This paper examines the other side of gender violence. Domestic violence is not always about men being victimizers and women being victims. In this study, I tried to investigate the opposite of this assumption.
It is generally assumed that, in our Moroccan culture, women, the fairer sex, are the victims of abuse and ill-treatment on the part of their male partners, the rough sex. In this research paper, we aim to examine the reverse of this assumption. Specifically, we aim to provide an answer to the question of whether Moroccan women abuse their male partners, and if the answer is in the affirmative, we intend to answer another, related, double question, namely how and why do Moroccan women abuse their male partners? It would be noted that, in the present work, we use the expression "women’s tyranny” to refer to women’s ill-treatment of men by using harshness, cruelty, and violence, and their prioritization of their own selfish interests over those of men. It also implies the violation of men’s rights and the questioning of their manhood. “The term women’s tyranny will be defined and discussed at length in chapter 1”
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Chapter one: General Introduction
O. General Introduction
O.O Introduction
O.1 Rationale
O.2 The basic assumption of the study
O.3 Objectives of the study
O.4 Research questions
O.5 Methodology
O.6 Organization of the work (chapters and sections)
O.7 Conclusion
Chapter two: Review of the Literature
1. O Introduction
1. 1 Stereotypes
1.2 Biological differences between men and women
1.3 The status of women in Moroccan society nowadays
1.4 A cultural approach to gender and language
1.4.1 Examples of gender differences
Minimal responses Questions
Turn-taking
Verbal aggression
1.5 Tyrant
1. 6 Fiction
1.7 Women’s tyranny
1. 8 Abuse
1.9 Psychological abuse
1. 10 Forms of abuse
1. 11 Conclusion
Chapter three: Data collection and classification
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Data collection
2.1.1 Methods
2.1.1.1 Observation
Direct observation
Participant observation
2.1.1.2 Interviews
2.1.1.3 Questionnaire
2. 2 Instrumentation
2.3 validity and reliability of the questionnaire
2.4 The distribution of respondents by age and gender
2.4.1 The distribution of respondents by age
2.4.1.1 The distribution of respondents by gender
2.5 Data classified according to themes
Theme 1: Women’s perception of women’s tyranny in the Moroccan cultural context
Statements
1-Women‘s tyranny is an obvious fact
2-Tyranny is perceived by women as
3-In your opinion, women are generally not tyrannical, tyrannical, very tyrannical
Theme 2: Moroccan wives’ ill-treatment of their husbands and the feeling of shame for men to admit so
Statements
4-Many Moroccan wives beat up their husbands
5-In Moroccan society, women ill-treat men and pretend that men ill-treat them
6-Many Moroccan husbands are ill-treated by their wives, but they are ashamed to admit it
9-Husbands do not complain when they are beaten up by their wives
Theme 3: Moroccans and the fallacy that the Mudawana incites wives to tyrannize their husbands
Statement
7- The Mudawana does not incite wives to tyrannize their husbands
Theme 4: Moroccan society’s view of women’s tyranny Statement
8-Moroccan society views women’s tyranny as
Theme 5: Husbands’ responses to their wives’ ill-treatment
11-When my wife ill-treats me, I
Theme 6: Testimonies of informants
Statement
12-I know more than one man who is tyrannized by his wife
2.6 Conclusion
Chapter four: Data analysis
3.1 Introduction
3. 2 Data analyzed according to themes
3.2.1 The age group of informants
3.2.1.1 The number of males and females who participated in filling out the questionnaire
3.2.1.1 The number of males and females who participated in filling out the questionnaire
Theme 1: Women’s perception of women’s tyranny in the Moroccan cultural context
Statements
1-Women‘s tyranny is an obvious fact
2-Tyranny is perceived by women as
3-In your opinion, women are generally not tyrannical, tyrannical, very tyrannical
Theme 2: Moroccan wives’ ill-treatment of their husbands and the feeling of shame for men to admit so
Statements
4-Many Moroccan wives beat up their husbands
5-In Moroccan society, women ill-treat men and pretend that men ill-treat them31
6-Many Moroccan husbands are ill-treated by their wives, but they are ashamed to admit it
9-Husbands do not complain when they are beaten up by their wives
Theme 3: Moroccans and the fallacy that the Mudawana incites wives to tyrannize their husbands
Statement
7- The Mudawana does not incite wives to tyrannize their husbands
Theme 4: Moroccan society’s view of women’s tyranny
Statement
8-Moroccan society views women’s tyranny as
Theme 5: Husbands’ responses to their wives’ ill-treatment
11-When my wife ill-treats me, I
Theme 6: Testimonies of informants
Statement
12-I know more than one man who is tyrannized by his wife36
General conclusion
Limitations of the study
Bibliography
Webliography
Appendix
O. General Introduction
O. O Introduction
It is generally assumed that, in our Moroccan culture, women, the fairer sex, are the victims of abuse and ill-treatment on the part of their male partners, the rough sex.
