Pol Partie

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University of Groningen

Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Department of Psychology

Master thesis, February 2009

Student Sanne Schoonbeek Student number 1562029

Supervisor Prof. Dr. Sabine Otten

NDI Morocco, the Peoples Mirror

Political participation of women: the case of Morocco

An explorative study at the influence of gender roles, religious beliefs,

meta-stereotype and internal political efficacy


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An explorative study at the influence of gender roles, religious beliefs,

meta-stereotype and internal political efficacy


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Acknowledgements

We are living in a world which is changing rapidly. The globalization process has its influence all over

the world: people from various cultures are in contact with each other by communication technology,

migration, tourism and international trade. Therefore, I believe it is very important to learn about other

cultures by remaining in a culture which differs from your native culture. For this reason I wanted to

do the research in the light of the master program in social psychology at the University of Groningen,

in Morocco. In order to fruitfully fulfill this research I did an internship at the National Democratic

Institute (NDI) at the Peoples Mirror department, the research center of the NDI. NDI is an

international non-governmental organization which aims to promote democracy worldwide.

Of course I could not do this without the help and guidance of many people. First, I would like

to thank my supervisor prof. dr. Sabine Otten for her time and critical remarks. She guided me through

the whole research process and I feel I have learned many things from her. Additionally, I would like

to thank Paolo de Mas, the director of the Dutch Institute Morocco in Rabat. He got in contact with the

NDI and recommended them to hire me as an intern. Due to his effort, I was able to arrange an

internship at the NDI-Peoples Mirror and conduct a research for my master-thesis in Morocco.

Finally, I would like to thank Imad El Atrassi, Sarah Ibrahimi, Mona El Hamdani, Driss Choukry,

Yasmina Sarhrouny and Adil Fala from NDI Morocco for sharing their knowledge and skills with me.

I can truly say they gave me a fruitful and enjoyable stay at the NDI as well as in Morocco.


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Table of contents

1. Abstract 4

2. Introduction 5

3. Method 11

4. Results 16

5. Discussion 23

6. References 29

7. Enclosures 34


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1. Abstract

The present study examines psychosocial, cultural and religious factors that may influence the political

participation of women in Morocco, namely: gender roles, religious beliefs, meta-stereotype and internal

political efficacy. By means of a questionnaire study under 73 Moroccan women from different social

classes, age and levels of education, I tested several hypotheses regarding these factors. It appeared that

gender roles and religious beliefs had no significant influence on political participation. Meta-stereotyping,

however, did have a significant influence on political participation. The more negative meta-stereotype

Moroccan women have, the less they participate in politics. Other than expected, this effect was not

moderated by internal political efficacy. In the final section I will interpret these and some other interesting

results of this study. Moreover, I will discuss some practical implications, as well as suggestions for further

research.


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2. Introduction


An explorative study at the influence of gender roles, religious beliefs, meta-stereotype and

internal political efficacy

Moroccos changes to the status of women are unique in the Arab world. In 2006, 50 women were licensed

as religious preachers (2006). Moreover, in 2004 Morocco installed a new family code. This family code

gives women in Morocco the right to divorce their husband and the right to marry whomever they wish for,

without the need of approval from their fathers. Moreover, the legal age to get married for women was

raised from 15 to 18 years, and polygamy has become practically almost impossible. These measures mean

an enormous step for the rights of women in Morocco (Haimoud, 2004). Morocco is the second Arab

country who installed a new family code (after Tunisia) and this appoints to the modern and progressive

changes in Morocco in the area of women rights.

Moroccos changes in the area of womens rights do not stop there but continue to develop. At

present, there is a huge discussion in Morocco about how to involve women more in politics. The

representation of women in politics, mainly within local communes, is described as unfair, because no more

than 0.58% of local elected Moroccans are women (Rmiche, 2008). Especially with the local elections

coming up in June of this year, the Moroccan government as well as womens movements are trying to find

a solution. In 2003, the government already took measures to give women more influence in politics. During

the parliamentary elections of that year, political parties agreed to set aside 10 percent of the seats for

women. As a result, 35 women were elected in the parliament that year (Tahri, 2003). However, it is

regretted that the 35 women who reached the parliament, were merely elected thanks to the 10 percent quota

(Storm, 2008). Moreover, during the legislative elections of 2007 only 34 women were elected, which

caused again a huge discussion about how to involve Moroccan women more in politics. Currently, political

parties are discussing whether there should be a quota for the local elections as well. Womens movements

truly support this way to get women to have more influence in politics, but does this system really works or

are there some other factors which stand in the way as well?

