Morocco's First Female Prime Minister Arrives With a Two-Decade-Low Turnout
King Mohammed VI's naming of Fatima Zahra El Mansouri as Morocco's first female prime minister was followed by the reappearance of an Islamic saying that a people who entrust their affairs to a woman will never succeed.
Dr Irene Fernandez-Molina, an expert on the Global South at the University of Exeter, places the appointment in the context of the monarchy's broader political interests, and tells the BBC that two headlines dominated coverage of September's parliamentary election: a two-decade low turnout, and the king's appointment of a woman as prime minister for the first time in the country's history.
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Mustafa Ramid, a former justice minister, made his case in a Facebook post questioning whether a woman should hold the country's highest political office. A proverb doing the work of a job evaluation is its own kind of argument.
A historic royal appointment that exposed persistent reservations about women in power sits inside a constitutional monarchy where executive power stays with the 63-year-old monarch — and official turnout was just 38% of registered voters. The glass ceiling and the ceiling on the office are two different ceilings.