Moroccan women seek increased representation in legislative elections

2007-04-08

Because many Moroccans continue to put their faith in male political leadership, the country's women’s associations are calling upon female voters to elect more women to parliament.

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 08/04/2007

[Sarah Touahri] Over 60% of Moroccans feel that men make better political leaders than women

As Morocco prepares to create candidate lists for September's legislative elections, women are stepping up efforts to increase their representation both on party lists and in parliament itself. The current 10% quota requires only thirty women to have seats in parliament. As campaigns to have the quota increased have been unsuccessful so far, many female deputies and women's associations are encouraging women to elect other women.

Deputy Nouzha Skelli told Magharebia that in 2002 Morocco elected only five women more than the quota required for a total of 35, the highest number of female deputies in Morocco's history. Rabea Naciri, a community activist and president of the Moroccan Democratic Women’s Association, feels that this figure is too low for a country seeking to project a modern image and which has decided to raise the status of women.

Skelli believes that women should vote for women as often as possible if the number of women in parliament is to increase.

The 2007 Daba Association recently launched a campaign of televised messages directed towards women to persuade them to put their faith in the abilities of female candidates.

Deputy Bouchra El Khyari thinks that women are unlikely to do well without quotas because voters are not yet ready to trust in the abilities of women, particularly at the local government level. According to the most recent figures provided in the 2004 National Survey on Values, over 60% of Moroccans feel that men make better political leaders than women. However, 82.2% of respondents said they would be prepared to vote for a woman.

Moroccan women's associations have been at the forefront of the push for more female representation in the government and they have been instrumental in lobbying Moroccan politicians to take steps to increase the representation of women in politics. In 2002, the country’s political parties adopted a joint agreement which introduced a quota and a national women's list for the 2002 elections.

The quotas provided the boost women needed to increase their representation in parliament. In comparison with the 1997 legislative elections, more than twelve times as many women ran for seats in 2002 and the actual number of women in parliament increased from 4 (0.7%) to 35 (10.8%).

Although women's associations have held talks with a number of progressive parties and demanded that the quota be increased from 10% to 33%, they have been unable to make any headway.

Deputy Driss Lachgar says that increasing the quota for women in the Chamber of Councillors (the upper house) should be a priority and that equality will be achieved only if all local authorities also have quotas.

Quotas have not yet been widely introduced at the local level and Skelli believes that the lack of such a quota is damaging to female representation. As local elections have shown, women continue to be under-represented on local councils without quotas. Although the number of female candidates in local elections increased fourfold between 1997 and 2003, women represented only 0.34% and 0.54% of councillors in those years.