Publication | Report/Paper

Focus on Morocco | Project Overview & Respondent Demographics

Project Background

The Status of Women in the Middle East and North Africa (SWMENA) is a gender-focused research project that evaluates the status of women in three countries: Lebanon, Morocco, and Yemen. SWMENA is a project by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Project Goals

  • Improve the status of women in the broader MENA region by strengthening local NGO capacity to effectively advocate on behalf of women
  • Train local NGOs on using solid data in their advocacy efforts and employ better strategies in approaching members of parliament, other governing bodies and the press about policy recommendations
  • Build local data collection and analysis capacity

Project Methodology

  • Evaluate existing data on women, identify gaps, and design national surveys to capture needed data
  • Before conducting the SWMENA survey, NGOs in Morocco that work on several aspects of women’s issues completed a short survey to identify their data needs Survey questionnaires include a core section that is standard across the three countries and a distinct country module that deals with country-specific gender issues
  • After data collection in all three countries, a final report will be created with comparisons across regions, between countries, and between communities within each country.

Project Research Areas

  • Political & civic participation; Economic participation & well-being
  • Social attitudes towards women’s roles, violence, reforming laws
  • Social autonomy (access to education, role in household decision-making, control over household resources)
  • Health & education

Morocco SWMENA Survey Details and Methodology

  • Fieldwork for the SWMENA Morocco survey was implemented between December 9, 2009 and January 21, 2010 by the Moroccan survey firm LMS-CSA.
  • The survey is nationally representative: the sample size is 2,500; includes 2,000 women & 500 men. There is an oversample of women in order to have a large sample of women across ages, education levels, urban/rural residents, and other demographic segments, so that robust comparisons can be made amongst women. The smaller sample of men is mainly used to allow the gender disaggregation of the data.
  • The margin of error for the women’s sample is: ± 2.19% and the margin of error for the men’s sample is ± 4.38%.
  • All respondents are aged 18 and above.
  • The sample represents proportionally the various regions of Morocco. The survey data has been weighted by age and area of residence (urban/rural area) to make the data representative of the Moroccan population aged 18 years and over. The weighting parameters were sourced from Moroccan Statistic Office (Haut Commissariat au Plan).
  • Illustrative data & key findings from the Morocco survey are shown in the Topic Brief Documents.