In this research paper, we aim to examine the reverse of this assumption. Specifically, we aim to provide an answer to the question of whether Moroccan women abuse their male partners, and if the answer is in the affirmative, we intend to answer another, related, double question, namely how and why do Moroccan women abuse their male partners?
It would be noted that, in the present work, we use the expression women’s tyranny” to refer to women’s ill-treatment of men by using harshness, cruelty, and violence, and their prioritization of their own selfish interests over those of men. It also implies the violation of men’s rights and the questioning of their manhood. “The term women’s tyranny will be defined and discussed at length in chapter 1”
O. 1 Rationale
The phenomenon of women’s tyranny is worth investigating for the following reasons:
Firstly, a preliminary study carried out by some Moroccan feminists reveals that women’s tyranny in Morocco has not been the subject of a systematic investigation. Therefore, we intend to probe the issue so as to find out whether the old stereotype which states that women are tyrannized by men is being replaced by the new stereotype that men are tyrannized by women.
Secondly, notwithstanding the fact that a plethora of reforms have been introduced in the Moroccan society with respect to women’s rights, it is often claimed that women are still relegated and scorned by men. In deed, champions of women’s rights pretend that Moroccan women are victims of all kinds of abuse by men Thirdly, it is very often claimed that if the majority of men do not admit that they are abused by their male counterparts, this does not mean that men are not victims of illtreatment by women.
O. 2 The basic assumptions of the study
The Mudawana has granted Moroccan women a set of basic rights based upon the assumption that women are tyrannized by men, and do not enjoy their civil rights as Western women do. Consequently, there is a widespread belief that, after having gained their fundamental rights, Moroccan women have begun to tyrannize the Moroccan men in various ways and for various reasons.
O. 3 Objectives of the study
Given the assumption above, we aim, in the present research paper, to achieve the following main objectives.
1) To argue that tyranny, understood as “abuse”, is practised not only by men but also by women.
2) To fathom the reasons behind women’s practice of tyranny, and to identify the forms that female tyranny takes.
3) To assess gender relationships in Moroccan culture on the basis of data elicited from Moroccan informants so as to verify the validity of the basic assumptions concerning gender mutual abuse.
O. 4 Research Questions
To achieve the objectives identified above, we need to answer the following questions:
1) Is women’s tyranny an old phenomenon or a new one?
2) Who are the victims of women’s tyranny?
O. 5 Methodology
Methodology refers to the methods to be adopted for data collection and the type of informants that will constitute the source of our corpus of data. In this research paper, I have adopted one method, namely, the questionnaire, for it is the most popular means of collecting data. Besides, it is undeniably inexpensive, flexible, and gives the researcher power and control over the research. Therefore, using a questionnaire would inevitably help me target around 90 and 110 informants. The sampling is arbitrarily selected for the purpose of gathering the opinions of various groups of Moroccan community.
O. 6 Organization of the work
This research paper will be composed of three chapters in addition to a general introduction and a general conclusion. The first chapter will provide a brief review of the literature relevant to the issue of gender equality, or discrimination in Morocco. The focus will be on gender relationships. In general, it will define the basic relevant concepts that are connected with women’s tyranny such as tyrant, women’s tyranny, abuse, psychological abuse and so on and so forth. And in particular, it will review studies, books, and articles concerned with gender (mutual) abuse.
The second chapter will present the methodology used for data collection. Specifically, the chapter will list the sources of written data, and the population sample targeted by the questionnaire. It will also provide information about the informants (including specific variables-e.g. gender, age, level of education, etc), and describe the procedure followed in devising the questionnaire.
The third Chapter will be concerned with data analysis which is a process of gathering, modeling, and transforming data with the goal of highlighting and analyzing useful information according to the research questions and exploring similarities and differences occurring among informants. The data gathered by means of questionnaire provides extensive descriptive data and further elaborated information elicited from different cultural and social backgrounds.
