The Moroccan university and innovations in feminist knowledge : challenges and alternatives

Abstract

In order to understand innovations in feminist knowledge within the contemporary scene of Moroccan higher education, it is essential to contextualize such innovations in their global Arabic-Islamic l geopolitical and ideological milieu. Such a contextualization is critical for several reasons. First, it is necessary to describe the dynamics of ArabIslamic postmodernism that has shaped the global power structure of higher education in the region since the mid-1970's. Second, it is also important to describe how these regional post-modernist developments have led to the formation of a gendered socio-political order, and to an endogenized power-structure of gender in higher education of Morocco in the 1980's. Third, it is necessary, given the aims of this chapter, to highlight the role of the UNESCO Chair for Women, established in 1999, as the most recent innovation in the history of gender integration in Moroccan higher education. Fourth, I evaluate the UNESCO innovation in the light of the history of gender integration in Moroccan higher education, and Morocco's international partnership with UNESCO. Finally, I provide alternatives for considering the gender question in Moroccan higher education, and for Morocco's future cooperation with international organizations. The three main sections of this chapter address each of these points in turn. I will first provide a background to the historical roots of postmodernism in Arab-Islamic society and their accompanying structural, institutional, and procedural mutations in higher education since the 1970' s. Thus, I set the stage for Morocco's regional political and ideological context. I will use the Moroccan case to illustrate the postmodernist socio-political and educational dynamics at the core of the present gendered socio-cultural contract in Morocco. Also, I situate the UNESCO Chair innovation as a by-product of both the post-modernist contexts of Morocco, and of globalization. I will then evaluate the UNESCO Chair innovation in view of the tension between local postmodernist reforms and global forces. I conclude with an evaluation of the UNESCO Chair innovation for the future of the gender question in Moroccan higher education, and for the future of Morocco's international partnerships.