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Women’s resistance across space and time in Morocco and the Philippines

Abstract

The contemporary women’s movements in the fight for liberation in Morocco and the Philippines have experienced many failures, contradictions and setbacks. The Moroccan monarchy claims to be progressive and support women’s rights but there has been little progress despite massive constitutional reforms. The Philippines elected the first female president in Asia and has an active and well-organized leftist and women’s rights movement but women in the Philippines still lack access to a number of basic rights. How can we explain these contradictions? How have women’s movements responded? What connections do these countries share that may help us explain these contradictions. The answer lies in a global, historical, decolonial analysis. This was carried out by reading multiple archives against the grain as well as collecting interviews and oral histories. The residual structures of Spanish colonialism in the form of the (re)conquista, construction of Islam as threat, the erasure of indigenous identity, and the gendered subject of the Moro/a were first formed in the conflict between Iberian and North African forces. The residues of these structures of oppression traveled around the world to the Philippines where the Spanish re-encounter the figure of the Moro/a and carry out a new colonial project influenced by the residual structures of oppression first formed in Morocco. However, in response to these residual structures of oppression, we also find residual structures of resistance based in the practices of indigenous women. This dissertation traces a decolonized history of women’s resistance, finding structures, figures, and practices of resistance in the forms of inzi and kalayaan. Both the structures of resistance and oppression persist as residual, effective but not determinant elements as seen in the more contemporary case studies of family law, violence against women, and indigenous women’s issues.

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