Not only in Morocco, but also in most other countries in the world, political participation of women

differs from that of men. Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) have defined political participation as any

activity that has the intent or effect of influencing governmental action, either directly by affecting the

making or implementation of public policy or indirectly by influencing the selection of people who make

those policies (p. 38). With using this definition of political participation, participating in politics can mean

a variety of activities, such as voting, attending a demonstration, signing a petition, being a candidate in

elections, discussing politics, being a member of a political party, etcetera. Research suggests that women


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on some points participate less in politics than men do. Miller, Wilford and Donoghue (1999) found that

women are less politically involved and more passive regarding politics than men. Men are more likely to

claim that they initiate or engage in political discussions and men are more likely to express their

disagreement if they do not agree with someone elses opinion. Another research indicated that women are

less likely to donate money to, work for and being a member of a political party (Childs, 2004). Further,

Swanee (2007) found, in a report covering 115 countries, that women enclosed only 15 percent of the

gender gap when it comes to political empowerment at the highest level, which indicates that women are

still severely underrepresented in governments worldwide. What could cause this gap between men and

women with respect to political participation?

To be able to answer this question, research in the western world has focused on many different

explanations, such as: gender stereotyping (Sczesny, Bosak, Neff, & Schyns, 2004; Swanee, 2007; Fox &

Oxley, 2008), prejudice towards female leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002), party identification (Kaufman &

Petrocik, 1999), sexism of voters (Rosenwasser, Rogers, Fling, Silvers-Pickens, & Butemeyer, 1987),

gender gap in political knowledge (Kenski, 2006), failure to express political attitudes (Atkeson &

Rapoport, 2003), the willingness of women to participate in politics and women doubting their leadership

abilities (Swanee, 2007). However, I believe Morocco, as a non-western country, is a different case. I

assume that in Morocco there could be as well other variables involved which affect the political

participation of women (as may be as well applicable to other comparable non-western countries).

Therefore, in this master thesis I did an explorative research on the influence of additional psychosocial,

cultural and religious factors that may contribute to the set of conditions that prevent Moroccan women

from participating in politics.

The case of Morocco: Gender roles and religious attitudes

One of the reasons why I assume Morocco is a specific case with respect to the political participation of

women is thefocus on traditional gender roles. Gender roles are expectations about how men and women

should behave (Johnson, Murphy, Zewdie, & Reichard, 2008). For many women in Morocco, becoming a

wife is the most important role that she and her family strive for throughout her life. Following marriage and

becoming a wife, the next role most women work towards is becoming a mother (Batnitzky, 2008). This

emphasis on the womens role as a wife and a mother exists, because it is seen as central to the spiritual

well-being of the family and the maintenance of the social order (Treacher, 2003). Moreover, patriarchal

structures in Morocco (i.e. norms, traditions) limit the self-rule women have to choose their social roles

(Batnitzky, 2008). Additionally, a national survey indicated that almost a quarter (24%) of Moroccans is

hesitant to women's access to the job market. According to the survey 77% of those who are hesitant,

consider that "women's place is in the kitchen" (Skalli, 2006). Since Eagly (1987) described gender roles as

more than beliefs about the attributes of women and men: many of these expectations are normative in the


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sense that they describe qualities or behavioral tendencies believed to be desirable for each sex (p. 13), I

assume this focus on traditional gender roles can influence the political participation of women in Morocco.

More specifically, I hypothesize that Moroccan women with more traditional views of gender roles will

show less interest in participating in politics than women with less traditional views of gender roles

(hypothesis 1).

A relevant aspect that needs to be taken into account when considering gender-roles in Morocco is

religion. The view of gender roles can be influenced by religious beliefs (Jones & McNamara, 1991; Sevim,

2006). Gender inequality is present across all religions (Hopkins & Patel, 2006). People with more

conservative religious beliefs tend to have a more traditional view of gender roles (Jones & McNamara,

1991; Read, 2003). Because almost 99% of the people in Morocco define themselves as Muslims, religion

has a major impact on society and daily life. Furthermore, research has shown that highly religious Muslims

have a lower tendency for seeking equality between men and women (Kamal & Ramzi, 2007). Because of

the influence of religious beliefs on views of gender roles and because of the major impact of the Islam in

Morocco, I assume womens religious beliefs should have a direct effect on political participation in the

sense that women with stronger religious beliefs will participate less in politics (hypothesis 2a). In addition I

assume that this effect should, at least partly, be mediated by adherence to traditional gender roles

(hypothesis 2b).

