About

In the city of Fes, Professor Fatima Sadiqi directs the first government approved gender studies program in the Middle East and North Africa. Her program is the first of its kind and offers a unique opportunity to study gender and work with women in Morocco.

Fatima Sadiqi is an internationally renowned linguist and a pioneer in establishing Gender Studies at the University of Fes, the first of its kind in Morocco. As an activist, she also pioneered the establishment of a strong link between her university and civil society. She is the President of the Center for Studies and Research on Women (C.S.A.R.O.W) and the Director of the Graduate Program “Gender Studies”. Fatima Sadiqi is a multilingual and widely published scholar. She has published extensively on Moroccan languages and women/gender issues in Morocco including Women, Gender and Language in Morocco (Brill Academic Publishers, 2003), Grammaire du Berbère (L’Harmattan, 1997), “Language and Gender” (in Women and Gender in the Middle East and the Islamic World Today, UCIAS Edited Volumes, 2003), and “Women and Linguistic Space in Morocco” (in Women and Language, Volume XXVI, Number 1, 2003).

Fatima Sadiqi has traveled extensively in Europe and the US and brings a deep understanding of her own and Western culture to her teaching. In addition to Berber, her native language, Fatima Sadiqi writes and lectures widely in Morocco and internationally in three languages: Arabic, English, and French. She also writes regular articles on language and women issues in Arabic and French in the mainstream Moroccan newspapers.

Fields of interest: linguistics, gender studies, current political issues and ways of establishing and sustaining dialogue between cultures Current courses: theoretical linguistics, gender, culture and language

Results examples

• The Gender Studies Program impacted curricular development in Moroccan higher education; many gender-related courses have been developed in the University of Fes such as gender and development, gender and performance, gender and communication, and research methodology in gender studies. In the wider Moroccan context, the program engendered the creation of similar courses in other departments and universities.
• Many male and female students have and are benefiting from the program as the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education has extended its accreditation to the program
• According to the evaluation sheets, the program has had a deep impact on the students’ ways of thinking and behaving. It is generally conceived as a good way of democratizing Moroccan higher education, allowing more inter-disciplinarity in curricular development, allowing more cooperation with Arab-Muslim and Western universities.
• Most of our laureates have been successful in finding jobs; a good number of them accepted in highly competitive secondary education training institutions.
• Almost all our laureates register for the Doctoral program.
• Fatima Sadiqi and Moha Ennaji, the principal participants in the program have won two Fulbright scholarships each to do research in the US; both have lectured at Illinois University and Mansfield University.
• The program is in the process of establishing solid international collaboration in the domains of curricular development with the University of Illinois (US), the University of Nijmegen (Holland), and the University of Nicosia (Cyprus)
• The program collaborates with local NGOs such as Fes-Saiss Association