(Dis)Empowering Education: The Case of Morocco
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[1] Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane
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- Localización: Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, ISSN 0894-6019, ISSN-e 2328-1022, Vol. 44, Nº. 1-2 (Spring, Summer), 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Muslim women in the Middle East), págs. 1-42
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This article critically approaches the widely accepted development discourse, which promotes the idea that education, individualized autonomy, and empowerment of women go hand in hand. My ethnographic research in various parts of Morocco since 2009, however, shows that although people generally accept education as a positive and welcome quality of women, there can be negative consequences to being too educated. A combination of pursuing (post-)secondary education while honoring a specific local moral order traps many adult girls (unmarried women) in a space between traditions, symbolized in the perception of what it means to be an ideal woman (wife and mother), and the pressures of modernity, which is understood here as a quest for autonomy and individualized identity through employment and ownership of resources. I argue that the transition from disenfranchisement to emancipation is not as linear as the development discourse suggests and that education is not necessarily the panacea for women’s empowerment. Instead, we need to be cognizant of the wider political and economic structures, such as authoritarianism and neoliberalism, which significantly impact the abilities and choices of individuals, and of women more specifically. My data, collected during various parts of my research work in Morocco, is situated within Paulo Freire’s and Hisham Sharabi’s theories about education in authoritarian contexts, and is coupled with Nelly Stromquist’s definition of genuine empowerment, in order to better understand the reasons behind the slow progress towards women’s empowerment in a developing country.