Meta-stereotype and internal political efficacy

Politics is still been viewed, by both men and women, as a domain more appropriate for men. Politics has

traditionally been a man's world. A woman may be considered too soft for political leadership or

unfeminine if she runs (Swanee, 2007). More general, men are usually seen as more competent than

women in leadership roles (Sczesny, Spreeman, & Stahlberg, 2006) and men themselves view men as more

competent than women. In research by Sczesny et al. (2004) male students were less likely than female

students to describe female managers as ambitious, competent, intelligent, objective and well-informed, and

were more likely to describe female managers as easily influenced, nervous, passive, having a strong need

for social acceptance and uncertain. Moreover, evidence suggests that stereotypes concerning gender

difference are relatively constant across cultures (Matsumoto, 2008). As a consequence, these gender

stereotypes can result in a perceived incongruity between feminine and leadership roles (Eagly & Karau,

2002; Johnson et al., 2008; Sczesny et al., 2004).

Because of the focus of traditional gender roles in Morocco I consider it is reasonable that this

causes women to hold a negative meta-stereotypeabout how men will appreciate female participation in

politics. A meta-stereotype refers to a stereotype of the in-group (women in this example) believed to be

held by members of a relevant out-group (men in this example) (Vorauer, Main, & O'Connell, 1998). In this

case, meta- stereotype refers to the possible belief of women that men consider women less appropriate to


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participate in politics than men. The focus in Morocco on the role of women as a wife and a mother makes it

especially probable that women will hold such a negative meta-stereotype. This may have serious

implications for womens interaction with men in the political domain. Research has shown that negative

meta-stereotypes have significant negative consequences for both affective and behavioral reactions to out-

group members (Vorauer, Main, & O'Connell, 1998). Substantial research indicates that if people believe

someone holds prejudices about them that are negative, their interactions with the person will be negatively

affected (Vorauer, Main, & O'Connell, 1998). Negative meta-perceptions of the in-group can cause people

to experience inter-group anxiety (Frey & Tropp, 2006; Mendez, Gomez, & Tropp, 2007), to view the out-

group more negatively (Frey & Tropp, 2006) and to have less interest in inter-group contact (Mendez et al.,

2007). As a result, women may avoid contact with men at the political domain, because they believe men

view women negatively with respect to politics. Therefore, in the present research I hypothesize that the

more negative the meta-stereotype (that women hold about how men will evaluate their political

participation) is, the less these women will express interest in political participation (hypothesis 3).

However, I assume that the strength of this relationship between a negative meta-stereotype and

political participation can be influenced by the internal political efficacy(internal PE) of women. Internal

PE represents the perception of personal skills for political participation (Yeich & Levine, 1994). Women

with high internal PE believe more strongly that they have the skills that they consider necessary for

political participation, than women with low internal PE. I believe that it is reasonable to assume that

internal PE functions as a moderator with respect to the link between a negative meta-stereotype and the

political participation of women in Morocco (hypothesis 4). More specifically, I hypothesize that a negative

meta-stereotype causes women to participate less in politics, mainly if women have low internal political

efficacy. Women with high internal PE, however, should be able to overcome the negative impact a negative

meta-stereotype has on their intention to participate in politics.

Possible other predictors of political participation

Furthermore, there are some additional concepts whose impact on womens political participation I want to

explore in the present thesis. However, in order to stay with a feasible number of hypotheses to be tested in

this research, the impact of these variables will only be investigated with respect to their correlations with

political participation.

First, I consider external political efficacy possibly relevant. External political efficacy refers to the

perceptions of responsiveness of the political system to the concerns of individuals (Yeich & Levine, 1994).

At the moment the Moroccan government is facing a trust-crisis with its citizens, which became especially

clear during the last elections (the parliamentary elections of 2007). During the last elections, the voter

turnout appeared to be as low as 37 percent (Layashi, 2007; Storm, 2008). Moreover, the actually

percentage of valid votes was even lower, because many votes were invalid or blank (on average 23 percent


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of the votes) (Layashi, 2007). This distrust of Moroccans in politics influences the political participation of

Moroccans and therefore the political participation of women as well. External political efficacy is a

variable that can be used to measure the trust that Moroccan women have in their government. More

specifically it can be used to measure to what degree Moroccan women believe their government listens to

them and does something with their problems. Therefore I decided to measure external political efficacy as a

variable.

