The Conflation of Single Mothers and Prostitutes in Morocco

In Morocco legal codes and dominant discourses conflate single mothers (om ʾazbaʾ) with prostitutes, creating a web of discrimination and marginalization for never-married women who are pregnant or have given birth.1 In contrast, single fathers enjoy legal and social impunity for any sexual transgressions. As I began to unravel the material, legal, and institutional roadblocks before single mothers, I noticed certain commonalities. According to Mahjouba Edbouche, president of Oum El Banine (OEB) in Agadir, half of the single mothers this association assists have backgrounds as child maids (petites bonnes).2 Others are employed as factory or agricultural workers in locations far from their familial support networks.3 In all these cases, the women were fulfilling the role of provider (qiwama) for their impoverished parents and siblings when they became pregnant. Disproportionate numbers of Moroccan women become unwed mothers due to Morocco’s restriction of sexual and reproductive health education and services to married women (Feather 2020b). Some of these women became “single” mothers due to the Moroccan state’s evolving marriage laws, notably the 2004 Family Law’s recasting of traditional religious marriages (fatiha) as betrothals or engagement periods. Fatima El Allaoui, a social worker at the Association of the South in the Fight against AIDS (ASCS) in Agadir, noted that most single mothers she worked with while interning at the OEB “entered into sexual relationships following promises of marriage.”4 In Morocco husbands are legally obliged to provide for wives and children, a provision that would remove the financial burden for child care on women already performing the role of qiwama for their natal families (2004 Family Law, Articles 194 and 198). Women who become pregnant out of wedlock are often rejected by their families and ostracized by Moroccan society, a position that becomes even more vulnerable due to the precariousness of their work.5 Consequently, many single mothers resort to sex work to provide for themselves and their children, thus strengthening the identification of single motherhood with prostitution in the popular imaginary.6This article explores the gendered outcomes of laws and public policies, often based on shariʾa, that reinforce and perpetuate this equation. The analysis relies on interviews and focus group discussions with more than two hundred activists across Morocco conducted between 2013 and 2018. It also draws on the experiences of current and former professional sex workers (PSWs), all single mothers, who describe the impact of this legal and social exclusion on their life options.While Moroccan courts and society consider extramarital sexual relations a type of prostitution, the Moroccan Penal Code does not explicitly criminalize professional sex work. The code criminalizes illicit sex, classifying it as a crime of corruption (jarimat fasad) punishable by up to one year’s imprisonment (Article 490). The maximum penalty is doubled in case of adultery (jarimat al-khiyana al-zawjiyya, Article 491). However, only women are held accountable for this “crime.” When a single man has sexual relations with a woman who becomes pregnant as a result, he often denies knowing her or claims that she was with other men. If a married man commits adultery and his wife does not file charges, he is not prosecuted (Article 492). Conversely, an ALCS beneficiary asserted that “if a single mother lodges a complaint against the father, he can pay off officials . . . [while the police or prosecutor] will accuse her of prostitution and send her to jail.”7 Reflecting on this situation, El Allaoui conceded that Morocco “always assumes the woman is responsible. It is always her fault.”According to Hafida El Baz, director of the Association Solidarité Féminine (ASF), if an expectant single woman files a complaint, asking the father to recognize his child, a judge can admit her pregnancy into court as proof of her “crime.”8 On this issue, El Baz added that the courts do not prosecute single mothers as they did before, because that required placing their children in orphanages, which are over capacity. Regardless, El Allaoui noted, the police take single mothers to the crown prosecutor, who sentences them to one month’s imprisonment and then grants them clemency but not a pardon, reinforcing the idea that they are indeed guilty. Instead, El Baz asserted that “sexual relations between consenting adults should be decriminalized and hospitals should not be required to contact the police.”9Nevertheless, conservative religious advocates support maintaining the criminalization of extramarital sexual relations. Along this line, Aziza Elbakali Kassimi, president of the Forum Azzahrae for Moroccan Women (FAFM), an association affiliated with the governing moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD), believes that “decriminalizing extramarital sexual