HANAN HART

Morocco – Today, the Moroccan political landscape includes more than thirty political parties, ranging from those whose roots go back to the national movement phase to others established during subsequent decades. Despite their differing intellectual and political backgrounds—including national, leftist, liberal, and Islamist—the common denominator among them has been male dominance over party decision-making positions. The parties that have shaped Moroccan political life since independence have rarely seen a woman reach their leadership, except in limited cases that remained the exception rather than the rule.

In 2007, Zehor Chekkafi founded the Democratic Society Party, making it the first political party in Morocco to be headed by a woman. In 2012, Nabila Mounib was elected General Secretary of the Unified Socialist Party, becoming the first woman to reach, through election, the general secretariat of a party with a national reach. Ilham Belfahili also assumed the general secretariat of the Moroccan Union for Democracy Party, reflecting a female presence that has remained limited compared to the continuous dominance of men over the highest party positions.

This reality is not related to the number of women involved in parties, as women have participated for decades in party organizations through local branches, parallel organizations, and running for elections. Instead, it is linked to the nature of the organizational structure itself, where senior leadership has remained a difficult field to penetrate. While the composition of elected institutions has gradually changed due to legal reforms, parties have remained more conservative in redistributing power within their structures. This has made the path of women's ascent to the top of the party pyramid much slower than their path to parliament or government.

A reading of the history of Moroccan parties reveals that most of them were associated with figures who played a pivotal role in building them and shaping their political identity. From Allal El Fassi, Abderrahim Bouabid, and Mahjoubi Aherdane, to Abdelkrim Al Khatib and Abdelilah Benkirane, the image of the "leader" in the party consciousness has been associated with men. This has contributed to consolidating a leadership model that reproduced itself through successive party congresses.

Furthermore, reaching the general secretariat is not linked to election alone; it passes through long paths of organizational hierarchy, alliance-building, accumulation of influence, and managing internal balances—areas that men have historically dominated. This has made the transition of women to the top of the party pyramid more difficult than their transition to elected institutions.

Constitutional Reforms... and Incomplete Change Within Parties

Although the 2011 constitution made parity a goal that the government works to achieve, this principle was not reflected at the same pace within party organizations. While constitutional and legislative reforms contributed to strengthening women's representation within parliament and local authorities, the majority of parties did not adopt similar internal reforms to ensure balance in their highest leadership structures.

It has become familiar for women to hold ministerial portfolios, head local authorities, or occupy advanced positions within elected institutions, while the presidency of parties and general secretariats have remained among the political positions least accessible to women.

This paradox reveals that a large part of the progress achieved by women in political participation was linked to constitutional and legislative reforms, rather than a shift in the organizational culture of parties, which mostly continued to adopt traditional patterns in leadership rotation and decision-making.

Thus, the gap remained between the expanding presence of women in elected institutions and their limited reach to the top of the party pyramid, reflecting the slow pace of change within parties compared to the pace of reforms witnessed by the legal framework.

A Crisis of Women Leaders... or a Crisis of Parties?

The Moroccan case does not seem to be an exception within the region, as the experiences of several regional countries reveal that the progress made by women within elected institutions has not been accompanied by a similar transformation in the leadership of political parties.

In Tunisia, which is considered one of the most advanced Arab countries in the field of women's rights, political life witnessed prominent female experiences in leadership, including the election of Maya Jribi in 2006 as General Secretary of the Progressive Democratic Party, becoming the first woman to lead a Tunisian political party with a national presence. Abir Moussi also later emerged at the head of the Free Destourian Party; however, the majority of major Tunisian parties, before and after the 2011 revolution, remained under male leadership.

The picture is not much different in Lebanon, where women have played prominent political, parliamentary, and governmental roles, but the presidency of traditional parties has remained, for the most part, linked to male leaders or political families that inherited leadership across successive generations.

These experiences, despite their different political contexts, reflect a common feature manifested in the expanding presence of women within government institutions, against the continued weak representation in party leadership. This paradox indicates that the challenge is no longer limited to women entering the political arena, but extends to their access to decision-making centers within the parties themselves, which still maintain leadership structures that are predominantly male.

Therefore, the question today does not seem to be about women's ability to exercise leadership, as much as it is about the ability of the parties themselves to renew their organizational structure and expand the mechanisms of responsibility rotation, allowing for broader competition for leadership, away from the traditional patterns that have governed party life for decades.