Second, I want to take into account the possible effect of stereotype endorsement as a separate

variable besides meta-stereotyping: To what extent do women themselves believe that women are less

suitable to participate in politics than men? I consider this a very relevant variable, because research

(Albright, Forest, & Reiseter, 2001; Frey & Tropp, 2006; Holland et al., 1998; Mendez et al., 2007;

Vorauer, Hunter, Main, & Roy, 2000) has shown that what you think about yourself influences the way in

which you believe how others perceive you.

In addition, I will test in this study whether I can replicate the effects of age, marital status, social-

economic class and level of education on political participation that have already been denoted in previous

research. Research (Batnitzky, 2008; Childs, 2004; Jones-Correa & Leal, 2001; Medoff, 1986; Nie,

Bingham Powel, & Prewitt, 1969) has demonstrated that marital status, age and social-economic class are

can influence the political participation of women. Moreover, I consider age as a very relevant variable to

measure, not only because of its possible influence on political participation, but also because of the recent

changes in Morocco with respect to the political participation of women. In 1993 the first woman was

elected in the parliament and before the elections of 2003 political parties agreed to set aside ten percent of

the seats in the parliament for women. Because of these recent changes it is important to collect data from

women from different ages, because younger women might have grown up in a time in which people are

more open to political participation of women in comparison to the time in which older women grew up.

This might cause older women to think differently about womens political participation than younger

women.

Furthermore, research by Medoff (1986) has shown that being married is negatively related to

political participation of women because of two reasons: (1) Women legislative candidates alter the

traditional authority role of men and (2) Women candidates pose a possible threat to the stability of marriage

since they may be more favourably inclined towards women-oriented issues or legislation that alters the

family unit and its economic security. Other research (Childs, 2004) indicated that married men are

significantly more likely to be politically active than married women.

With respect to social-economic class and level of education, differences can vary widely among

people in Morocco. Moreover, research has shown that an individual's social-economic class and education

strongly affect the likelihood of his engaging in various types of political activities (Nie et al., 1969).

Additionally, Medoff (1986) has shown that education is a good indicator of women's attitudes concerning


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the women's political movement. Educated women have more liberal attitudes and are supportive of women

candidates. Childs (2004) and Jones-Correa and Leal (2001) confirm this influence of education and income

on political participation of women as well. Therefore, in light of this research I consider these variables

important to measure.

Summary of hypotheses

Summing up, the present thesis aims at identifying relevant predictors for womens political participation in

Morocco. Specifically, the following hypotheses are tested:

1. Moroccan women with more traditional views of gender roles will show less interest in participating

in politics than women with less traditional views of gender roles.

2. Womens religious beliefs should have a direct effect on political participation in the sense that

women with stronger religious attitudes will participate less in politics, which should, at least partly,

be mediated by adherence to traditional gender roles.

3. The more negative the meta-stereotype that women hold about how men will evaluate their political

participation, the less these women will express interest in political participation.

4. A negative meta-stereotype causes women to participate less in politics, mainly if women have low

internal political efficacy.

In addition to testing these hypotheses, the impact of external political efficacy, stereotype endorsement, and

of several demographic variables will be subject of correlation analyses.


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3. Method

Measures

To test the hypotheses I presented in the introduction, I conducted a questionnaire study. The questionnaire

consisted of the items measuring the five concepts that I consider relevant in the present thesis. These

concepts are: political participation, religious beliefs, gender roles, meta-stereotype and internal political

efficacy. Furthermore, some additional concepts were measured, namely external political efficacy,

stereotype endorsement, and several demographic variables.

Political participation

Political participation was measured by 14 questions about the participants participation in different aspects

of politics (discussing political issues, attending demonstrations, voting, signing a petition, being or wanting

to be a candidate in elections, being or wanting to be a member of a political party).

Participants were asked about their past political participation and their intention to participate in

the future. Some questions could be answered by indicating yes or no, others had to be answered on a

five-point scale. The five-point scales ranged from never tot very often, or from certainly not to

certainly yes. Moreover, participants had to indicate how many times they attended a demonstration or

signed a petition if they indicated that they had done this in the past. An example question is:Do you discuss

political issues with your friends? (Never, Incidental, Regularly, Often, Very often). For the complete list of

question used to measure political participation, see enclosure 9.1.

Initially, the reliability of the scale was relatively low (alpha = 0.65, based on standardized scores).

