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Rabat: Monday marks International Women’s Day, a date when the world celebrates women and their achievements. Moroccan women continue to fascinate the world, strengthening their positions in all fields, including higher education.
Celebrating Moroccan women, Morocco’s representation at UNESCO has hereNorthtified the North African country as “one of the countries closest to gender parity” in engineering fields.
The representation pointed out that women represent 45% of engineering graduates in Moroccan universities.
Citing data from the 2019 Gender Equality Report, the Moroccan representation noted that 46% of Moroccan graduates in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are women.
Every year, Morocco celebrates women of all ages, ethnicities, and educational backgrounds.
Moroccan NGOs and media often publish reports on the most influential women in the country.
Despite having made considerable progress in terms of gender equality, Morocco still faces the urgent task of redoubling its efforts to address some permanent challenges that limit Moroccan women.
Unemployment among women rose 2.7 points to 16.2% for women in 2020, data from the High Commissioner for Planning (HCP) revealed in February.
Unemployment in Morocco went from 9.2% in 2019 to 11.9% in 2020.
The same February HCP report shows that housework significantly affected Moroccan female students’ ability to follow distance classes during the pandemic.
Also read: Human rights, gender equality: the UN celebrates Amina Bouayach from Morocco
According to the report, the majority of Moroccans still consider housework to be a “female duty”. These perceptions continue to negatively affect the study time of girls and young women in Morocco.
In addition to obstacles in the field of education, violence against women remains one of Morocco’s most pressing concerns.
At least 5.3 million women in Morocco experienced violence, according to a September 2020 HCP report.
Economic violence increased from 8% in 2009 to 15% in 2019, while sexual violence increased from 9% to 14% during the same period, according to the report.
In rural Morocco, physical violence against women increased from 9% to 13% between 2009 and 2019. Meanwhile, domestic violence perpetrated by family members or marital partners affected 52% of women and girls in 2019.
Marital violence also increased by 46% between 2009 and 2019, with 5.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 74 experiencing violence by their partners.
NGOs have long urged the Moroccan government to strengthen laws to hold perpetrators of gender-based violence accountable. Advocacy groups in particular have called for laws to intensify punishments against those found guilty of spousal, domestic violence and sexual harassment.
Between 2009 and 2019, third-party sexual violence against women aged 15 to 74 increased from 4.3% to 8.5% in Morocco.
Report after report established that, while Morocco made significant progress in terms of women’s rights, the country still needs to strengthen efforts to close the gender gap.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2020 ranked Morocco 143 out of 153, suggesting that the country still has a long way to go.
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