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Silencing Women’s Demands: Strategic Framing Within a Moroccan Social Movement
Abstract
Social movements strategically frame their messages and demands to effectively resonate with the public. What implications does strategic framing have on women? This article engages social movement framing literature in order to examine gender dynamics within the February 20 Movement (F20), the main organizer of protests during the Arab Spring in Morocco. Interviewees make clear that feminist activists were increasingly active in the F20 movement, but their demands for gender equality were not. For frames to resonate with a public they need to be culturally compatible to the target audience. The article will use narratives from F20 activists and focus on how women’s demands for gender equality were self-censored by the F20 in order to resonate with a conservative public. The paper will demonstrate that women’s demands for gender equality, along with other ‘culturally sensitive topics’, were strategically relegated to the broad demand of freedom. In other words, the F20’s broadly-construed justice frame of “Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice” encompassed culturally sensitive issues like gender equality, without specifically mentioning them.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
Maghreb Studies