Because of the importance of this measure in the present study I removed several items. First, I removed

items 3a and 4a (because almost all the participants answered no on items 3 and 4 and therefore could not

fill in questions 3a and 4a). Furthermore, I made a single item measuring the quantity of political activity

based on the responses on all dichotomous items (items 3, 4 and 5 till 8). Each yes response was counted as

1, each no response as 0; accordingly, the resulting scale could vary between 0 and 6). Finally, based on

reliability analyses, I excluded items 11 and 13 from the joint scale. After standardizing the remaining

variables by a z-transformation, the reliability of the total scale was 0.71 (Cronbachs Alpha).

Religious Beliefs

For measuring religious beliefs, I used an adapted version of the System of Beliefs Inventory scale by

Holland et al. (1998). I translated the scale into French, and I omitted the social support subscale, as I

considered it less relevant in the context of the present research. As a result, I only used the subscale beliefs

and practices. This scale consists of ten statements, and participants had to indicate on a 5-point scale how

strongly they agreed with them (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). An example statement is: Ones


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life and death follows a plan from God. For the complete list of question used to measure religious beliefs,

see enclosure 9.2.

Concerning reliability measures, initially the Cronbachs Alpha of the subscale beliefs and

practices was unacceptably low (0.55 Cronbachs Alpha). Therefore I decided to remove items that

included the word meditation (items 6 and 10). However, Cronbachs Alpha remained relatively low

(0.67). Because of the importance of this scale for the present research, I decided to use the scale in spite of

the low Cronbachs Alpha.

Gender roles

In order to measure views of gender roles, I used some items that specifically dealt with a link between

religion and gender roles. For this scale participant had to indicate how strongly they agreed with five

statements being presented. Answers were given on a five-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly

agree). An example question is:I believe God perceives men and women equally. For the complete list of

questions used, see enclosure 9.3.

Due to reliability analyses I omitted the second question of this scale (I believe God given men and

women different purposes in their lives.). However, after removing the second item, the reliability of the

subscale gender roles was still relatively low (0.65 Cronbachs Alpha). Because of the importance of this

scale for the present research, I decided to use the scale in spite of the low Cronbachs Alpha.

Meta-stereotype

Whether women held a meta-stereotype was measured by five statements about what the participants

believed most Moroccan men think of women and political participation. The reliability of the scale was

excellent with a Cronbachs Alpha of 0.98. The participants had to indicate how strongly they agreed with

the statements. The answers were given on a five-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree).

Example questions are:I believe most Moroccan men find women not appropriate to attend a protest

meeting;I believe most Moroccan men find women appropriate to be a candidate in election. For the

complete list of question used to measure the meta-stereotype, see enclosure 9.4.

Internal political efficacy

For measuring Internal political efficacy, I translated the subscale for internal political efficacy of the Craig

and Maggiottos political efficacy Measure (Craig & Maggiotto, 1982) in French. The reliability and

validity of the PE scales (internal PE and external PE) developed by Craig and Maggiotto was sustained

(Zimmerman, 1989), as also appeared in the current research with Cronbachs Alpha of 0.78.

The subscale of internal political efficacy contained of five statements and participants had to

indicate how strongly they agreed with them. The answers were given on a five-point scale (1 = Strongly


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disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). Example questions are: Sometimes politics and government seem so

complicated that a person like me cant really understand whats going on; People like me are generally

well qualified to participate in the political activity and decision making of our country. For the complete

list of questions used to measure internal political efficacy, see enclosure 9.5.

Additional measures

External political efficacy

For measuring external political efficacy, I used the subscale of external political efficacy from the same

measure I used to measure Internal Political Efficacy, namely Craig and Maggiottos political efficacy

Measure (Craig & Maggiotto, 1982). The subscale for external political efficacy contains 9 questions which

I translated into French. Participants had to give their answers on a five-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5

= Strongly agree). An example question is:I dont think public officials care much what people like me

think. For the complete list of question used to measure external political efficacy, see enclosure 9.6. As

mentioned in the section of internal political efficacy, the reliability and validity of the PE scales developed

by Craig and Maggiotto was sustained (Zimmerman, 1989), as well as in the current research with a

Cronbachs Alpha of 0.78.

Stereotype endorsement

Stereotype endorsement was measured by three statements of which the participants had to indicate how

strongly they agreed with them. The reliability of this scale was excellent, with a Cronbachs Alpha of 0.96.

The answers were given on a five-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). An example

questions is:I believe that it is inappropriate for women to participate in politics . For the complete list of

question used to measure stereotype endorsement, see enclosure 9.7.