0. 7 Conclusion
In this introductory section, we have introduced the topic of our study and some of the basic issues which we intend to address in the course of our research. In addition, we have provided brief definitions of the basic terms of the topic title. Moreover, after having identified the main objectives of our study and formulated a set of relevant research questions, we have presented the methodology that we intend to adopt in this work in order to achieve our objectives. Finally, we have presented the organisational aspect of our study in terms of chapters and the issues to be addressed in each chapter.
1. Review of the Literature
1.0 Introduction
This chapter will present a review of the literature related to the present topic with the aim to establish the theoretical background of this research. It will both briefly review the research conducted on gender mutual violence with a focus on articles handling women’s tyranny, and define the basic relevant concepts that are connected with women’s tyranny.
The fact that the topic of our research, Women’s Tyranny: Fact or Fiction, falls under the category of Stereotypes, our first task is to define a stereotype and the process of stereotyping. The following sections are an attempt to define the concept “stereotype”.
1.1 Stereotype(s)
“Originally used for a method of duplicate printing, the term “stereotype” was first used in a social sense by the American journalist, Walter Lippman, in 1922. In sociology, the term is generally used to refer to a fixed, exaggerated, and preconceived description of a certain type of person, group, or society. Characteristically, a stereotype is based upon prejudice rather than fact. By repetition and with time, stereotypes become fixed in people’s minds, resistant to change and ignoring factual evidence to the contrary. For example, some sociologists believe that stereotyping reflects a power structure in which one group in society uses labelling to keep another group in its place. Because stereotyping carries with it an ideological position, stereotypes, whether positive or negative, can prove dangerous, especially when used to justify persecution and discrimination.”
Scollon and Scollon [1995: 155] states that “Ideological statement or stereotyping often arises when someone comes to believe that any two cultures or social groups, or, as we prefer to call them, two discourse systems, can b treated as if they were polar opposites”.
According to the same source “stereotyping is simply another word for overgeneralization. The difference, however, is that stereotyping carries with it an ideological position. Characteristics of the group are not only overgeneralized to apply to each member of the group, but they are also taken to have some exaggerated negative or positive values”.
1.2 Biological differences between men and women
Numerous scholars have distinguished between the genders from a biological perspective.
As a case in point, Ramey [1975: 1] notes that “women and men have obvious differences in terms of their sex hormones. The differences in the sex hormones are what most of us consider to be the outstanding differences to account for behavior, and to some degree they do. Women have cyclic behavior. They have menstrual cycles. They bleed regularly and slough membranes off the uterus to prepare it for another cycle and possible implantation of a fetus.”
According to the same author [1975: 2], “women refer to their menstrual period as “the curse.” One of the reasons for that is that in virtually all of the major religions a menstruating woman is regarded as somewhat unclean. Therefore, it is just another one of those descriptions of women that tend to make her feel as if somehow she is inferior. She came from Adam’s rib, which means that she is sort of second-hand, at least in the biblical story. She bleeds every month in this curious way, and instead of now being regarded as something miraculous, it is used against her as a “curse,” and she is unclean”.
The fact that a natural biological process could be regarded as unclean demonstrates that perceptions about gender and its affiliated phenomena have been constructed in a way that makes women feel somehow that they are inferior. Notwithstanding the fact that women and men are biologically different, these differences need not form an obstacle to harmonious living. Factually, the differences between men and women complement each other and enrich perspectives.
1.3 The status of women in Moroccan society nowadays
In general, female talk1, attributes, actions, and habits are more negatively depicted on the three Moroccan languages than male talk, attributes, actions, and habits. Women and their language are systematically subject to biased, pejorative, and reductive stereotyping that is reflected in some most common expressions in everyday speech such as “suq nsa” ( Literally translated “women’s market” ). This expression and others are often used as derogatory terms or even as insults. Women in Morocco widen the concept of gender by making it interact with other social and political categories, such as “development” and “elections”, that may prove to be more important than gender itself Women in Morocco were and still are confined to laws and customs confining them to the domestic sphere, thus subjugating them to men. These laws are crystallized in the Moroccan family law, based upon 1957 “Code du Statut Personnel”2 which grants male supremacy and authority over women. By confining women to the family structure, Moroccan officials have kept them at a subsistence level when sectors of the economy are money-based. Moroccan experience, therefore, confirms boserup’s3 arguments that industrialization and modernization tend to enhance the difference between the sexes in developing economies and that it has produced a distortion in the dynamics between the sexes at the economic level.