relations would contribute to debauchery, illegitimate children, and prostitution.”10 This sentiment pervades conservative Islamic activism.In 2001 King Mohamed VI assembled the Royal Consultative Commission (RCC) to analyze potential family law reforms. The RCC was primarily composed of male religious scholars (ʿulama) but included three women. One of them, the medical biologist Nouzha Guessous, admitted that “single mothers have no rights” in Morocco and explained that, in the debates on single mothers, RCC conservatives denied their existence, claiming that “we do not have any single mothers in Morocco. Those who are single mothers are prostitutes. Do you want to take the rights from good mothers and give them to these prostitutes?”11 During the RCC meetings, which extended for thirty months between 2001 and 2003, the king of Belgium and King Mohamed VI’s then-wife Lalla Salma made a high-profile visit with camera crews to the ASF. TV and radio announced in 2004 that the Belgian king and Lalla Salma had donated to the ASF following that visit, demonstrating royal sympathy for this cause.12 Regardless, Guessous conceded, RCC conservatives did not budge from their position because of religious sensitivities regarding out-of-wedlock children. Hence the 2004 Family Law maintained the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate paternal filiation. RCC progressives could not convince their conservative counterparts to include mandatory paternity testing in the family law, although at the time Morocco admitted DNA testing in criminal cases. Guessous emphasized that progressives were arguing not that the father had to marry the mother but only that he had some duties to his child. Conservatives, however, insisted that paternity testing would promote extramarital sexual relations and give women weapons to oblige men to marry them. Moreover, they asserted that Morocco had its own rules for determining paternity, such as lian and qyafa, which were both ultimately removed from the 2004 Family Law.13According to Guessous, the only concession conservatives made was providing women with legal recourse if they had performed a traditional fatiha marriage and became pregnant before registering it. The compromise responded to the 2004 Family Law’s stipulation that the state would only recognize registered marriages as legally binding (Article 4). Fatiha marriages—which are concluded by reciting the first verse of the Qurʾan—the state recast as a betrothal or engagement period (Articles 5 and 6). Following recommendations of RCC progressives, conservatives accepted that if a woman became pregnant before registering her fatiha marriage, her husband decided not to assume his marital responsibilities, and she could prove that they were married by fatiha, courts could consider the pregnancy the result of sexual relations by error and recognize all the rights of the child, including the father’s name, maintenance, and inheritance (Articles 156 and 157). Hence fatiha marriages became one pathway to legitimate paternal filiation.14Retaining the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate paternal filiation in the 2004 Family Law has important implications for single mothers and their children. Legitimate paternal filiation (nasab) entails a high degree of responsibility and financial sacrifice for fathers, who are legally responsible to provide for their legitimate sons until they come of legal age or, for those pursuing an education, reach the age of twenty-five. Furthermore, fathers pay maintenance to their daughters until they can earn a living on their own or until their maintenance becomes incumbent on their husbands (Article 198). In addition, legitimate children are entitled to their father’s name and to inheritance rights (Articles 145 and 157). In contrast, men enjoy paternal impunity for the children they father out of wedlock, as illegitimate paternal filiation does not produce any of the effects of legitimate filiation (Article 148). Morocco bases its understanding of illegitimacy on jurisprudence or case law from a fourteenth-century ruling by Sheikh Khalil ibn Ishaq al-Jundi, stating that “a child of fornication is a bastard, remains a bastard, he does not take the name of his father, he does not inherit anything at all.”15 With regard to this interpretation, El Baz explained that a judge upheld Sheikh Khalil’s ruling in 1983. In addition, Guessous suggested that much of the resistance to recognizing the paternity of out-of-wedlock children comes from the semantics around the Arabic word shariʾa, which has three meanings: “legitimate,” “legal,” and “dictated by God.” Hence the hadith from the Prophet “That which is illegitimate/illegal cannot be made legitimate/legal” has a decisive effect.Rejecting the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate paternal filiation, El Baz insisted that “as soon as a woman says the father is X, the state should run automatic, mandatory DNA testing and, if