Age, Marital status, Social-economic class and Level of Education

Two items in the questionnaire dealt with the age and marital status of the participants. Further, social-

economic class is measured by asking the income of the family of the women, because previous experiences

of the Peoples Mirror research centre in Morocco learned that women may experience difficulty giving the

exact amount of money they themselves earn each month. Subsequently, this family income is being divided

by the number of people in their household.

Level of education was measured according to the Moroccan school system and based on previous

research conducted in Morocco by the Peoples Mirror. The participants had to indicate their highest level of

education; I distinguished between Primaire (Primary school); Secondaire, collge(first 4 years after

primary school); Niveau Bac, lyce(first four years after collge, the completion of secondary studies);Bac


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et plus(completion of secondary studies and some extra education or training) and Universitaire

(University). See enclosure 9.8.

Participants

The participants were 80 Moroccan women of different ages (ranging from 18 till 54 years) and levels of

education (Primaire, 5.5%; Secondaire, 23.3%; Niveau Bac, 27.4%;Bac et plus, 21.9% and Universitaire,

21.9%.). 47.9% of the women were married. From the initially 80 participants I had to remove 7 from

analysis, because they did not fill in all the research questions. Therefore, a total of 73 participants remained

in the further analysis.

Procedure

The participants were randomly contacted in public places in Rabat (the capital of Morocco) by a female

Moroccan trained questioner from the Peoples Mirror research centre. Because of my obvious appearance

as a non-Moroccan, it was very likely that when I myself would have approached Moroccan women on the

street and would have asked them if they were willing to fill in a questionnaire, they would have thought

more strongly about the questions and might even have been wondering why a western person wanted to

know this information about them. They could have asked themselves how the western world would view

Morocco and they could have speculated what I would expect them to answer. These thoughts could have

influenced the way Moroccan women answer the research questions, therefore I decided to hire a trained

female Moroccan questioner to approach the women.

Participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing the items explained above. They were

all approached by the questioner with the same question: Please, can I have a couple of minutes of your

time? Would you like to give your opinion on different current subjects, through a questionnaire? We tried

not to state explicitly that the research was about political participation of women.

Instructions to the questioner

Before the actual recruitment, the questioner was asked to read the whole questionnaire, so she knows what

the participants would have to fill in. In addition she was given several instructions. She was asked to

randomly recruit participants in different quarters of Rabat in order to recruit women from different social

classes. Also she was instructed to approach approximately 20 women aged between 18 and 25 years, 20

women in the age range of 25-35 years, 20 women aged between 35 and 45 years, as well as 20 women

between the age of 45-55 years, in order not to have only women from a small range of ages. Moreover, the

questioner was asked not to discuss the questions with the participants, but to give only explanations about

questions when participants asked her to, and to check whether the participants had filled in all the


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questions. The instructions were also given to her on a piece of paper which she was requested to bring

during the recruitment.

Questionnaired

At the first page of the questionnaire, the participants read an instruction about the questions they had to fill

in. This instruction dealt with the following information: make sure you fill in every question; do not discuss

your answers with others while filling in the questionnaire; the answers you give will be completely

anonymous. Furthermore, the questions in the questionnaire were divided in four categories (I till IV).

Respectively, the subjects of these four categories represented: the participants relation with politics; the

participants beliefs about men, women and politics; the participants religious beliefs; general information

about the participant. Before each category of questions there was a small instruction about how to fill in the

answers they wanted to give. Moreover, participants were asked to give the answer which first crossed their

minds as well as they were reminded at the fact that they couldnt give right or wrong answers. At the end of

the questionnaire, participants were asked if they wanted to be informed about the results of the research. If

so, they could leave their name and e-mail address on a list which the questioner brought with her. It

appeared that almost all the participants were willing to give their e-mail address to the questioner. This was

either their own e-mail or (if they did not have an e-mail address of their own) the e-mail address of a

relative. For the whole questionnaire (in French), see enclosure 9.9.


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4. Results

In the following, I will first focus on the general distribution of the data (considering the outliers and mean

values for the main variables in this study) and the impact of socio-demographic variables (marital status

and level of education). Thereafter, I will report the results for the four hypotheses stated in the introduction.