The co-existence of incompatible forms of legislation as shown in the constitution and family law, aggravate and delay the integration of women into the process of development4. In fact, when women have access to the modern sector, they are restricted to pre-industrial roles because performance in this related traditional task, in the modern world, does not require any training in new skills leading to decent places in the nation’s economy.
From a historical point of view, we are told about the miserable fate of women in ancient societies, and the limited rights which they enjoyed. Greek women, for example, were the first slaves to their husbands. Of course, some women were able to hold a social rank even when their legal status did not allow them access to higher positions. As a result, the fate of the woman was subject to circumstance. This state of affairs is explained also by the patriarchal system that placed all members of the family under the absolute domination of men.
1.4 A Cultural Approach to Gender and language
“The cultural approach to women’s and men’s language can be summarized in the concepts of rapport or cooperative talk verses report or competitive talk (Tannen, 1990)” The cooperative talk is attributed to women, because according to this view female culture maintains relationships of closeness where females can criticize and interpret others in an acceptable and accurate manner and so, they develop a cooperative style of communication, while males on the other hand, come from a culture where they were used to dominate and assert themselves by interpreting, thus their style is more competitive than cooperative. Still, theorists justify the misunderstanding between men and women as a defect in women’s talk and language rather than other socio-cultural, linguistic and psychological factors.
All in all, as Trudgill mentioned in his book, Communication and Citizenship (1980), women and men’s speech are considered not only as different by others but one is “better” and the other is “worse”
1.4.1Examples of gender differences in language
- Minimal responses
It is stated by Carli [1990: 60] and Zimmerman and West’s [1977: 198] that “women tend to use more minimal responses such as “yeah” “mhm”. While men use them less frequently in case they want to express agreement.
- Questions
Barnes [1971: 22] points out that “men use questions as a way to request information while women use them for other aims like engaging others in a conversation or attracting attention Therefore, women use questions more frequently. In writing, however, both genders use rhetorical questions as literary devices”.
- Turn- taking
De Francisco [1991: 46] claims that “women tend more to engage in conversations and exchange information, while men are more likely to center on their own point and keep silent when they are asked to participate in turn-taking.”
- Verbal aggression
Labov [1972: 46] claims that “men tend more to use verbal aggression in language (swearing, yelling…), while women do not because they are more concerned with preserving their hierarchical status and prestige.
1.5 Tyrant
According to the free encyclopaedia “Wikipedia”, “a tyrant carries modern connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who places his or her own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which the tyrant governs or controls. However, in the classical sense, the word simply means one who has taken power by his own means as opposed to hereditary or constitutional power (and generally without the modern connotations). This mode of rule is referred to as “tyranny”. Many individual rulers or government officials are accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy”.
1.6 Fiction
According to the same source “Wikipedia”, “Fiction is an imaginary thing, statement, or event, postulated for the purposes of argument or explanation. It seeks to describe something that has no existence in our real world”. Fiction also embodies a cluster of lies, fabrications, inventions, that somehow have the capacity to communicate some of the most profound truths about human beings and about human experience. The characters are invented, the things that happened to them did not happen.
1.7 Women’s tyranny
Women’s tyranny refers to women’s ill-treatment of men by using harshness, cruelty, and violence, and their prioritization of their own selfish interests over those of men. It also implies the violation of men’s rights and the questioning of their manhood.
It is worth pointing out that women’s tyranny takes many forms, but in this section we are going to focus solely on its verbal and psychological forms. To commence with the first form, it occurs, particularly when women use words and body language to inappropriately criticize men. It also occurs when a man cannot satisfy his wife in bed «sexual gratification".
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1 Sadiqi, Fatima (2003: 125). Women, Gender, and Language: Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers 2002
2 Code du Statut Personnel Dahir # 1-57. 343. Nov. 22, 1957
3 Boserup, Easter (1970: 117-139). Woman’s Role in Economic Development: New York. S.T Martin press,
4 Mernisi, Fatima (1976: 37). “The Moslem World: Women Excluded from Development”. Women and World Development. (Ed): Irene Thinker and Michele Bo-Brassen. Washington. D. C