Modernizing Patriarchy: The Politics of Women's Rights in by Katja Zvan Elliott

Morocco is hailed through teachers, overseas NGO employees, and the media as a trailblazer in women’s rights and criminal reforms. the rustic is taken into account a version for different international locations within the center East and North African zone, yet has Morocco made as a lot growth as specialists and executive officers declare? In Modernizing Patriarchy, Katja Žvan Elliott examines why women’s rights advances are lauded in Morocco in idea yet are frequently now not well-known in truth, regardless of the efforts of either Islamist and secular feminists.

In Morocco, girl literacy premiums stay one of the lowest within the area; many girls are sufferers of gender-based violence regardless of criminal reforms; and women as younger as twelve are nonetheless engaged to grownup males, regardless of a variety of reforms. in accordance with wide ethnographic examine and fieldwork in Oued al-Ouliya, Modernizing Patriarchy deals a window into the lifetime of Moroccan Muslim ladies who, even though frequently younger and trained, locate it tough to steer a dignified lifestyles in a rustic the place they're anticipated to have just one future: that of spouse and mom. Žvan Elliott exposes their struggles with modernity and the felony reforms which are supposedly ameliorating their lives. In a balanced technique, she additionally provides male voices and their purposes for criticizing the existing women’s rights discourse. Compelling and insightful, Modernizing Patriarchy exposes the not often stated truth of Morocco’s technique towards reform.