Empowering women weavers? the internet in rural morocco

Abstract

This is a case study of whether and how the information society empowers women at two sites in rural Morocco, where mostly illiterate women sell the rugs they weave on the Internet. It examines both beneats and constraints, which include the women’s illiteracy and lack of net skills in addition to the lack of village Internet connections. Among the beneats is a worldwide market with increased sales through which women rather than middlemen obtain more of the proats generated by their work; these proats are used mainly to support the family or for children’s education and sometimes for community projects. Thus women gain some degree of empowerment. This article discusses what that empowerment means and its implications. Although widely used, the concept of empowerment is often not clearly deaned. I examine ways in which this Moroccan ICT project empowers local people (i.e., whether it gives them more choices in and control over their lives, including access to resources, more agency, and achievements) (Kabeer, 1999; The World Bank Group, 2005), in both the individual beneat and collective, or condition-altering, senses (Young, 1997). There are widespread stereotypes about the relation of Islam to gender and power. In these, men hold all authority and women must submit to their will; men are fully empowered to control their own lives and the lives of others, and women have no power at all. This, in fact, is not true for Morocco (Davis, 1983), nor is it true for other Muslim countries. Within both Morocco and the Arab world, women’s individual and collective levels of empowerment vary. For example, women cannot drive nor go out without being fully covered in Saudi Arabia, whereas Moroccan women can both drive and dress as they wish. In Morocco one often sees a girl in hijab or modest dress, with her hair covered, walking hand in hand with her friend who has oowing tresses and is wearing snug blue jeans. There is also regional variation: a middle class young urban woman would usually have more say in choosing her future spouse than would her rural Moroccan cousin. One ands such degrees of variation within all Muslim countries. One source of stereotypes of Muslim women’s powerlessness is the lack of accurate information on their lives, at least until relatively recently. Past observations were often by outsiders, usually males, for whom Muslim women are expected to literally or aguratively disappear (i.e., serving guests silently and with downcast eyes). This was interpreted as demonstrating their utter submission to males. But we now have a plethora of information from women, from their own cultures, or from others who live with them. These accounts provide a much richer and more realistic picture of Muslim women’s roles—roles in which they have various kinds of power in various domains.