Morocco's King Gave a Woman the Title and Kept the Power

Let us begin with a simple question. What does it mean when a country finally puts a woman at the top of its government, and the woman still cannot change the laws that govern her daughters' lives?

In Morocco, it means a historic photograph and a stalled promise. On the day Fatima Zahra El Mansouri was named prime minister, a headline-grade milestone for half the population, the country's old arguments came roaring back. A former justice minister posted a long Facebook message repeating the saying that a people who entrust their affairs to a woman will never succeed. We have heard that line before across our continent, and we know exactly where it leads: to a daughter denied the right to lead, and a sister denied the right to inherit.

Let us be precise about who holds power in Morocco. The country is a constitutional monarchy, but executive authority remains with King Mohammed VI, who is also Commander of the Faithful. The king selected El Mansouri. He retains extensive control over defence and foreign affairs. The prime minister governs inside a system where authority is shared, and where the most consequential decisions are never made in a public vote. That is not a democracy that answers to its citizens. That is a monarchy that answers to itself and borrows the language of progress when it suits.

The numbers should make every reformer uneasy. Her Authenticity and Modernity Party, PAM, won the most seats in September's parliamentary election, and a coalition of four parties now holds 207 of the 395 seats. Yet official figures put turnout at 38 percent of registered voters, and the share of all eligible citizens who actually voted was lower still. Two decades of falling participation, and the government's most celebrated moment was a royal appointment rather than a mandate from the ballot box. When most of the electorate stays home, the state does not become more legitimate. It becomes more fragile, and it looks for symbols to fill the gap.

Dr Irene Fernandez-Molina of the University of Exeter has a name for what we are watching: "authoritarian state feminism," a top-down and selective use of women's rights to bolster the regime. We should not soften that phrase. A woman's promotion can be real and still serve a political purpose. The test is what follows. Does the new prime minister use her office to reform laws that hold women back, or does the picture of progress hang on the wall while the code stays unchanged?

And the code is where women in Morocco are paying the price. Under existing inheritance rules, a daughter typically receives half the share of a son in comparable circumstances. The practice of taasib can force female orphans without brothers to share their inheritance with male relatives, sometimes distant ones, who may never have supported them. The Higher Council of Ulemas, a body of religious scholars made up largely of men, has refused to consider equal inheritance and has rejected proposals to abolish taasib. Morocco's own National Human Rights Council stated in a 2022 report that unequal inheritance rules contribute to poverty among women. Think about that. A state body in Rabat has put in writing that the law impoverishes its own women, and the law still stands.

The Moudawana, the family code that governs marriage, divorce and child custody, was supposed to be the answer. A package of reforms was announced in 2024. Two years later, those reforms have not become law. Polygamy remains legal under certain conditions. Proposals that would let women write into their marriage contracts that their husbands cannot take another wife are welcome, but exceptions tied to a first wife's infertility or illness remain, and women's rights groups have rightly criticised them on grounds of privacy and medical confidentiality. Every delay in this process is a decision made by someone. We should ask who is making it, and why.

Education tells the same story from another angle. The High Commission for Planning, Morocco's official statistics agency, found in 2025 that only 55 percent of girls aged 15 to 17 in rural areas were attending school. In urban areas, the figure was 100 percent. Let that gap sink in. The distance between a girl in Casablanca and a girl in the Atlas foothills is not a difference of talent or ambition. It is a difference of roads, transport, sanitary products and whether a poor family can afford to keep a daughter in a classroom. Young women such as Chifae Laazouzi have said plainly that girls drop out because menstrual health remains a taboo and they cannot afford basic products. A nation that can build world-class stadiums can find the money for free sanitary products in rural schools. The question is whether it chooses to.

El Mansouri has credentials. She has been mayor of Marrakech, held government posts and sat in parliament over more than two decades. Her late father was a pasha and a diplomat, and her political networks are real. Rights advocate Yasmina Benslimane made a fair point: the appointment breaks a ceiling that had never been broken, but it matters how she got there. Access to power through family connections is not the same as access earned by a movement that fought for every inch. Millions of Moroccan women will never have that door opened for them, which is exactly why the law must open it for everyone.

So here is what we demand, and what Morocco's leaders should be ashamed not to deliver.

Morocco must pass the Moudawana reforms into law this session, not next decade. Equal inheritance must be codified, and taasib must be abolished in statute, not left to the discretion of a council that answers to the palace. The 2011 constitution already enshrines the principle of gender equality. Principles on paper are worthless if the family code still treats a daughter as half a person. Parliament, which has a clear majority, should make the reforms its first act and publish the timetable openly.

Morocco also has real models to learn from. Botswana has built one of Africa's most stable multiparty democracies by keeping its institutions accountable and its elections credible. Mauritius shows that an open economy, an independent judiciary and strong civic freedoms can coexist and deliver. Senegal, after years of tension, demonstrated that courts and citizens can hold the line on constitutional order when leaders test it. None of these countries is perfect, but each proves that the rule of law and property rights are not Western luxuries. They are the foundations on which women, workers and entrepreneurs build their futures. A woman who owns land, inherits fairly and can start a business without her brother's signature is a woman the economy cannot afford to lose.

Civil society and the private sector have roles too. Women's rights groups should keep publishing the scorecard on every promised reform, and the media, including outlets like Chouf TV, should keep asking the grey-haired man on the street and the minister in the office alike what the law says and when it will change. Businesses can lead on rural girls' education by funding transport and sanitary supplies in the regions the state has neglected.

And citizens must demand more than a photograph. Ask your MP when the Moudawana becomes law. Ask the prime minister, in public, whether she will push for equal inheritance. Ask why turnout fell to 38 percent and what the government will do to make voting mean something again. Symbols are cheap. A woman in the top job who cannot change the law is a symbol that protects the men who keep the law unchanged.

We are not asking Morocco to copy anyone. We are asking it to keep its word. The king has the power to demand action. The parliament has the numbers. The women of Morocco have waited long enough. Let the next chapter of this story be measured not by who was photographed on the first day, but by which daughter inherits her father's home, which girl finishes school in the mountains, and which law finally treats them as equal citizens.

Based on reporting by BBC