Exploration

Outliers

In order to test the presented hypotheses, regression and correlation analyses are required. Because these

analyses are both sensitive to outliers, box plots have been made of each variable to see if the data contains

any (figure 1). The variables political participation, meta-stereotype, internal political efficacy and

stereotype endorsement did not contain any outliers. However, especially the variable with respect gender

roles contained many outliers, probably due to the fact that 61.6% of the participants the same score on this

variable (a score of 14 on a scale ranging from 0 - 20). The standard deviation was relatively small (SD=

2.02), which causes scores that differed more than 2 points from 14 to be outliers. Noteworthy is the fact

that the scores one participant were outliers on all the three scales that contained outliers. Therefore, I

decided to remove this participant from analysis. I did not remove other outliers, since there is no concrete

reason to do so and because the values of Cooks distance indicated that the outliers do no exhibit a large

degree of influence on the parameters when a regression analysis is made (all of the values of Cooks

Distance were much lower as 1, with the highest value being 0.14).


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Descriptive statistics

To further explore the data, I examined minimum and maximum scores of each of the variables, as well as

the median, mean and standard deviation (see table 1). With respect to political participation, the mean score

was 13.67 on a scale ranging from 0 (= no political participation) to 30 (= very high political participation).

Therefore, the political participation of the participants was neither very low, nor very high. All other scales

varied on 5-point scales ranging from 0 to 4 (for the specific scoring of the respective scales, see the

enclosures"). Considering gender roles, the mean value was 3.23 (min. = 1.0, max. = 3.75) . Therefore,

participants a relatively high score on the scale considering gender roles; in general, they believe men and

women are relatively equal and have the same purposes in life. With respect to religious beliefs, participants

scored on a mean value of 0.21 (min. = 0, max. = 0.88). This score implies that participants in general show

strong religious beliefs. Further, the average score on meta-stereotypewas 0.89 (min. = 0, max. = 3.2).

However, the standard deviation of the scale was high (SD= 6.16) and 61.1% of the participants scored 0 on

the scale. Hence, the majority of the participants gave the most negative rating for the assumed attitude of

men towards womens political participation. This implicates that participants in general strongly feel that

men consider women as inappropriate to participate in politics. The mean of internal political efficacywas

2.34 (min. = 1.6, max. = 3.4). This score can be considered neither very low, nor very high. Participants

Figure 1: Box plots of political participation, religious belief, gender roles, meta-stereotype, internal political

efficacy, stereotype endorsement and external political efficacy.


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seem to be not very confident, but also not very insecure about their political skills. The mean of stereotype

endorsementwas 1.97 (min. = 1, max. = 4) which is nearly exactly in the middle of the scale. This

implicates that participants in general are uncertain about whether they believe women are suitable to

participate in politics or not. Finally, the mean of external political efficacywas 1.12 (min. = 0.67, max. =

2.1). The average score of the participants is rather low. This indicates that participants have little trust in

the responsiveness of the government to the concerns of their citizens.

Table 1: descriptive statistics for the main variables

Min. Max. Mean Std. Deviation

Political participation 3 26 13.67 5.63

Gender roles 1.0 3.75 3.23 0.56

Religious beliefs 0 0.88 0.21 0.22

Meta-stereotype 0 3.2 0.89 1.23

Internal political efficacy 1.6 3.4 2.34 0.45

Stereotype Endorsement 1 4 1.97 0.87

External political efficacy 0.67 2.1 1.12 1.23

Impact of socio-demographic variables

Furthermore I investigated the impact of socio-demographic variables on political participation, religious

beliefs, gender roles, meta-stereotype, internal political efficacy, stereotype endorsement and external

political efficacy. First, the socio-demographic variable social-economic classhad to be excluded from the

analysis since 49.3% of the participants did not fill in the question regarding this variable. When

investigating the other socio-demographic variables, it appeared that agewas significantly positive related

to political participation (r= 0.27,p< 0.05) which indicates that the older women, the more they participate

in politics. Also, age was significantly positively related to religious beliefs (r= 0.30,p< 0.01). Thus, in

general it seems that if participants are older they tend to have less strong religious beliefs. Moreover, level

of educationcorrelated significantly positively with internal political efficacy (r= 0.26,p< 0.05), stereotype

endorsement (r= 0.29,p< 0.05) and external political efficacy (r= 0.26,p< 0.05). This implicates,

respectively, that the higher the level of education of the participants, a) the more they believe they have the

skills to participate in politics, b) the more they believe that men and women are equally qualified to

participate in politics, and c) the more trust they have in the responsiveness of the political system to the

concerns of individuals.Marital statuswas not related to any of the variables.


