The new government, which is made up of a coalition of three parties, includes 28 ministers, including 7 women, representing a third of the ministers. It is expected that the female representation will be raised with the appointment of the State Secretary at a later date.
Women have won strategic ministerial portfolios in the new government, including the economy and finance portfolio, which is assigned, for the first time in the history of Morocco, to a woman.
The remaining six portfolios include health, housing, tourism, energy, family and management reform.
The previous government, led by the Justice and Development, included four women ministers, after the government reshuffle in 2019, which cut women’s representation in half.
What is remarkable about the formation of the tripartite coalition government, which includes the National Rally of Independents (liberal), Authenticity and Modernity (centre left) and Al-Istiqlal (moderate right), is that most women obtained ministerial portfolios, unlike previous governments where women usually held the positions of ministers, delegates or writers. for the state.
Commenting on the new line-up, Abdelhamid Benkhatab, professor of political science at the University of Agdal in Rabat, believes that assigning strategic ministerial portfolios to women reflects the current political will to enable them to effectively and truly participate in the Moroccan executive, and not just to furnish the scene.
In a statement to “Sky News Arabia”, the university professor confirmed that the new government headed by Aziz Akhannouch witnessed a qualitative leap in the level of confidence in women’s competencies, especially with the assignment of a woman by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which is a precedent in the history of Moroccan governments.
The speaker believes that the women selected for government positions are highly qualified.
The seven women ministers belong to different fields, including medicine, law, energy and information systems. Among the new women ministers, the former Minister of Tourism will take over the Ministry of Economy.
Date of government participation
Moroccan women had to wait 44 years before they signed their first government participation. All governments came in the masculine form, since the first cabinet formation led by Mubarak al-Bakai in 1955 until the government led by Abdel Latif Filali in 1997, which saw, for the first time, the appointment of women at the head of 4 ministries.
The percentage of women’s participation in successive governments has seen ups and downs. However, the first government of Islamists (2011) witnessed a significant regression by appointing one woman to head the Ministry of the Family.
But when the government underwent a cabinet reshuffle following the withdrawal of the Istiqlal Party from the government coalition, and its replacement by the National Rally of Independents, in October 2013, the share of women in the government rose to 5 women ministers.
The women’s movement received with some satisfaction the appointment of 7 women to head important ministries in the new government formation.
In this context, Khadija Rabah, the national coordinator of the Movement for Equitable Democracy, confirmed that the quantitative and qualitative presence, which excluded women from traditional bags, satisfies the demands of the women’s movement.
In an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, the association’s activist asserts that thinking about the situation of women in managing the country’s economic affairs and giving them strategic portfolios confirms that there is a listening to the demands of women’s movements, foremost of which is the empowerment of women.
The road to parity
Khadija Al-Rabbah considers that granting women more than one-third in the next government means that the road has become paved for achieving parity, expressing her hope that this progress will be translated at the level of granting the presidency of the next parliament to a woman.
On the other hand, the National Coordinator of the Movement for the Democracy of Equity confirms that the movement had hoped to witness the emergence of a government concerned with the affairs of parity, a demand that was raised some time ago.
The Moroccan electoral law stipulates allocating a third of parliament members to women within the framework of the affirmative action system, which Morocco has been operating for a decade.
Voices began to rise in order to reconsider this temporary mechanism and to search for other ways to enhance the presence of women in the political arena.
Three women were elected to the mayoralty of the three capitals of Morocco, which are Rabat, the administrative capital, Casablanca, the economic capital, and Marrakesh, the tourist capital.
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