The Venus- Reinforcing women participation in politics and education in Morocco project aims to promote a cultural, legal and social enabling environment to the full political participation of women in the Moroccan society.
Since 2011, Morocco has started a process of political and socio-economic transformation, ratified by the adoption of a new Constitution. This legal text establishes, through its articles, gender equality in the exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights and freedoms. However, Morocco is ranked at number 133 out of 142 countries in the 2014 Gender Gap Report (Index measuring inequality between men and women in the world). This index ranks Morocco below all the Maghreb and most Arab countries, with the exception of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The main causes of violation of women’s basic human rights in the country are: unequal access to primary and secondary education between boys and girls and a huger illiteracy rate among women than men; the unequal right to both economic and political participation of women and the unequal territorial development of the country by regions, as a source of double discrimination for vulnerable groups such as women.
With an expected duration of 12 months, the VENUS project takes as a premise that, to combat the main focus of gender inequality of the country, which is the low political participation of women, we must deal with its leading cause, which is the unequal access to education between boys and girls, as well as the high percentage of female illiteracy. According to this analysis, the expected results of this project are:
1. Strengthen the knowledge about the causes and resources of women political discrimination in Morocco
2. Reinforce the coordination between political parties and civil society to promote public policies to improve the political participation of women, with a special attention to education policies.
3. Implement a political advocacy and awareness strategy at national and regional level to improve the political participation of women in the Moroccan Parliament, in the context of the legislative elections of September 2016.
Partners of the project: Fòrum des Alternatives Marocain (FMAS), SUDS
Funded by: Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation (ACCD)
