Being young and post-feminist in Morocco: the emerging of a new women’s activism

For several months in 2011 a new generation of young women militants invaded the streets and the squares of more than sixty both small and large towns in Morocco, reconfiguring gender roles and turning squares and streets into new gendered spaces. Young women and young men joined and demonstrated together, producing a new kind of activism and a new form of relationship between the genders. Through the internet their message went viral, circulating within the country and abroad, spreading the feminist concept of equality between men and women. However, this young generation of activists did not feel that it fully belonged to feminist practices and ideas and broke away from the historical women’s associations which had dominated the public and political scene in Morocco since the 80s. The youth of the 20 February Movement occupied a political space, which can be defined as ‘post-ideological’, ‘post-secular’ and ‘post-feminist’. On the basis of interviews with activists from different generations, this paper investigates the forms and tools of this new young ‘post-feminist’ activism, placing it within the long history of the women’s movements in Morocco.