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By Houda Filali-Ansary
The new Moudawana has brought significant legal changes into Moroccan women's lives, but a long time is needed before it can have an impact on mentalities. Single mothers for example are still considered as prostitutes by many.
Only a small metal plaque marks the difference between this quiet suburban house and the rest of its neighbourhood. Inside, plenty of light and, facing the door, a huge chimney with piles of toys around it. These are the warm and cosy headquarters of INSAF (National Solidarity Institution for Women in Distress), a Casablanca-based NGO aimed at dealing with what is still a very harsh reality in today's Morocco: life as a single mother.
Upstairs, a bedroom has been transformed into a nursery. Inside, a score of tiny, colourful beds with babies in them, most of them asleep. In a corner of the room, teenagers and young women are huddled together on the seddari divan. They are listening to the nurse giving them basic hygiene advice. Two of them are lying exhausted. They gave birth yesterday.
Next door is the doctor's consulting room. The meeting room and the workshop are downstairs. They are used for all sorts of classes: alphabetization, hygiene, knitting, sewing, languages…
Overall, some 1,600 women have benefited from the NGO's help between 2000 and 2004, but they are only a tiny minority of single mothers. “We look for them in the maternity wards and we try to convince them to come to INSAF,” explains Nabila Tber, director of the NGO. She adds: “Many are afraid of going to hospital to give birth in case the medical personnel call the police.” In addition, not everyone can afford the 200DH needed for healthcare fees.
When asked about detailed figures concerning the number of women in this situation, everyone is clueless: the aura of shame surrounding this issue leads to a great deal of secrecy, which even extended to the recent national census. The best estimations are based on the number of children left in orphanages and some hospital records. However, widespread secret adoptions and the fact that many women prefer to give birth at home make these figures anything but realistic.
Often these young women, generally aged between 15 and 26, do not have much choice: many fear to tell their family the truth and would rather run away from home. As for employers, when they do not plainly reject them for being “dishonourable,” they just wish they could go and “solve their problem elsewhere”, explains Meriem Othmani, president of INSAF.
The mothers who take up the invitation are housed and educated for six months. After helping them deal with all the necessary administrative processes, the NGO helps them find a job and rents them low price furnished rooms in working class districts so that they can live with their babies.
But that is not always an easy process: most of these women have difficulty finding work since they “have a very low intellectual level: many were housemaids since their childhood and never studied higher than primary school,” explains volunteer psychologist Najah Tazi, adding that some started working as young as four.
“We progressively realized that many of these single mothers have been working as housemaids since their childhood. This is why we later launched a campaign against child labour,” explains Tber.
“These young maids were separated from their families at a very early age. They have often moved from one house to another. […] All these changes often lead them to have affective maturity problems. Even when they are working for a family which takes care of them, they are not happy with themselves, since they do not have the same status as other family members. They often dream of having their own home where they would feel better,” adds Tazi. And so, they are looking for a husband; “Most of the fathers were the girls' fiancés, but they abandoned them as soon as they knew they were pregnant,” said Tazi.
The trouble for these women is that they often made their engagements in an informal manner with a small gift such as a ring, for example. Despite the fact that the new Moudawana implies the attribution of the child to its father when its parents are known for being fiancés, such links can be difficult to prove, especially when the “prince charming” does not have a stable living place and survives on occasional jobs.
“He first asked me to become his wife, but my aunt said no, because he didn't have a steady job,” explains Kbira, who looks 19. “I broke up with him and he married his cousin. But later, he came back to me. He used to say that if I ever fell pregnant, he would be there for me. But when it happened, he told me he already had a daughter with his wife, and that there was nothing he could do. I was so angry I tore up the piece of paper I had with his phone number on it. When I came here (INSAF) and we wanted to contact him for administrative purposes, I had lost all contact with him. I only know he works somewhere in the Maârif district. […] All I want from him now is to recognize the child as his.”
Kbira looks very calm while telling her story. She has already decided to hide the existence of the child from her family - not from its father: “He (her ex-fiancé) still doesn't know I gave birth to our child. But I'm not afraid that he might take my baby away from me, because the new Moudawana says he can't do so,” she adds energetically.
But not all the girls have as precise a vision of their future: “Generally, during their stay with us, many kind of live outside reality, they hope they will be back with the father of their child. It is only when they leave the place and discover they have really been abandoned that they start thinking about their future and that of their child,” explains Farida, the social assistant.
Many of these young women are very attached to their children, since a majority of the women who go through do not end up abandoning their children. “ They often try to give their children a better life than the one they had,” explains Fatema, who teaches the women skills such as counting or sewing. She adds that they are careful about vaccination, clothes, education, and that those who have daughters are often afraid that the same might happen to them.
When one leaves the association headquarters, one cannot help but feel how exceptional this place is in these women's lives: only a small minority of single mothers manage to blend into society. “The main problem for them is not that they are single, it is rather the bad treatment they suffer from their families and employers,” explains Tazi. Despite having been awaited for so long, the new Moudawana looks as though it is too much in advance in comparison with mentalities.
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