity cases in courts, see Sonneveld, “Seeking Portia.”

62 For more on the importance of marriage in Morocco, see Žvan Elliott, Modernizing Patriarchy.

63 Ilahiane, “al-Hogra”.

64 Solórzano and Yosso, “Critical Race Methodology,” 28.

65 Foley, Barbara, “Intersectionality: A Marxist Critique,” Science & Society 82, no. 2 (2018): 272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.