Moroccan Women in Limbo: On Liminal Citizenship and the Quest for Equality

Abstract

This chapter addresses how two contradictory official discourses—one legal/modernist and the other religious/traditional—continue to undermine Moroccan women’s quest for equality and participatory citizenship. It looks at what makes the discourse of the modern democratic state easily yield to social and political conservatism, how the ambiguity of the official discourse nullifies the advances made in the law in the last decade, and how this ambiguity hinders the implementation of societal change. The chapter also ventures an idea on how patriarchy and conservatism feed on global conflicts and tensions to create the conditions of what the chapter refers to as women’s liminal citizenship (the status of women whereby their full citizenship is not attained or sometimes denied despite its being fully recognized in the new constitution adopted in July 2011).