the test confirms paternity, the child should be filiated with the father.” Edbouche went even farther to suggest that the man should recognize his relationship with the woman, not just with his child. Regardless, DNA testing in Morocco is not enough to establish paternal filiation, since a legal marriage and not biological paternity determines legitimate filiation. In a 2017 court case a mother sought child support from a man confirmed through DNA testing as the biological father. Although the trial court ruled in favor of the mother, an appeals court overturned this ruling. The appellate court stated that, despite the DNA test, the child was illegitimate and without paternal filiation and so was denied the father’s name, maintenance, and inheritance (El Masaiti 2017).Conservative Islamic understandings underlie Morocco’s legal framework. Noufissa Ibn, general secretary of the Moroccan Association of Women’s Rights (AMDF) in Casablanca, contended that the PJD “doesn’t accept single mothers because Islam says that, in order for there to be sexual relations between a man and a woman, there must be marriage.”16 Furthermore, National Human Rights Council (CNDH) member Mostafa Naoui emphasized that “the 2011 Constitution designates families as the base unit of society (Article 32), which systematically excludes single mothers and their children.”17 While Naoui insisted that the law should be “free from religious influences,” he noted that the family law—as well as the penal code—is based on shariʾa, so extramarital sexual relations are categorized as “an attack on public morals” (2018 Penal Code, Section VI).In Morocco feminist associations have been reticent to help single mothers and PSWs for fear of social persecution and criminal prosecution.18 As El Baz said: “Associations have not been talking about the issue of single mothers for very long. They didn’t want to, not even the feminists, who avoided this topic.” Edbouche agreed, noting that when the OEB’s Swiss sponsors left in 1995, she looked for a domestic sponsor, but the issue of single mothers was still “a taboo project,” and Moroccan society considered the OEB the place of “prostitutes and their children.” Even prominent feminist associations such as the Union de l’Action Féminine (UAF) refused to take over sponsorship of the organization. Consequently, Edbouche explained that “to avoid problems with the law and the government, the OEB [did] not help prostitutes or recidivists.” It was only in 2002, after King Mohamed VI invited Edbouche to his palace and gave her a check for 500,000 MDH ($53,047), that Moroccan society began to accept the OEB. This royal overture lifted feminist associations’ fear of prosecution for working with single mothers, despite the repressive legal framework and continued chastisement by some religious elements. As Fatima Mafdali, president of the Association Wafae, explained, “Now we have the right to talk about the rights of children and single mothers, which was not the case before, but if you talk about single mothers, Moroccan society still calls you a prostitute.”19Regardless, some associations have braved the social stigma to make positive changes in the lives of PSWs. For example, the Association Voice of Moroccan Women (AVFM) collaborated with the ALCS and the Social Development Agency (ADS) for three years in the framework of the Amelie Project. According to AVFM president Aicha Sakmassi, her organization helped PSWs develop projects and submit them to the ADS for short-term, interest-free loans of 20,000–30,000 MDH ($2,095–3,143), which the beneficiaries repaid in four to five months.20 Sakmassi said that they helped eight women leave sex work by enabling them to develop projects through which they could support themselves and their children. Among those, she mentioned the case of a mother of three who survived on 5 MDH (53 cents) a day and had resorted to sex work to repay a micro–credit loan with a very high interest rate. Thanks to the Amelie Project, she started making and selling household cleaning products and, according to Sakmassi, “No one speaks of her as a prostitute, the community values her as a businesswoman with a shop where she works all day. A year after the project, the woman and her children can eat lunch for 50 MDH ($5.29).” Unfortunately, the PJD-headed Ministry of Solidarity, Women, Family, and Social Development—of which the ADS is part—canceled the project because, as Minister Bassima Hakkaoui noted, it worked with prostitutes.21Single mothers still have no rights in Morocco. They do, however, have additional responsibilities according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Morocco signed in 1990 and ratified in 1993. The CRC protects children against discrimination based on the status of their parents and asserts their right to be registered, to have a name and a nationality, and to be known and cared for by their parents (Articles 2[2] and 7). In compliance with its CRC