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Two days before local elections across Morocco, candidates and their supporters crowd the streets at sunset,
hoping to catch and convert voters on their way home from work. Like candidates everywhere, they shake hands,
debate issues, argue their case. What's unusual is who's campaigning.
Women, like Nadia Belqari, a gynecologist who says she's running to improve services
she says her neighborhood needs, from roads to recycling.
I'm really counting on practicing everything I learned, everything I was taught, when I specialized in public health.
Last year, parliament passed a law adding thousands of seats to Morocco's town councils and reserving them for women.
Women will now comprise 12 percent of these councils, up from less than 1 percent in the last election.
This is just the latest step in a series of reforms that have placed
Morocco near the top of the Muslim world in terms of women's rights.
A progression that began five years ago with sweeping reforms to laws of divorce and guardianship
contained in the Moroccan family code, known as the "Moudawana."
The "Moudawana" awakened women to their rights.
Women now play an unprecedented role in Moroccan public life. Feminists say they
reached this point by first taking legal control of their private lives.
The old family code, called the "Moudawana," considered a husband the head of the family; his wife owed him -
- obedience. It was in the law.
And before they married, women were subject to the will of their parents.
Women didn't have the right to choose their husband on their own. They couldn't end their marriage on their own.
She was married, in a way, by force.
Among other reforms, the new code declares women equal to men, ensures their right to decide whom to marry
and grants women equal rights to divorce in a court of law.
It's a profound change. We consider that it has become a true revolution in Moroccan society and culture.
And not just for women like Belqari, an upper-middle-class doctor who lives in one of the capital's chic neighborhoods.
S. H. is the daughter of a farmer near the city of Kenitra. We're protecting her identity out of safety concerns.
Six years ago, she married a man she'd never met in a marriage arranged by her parents.
My husband started to beat me after I got pregnant. He hit me, pulled my hair and injured me.
One time, he hit me on the head with a glass and it left a wound that needed three stitches.
Then, he locked me in the house and I couldn't get out until morning. I couldn't leave.
The old family code was still in effect when she married. But now, with the help of an organization in Casablanca,
she is on her way to getting a divorce, and is filing for custody of her 5-year-old son.
Before, I didn't know anything. The law has changed. Before it was very hard for a woman to get a divorce.
Things have changed and now you can get your rights, all your rights.
The changes haven't happened overnight. Activists like Latifa Jbabdi spent decades fighting for rights for women.
It's a question that was debated everywhere, in the souks, in the hammams, on buses.
Everywhere you went people talked about the family code. It was everyone's business.
But more conservative Moroccans believe separate roles for men and women are dictated by Islam.
Sociologist Abdessamad Dialmy explains.
A woman, because she is female, has a social role to play, and the functions related to her social role and biological role
mean that she has different rights.
After early failures, Moroccan feminists say they made a successful case for change by using arguments
for equality and social justice contained in Islamic theology.
We reinterpreted Islam with a regard to women. We became activists. We were well-armed to face their arguments.
They say their homegrown success has made their movement a model for other Muslim countries.
In Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in Yemen, in the UAE, in Jordan, all the woman are trying. There's an emergence,
I would say, there's an emergence of women's movements also in other countries.
We have done a tremendous amount of work to prove that one can promote these rights on the basis of Islam.
But the debate is far from over. Even among young college women at Mohammad V University in the capital,
I spoke to those who are opposed to the reforms. Amri Nouria, a 23-year-old biology major,
said she appreciates some of the changes, but worries others have gone too far.
We have the right to say yes, we want to get married, or no. This is a positive point.
But the negative is that, in view of the legal changes, men are afraid of getting married.
And in view of the Muslim religion and all
there are more unmarried women than married.
It's a common claim here by those who oppose the reforms, though the latest statistics don't seem to bear it out.
According to the justice department, marriage registrations rose 30 percent in the first four years after the code changed.
There has been a clear increase in the number of marriages.
Nouzha Skalli was herself a women's rights activist
before being appointed minister of social development, family and solidarity.
She sides with those who say there's more to be done. The family code is sporadically enforced,
and women remain second to men in other areas of law, such as inheritance.
The advances that have come with the family code are very, very important, and can be felt in daily life.
And the problems, they'll continue, because no problem can be solved with the touch of a magic wand.
Skalli has faith change will continue
at a pace set by the rhythms and traditions at the heart of Moroccan life.