commitments, Morocco amended its Civil Status Act (CSA) in 2002. This reform grants children a right to a name and to be declared by their mother in the civil status registry, with penalties for mothers failing to register their children or for civil status officials refusing to do so.22 The 2004 Family Law reinforced the 2002 CSA, granting children the right to the “respect of their identity and its preservation, particularly their name, nationality, and registration in the civil status registry” (Article 54[2]). As a result, children of single mothers have the right to a legal identity through maternal filiation and the right to registration in the civil status registry, which gives them a legal identity (Articles 146 and 147 of the 2004 Family Law; Article 16 of the 2002 CSA). In addition, the 2007 Nationality Code grants out-of-wedlock children nationality through filiation to the mother (Article 6). Interestingly, it is not the mother who has the right to pass on her nationality but the child who has the right to receive it. Although the effect may be ultimately the same, the wording of the Nationality Code reinforces the idea that single mothers have no rights.In 2011 the Moroccan PJD-led government launched the Family Solidarity Fund to help impoverished divorcees and widows who do not receive child support. Through the fund the state allocates 350 MDH/month ($37) per child for up to three children.23 Since it was specifically conceived to help impoverished children of once-married women, divorcees and widows who are childless receive no money. Likewise, this governmental resource excludes the children of never-married mothers, effectively absolving the state from any financial responsibility for out-of-wedlock children when their derelict fathers refuse to acknowledge paternity.Moreover, out-of-wedlock children do not have the right to their father’s name. Instead, mothers must choose their first name and a fictitious father’s name preceded by ʿAbd (servant of) but without a grandfather’s name, which marks the child as illegitimate (2002 CSA, Articles 16 and 20). Although these provisions are positive for out-of-wedlock children, many single mothers feel that their “right” to register their child actually exonerates single fathers of responsibility and places all the physical and financial burden of parenting on the mothers (Bordat and Kouzzi 2010: 14–16).Although single mothers are not necessarily PSWs, a disproportionate number of PSWs are in fact single mothers who turn to sex work to provide for themselves and their children. Some Moroccan areas, such as the Mellah District of Marrakech and the beaches and hotels of Agadir, are known for sex tourism, while it is in smaller cities like Boumia, located two hundred kilometers from Rabat, where Moroccan men go for inexpensive sex, paying as little as 100 MDH ($10.59).24 Due to legal restrictions, there are no pimps or brothels in the Moroccan sex industry.25 Instead, PSWs offer their services directly to clients. While many Western countries have decriminalized the supply side of prostitution, they have increased penalties against the demand side, including clients, pimps, and brothel owners. In Morocco solicitors of prostitution risk up to one year’s imprisonment and a 200,000 MDH fine ($21,680, Article 502 of the 2018 Penal Code). Despite these penalties, Morocco has become an increasingly for sex and sexual to increased penalties its (Feather Reflecting on this sex that men are the so the is the and who come to Morocco for sex tourism, even sexual relationships with Moroccan however, does not with the sex it as an to and In such as the ALCS and the work with PSWs in with the Ministry of to and other through testing and and As El Allaoui help them, them, them in case of also MDH per to PSWs in for to their for testing and to up and and to other PSWs. the the royal the general public the that provide services to PSWs, since their is to the of and other of never-married mothers with prostitutes in Moroccan law and society but does not their They the parenting burden of out-of-wedlock children, as single fathers enjoy social and legal women often become single mothers while the role of qiwama for their impoverished parents and the responsibility of fathers and they are rejected by their often denied by their and systematically from the state’s social While the CRC has increased the rights of out-of-wedlock children, never-married mothers still have Even feminist associations have been reticent to help them for fear of social and penal Despite some never-married mothers are still often to turn to sex work to provide for themselves and their children. legal and social identification with prostitutes them, in no other

Conflation · Epistemology · Genealogy · Geography · Sociology · History · Migration, Identity, and Health · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Philosophy · Sex work and related issues

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