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Further noteworthy results

When viewing the participants scores of political participation, it is remarkable that 84.9% of the

participants indicated that they voted during the parliamentary elections of 2007. This average lies far above

the national 37% voter turnout. Considering the high percentage of participants that voted during the last

elections, it is surprising that only 28.8% said they certainly would vote during the upcoming local elections

of 2009. Moreover, 28.8% of the participants have attended a demonstration in the past, and if they did so

they have done it on average 2.2 times. Additionally, 17.8% of the participants stated they have ever signed

a petition, and they indicated that on average they have done it 2.1 times.

Furthermore, it appeared that external political efficacy correlated significantly positive with

political participation (r= 0.33,p< 0.01), which means that the higher the trust of the participants in the

responsiveness of the political system, the more they show interest in political participation.

Finally, also stereotype endorsement correlated significantly positive with political participation

(r=0.34,p< 0.01). This result implies that the more positive Moroccan women think about womens

political participation, the more they participate in politics.

Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: Moroccan women with more traditional views of gender roles will participate less in politics

than Moroccan women with less traditional views of gender roles

The first hypothesis I examined was if Moroccan women with more traditional views of gender roles will

participate less in politics than Moroccan women with less traditional views of gender roles. In order to see

how participants' responses on the political participation measures were affected by their views on gender

roles, a linear regression analysis with dependent variable political participation and independent variable

gender roles is needed. However, the data contained severe violations of the assumptions required in order

to do regression analysis. As can be viewed in figure 2, there is no linear relation and the assumption of

homoscedasticity, or equal variances, is violated. Moreover, the Levene Statistic for equal variances

indicated that the assumption for equal variances is not sufficient (Leven Statistic(7, 63)= 1.68,p= 0.13). In

addition, transformation of the variable gender roles could not succeed. Therefore, I used a non-parametric

test, namely the Kruskal-Wallis Test, to test the hypothesis. It appeared, as could be expected on the basis of

the skewed distribution of the data, that there was no differences between scores on the gender roles scale in

political participation (2= 7.29,p= 0.51).


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Hypothesis 2: Womens religious beliefs have a direct effect on political participation in the sense that

women with stronger religious attitudes will participate less in politics (2a), which should (at least partly)

be mediated by adherence to traditional gender roles (2b)

The second examined hypothesis dealt with the influence of religious beliefs on the political participation of

women and the mediating role of traditional gender roles in this relationship. To test this idea, I first

examined the relationship between political participation and religious beliefs. It appeared that there was no

correlation between the variables (r= 0.09,p= 0.43), therefore, hypothesis 2a could not be confirmed . Given

this lack of correlation, I did not further test the mediating impact of gender roles which was assumed inhypothesis 2b.

Hypothesis 3: Moroccan women with a more negative meta-stereotype will participate less in politics than

women with a less negative meta-stereotype

The third hypothesis claims that women with a more negative meta-stereotype will show less interest in

participating in politics than women with a less negative meta-stereotype. In order to test this hypothesis, I

Figure 2: Residual Plot of the variable gender roles


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examined the correlation between meta-stereotype and political participation. In fact, the correlation was

positive and significant (r= 0.24,p< 0.05), suggesting that hypothesis 3 could be confirmed.

However, when viewing the intercorrelation between meta-stereotype, internal political efficacy,

external political efficacy and stereotype endorsement, it appeared that these variables correlate strongly. As

can be viewed in table 2, all intercorrelations are highly significant; this implies that there is a problem with

multicollinearity. Therefore, further examination of the role of internal PE, external PE and stereotype

endorsement is needed.

Table 2: Intercorrelations between political participation, meta-stereotype, internal political efficacy, external

political efficacy and stereotype endorsement

Political

participation

Meta-

stereotype

Internal political

efficacy

External political

efficacy

Stereotype

endorsement

Political participation 1.00 0.24* 0.43** 0.33** 0.34**

Meta-stereotype 1.00 0.77** 0.62** 0.88**

Internal political efficacy 1.00 0.62** 0.74**

External political efficacy 1.00 0.54**

Stereotype endorsement 1.00

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

To further explore the relationship between meta-stereotype, internal political efficacy, external political

efficacy, stereotype endorsement and political participation, I conducted a regression analyses where meta-

stereotype was added last in the regression analysis (after internal PE, external PE and stereotype

endorsement). It appears that meta-stereotype does still explain a significant extra proportion of variance in

political participation if internal PE and stereotype endorsement are first added in the regression analysis (F

change(1,67)= 6.46,p= 0.01). Therefore, the hypothesis that women with a more negative meta-stereotype

will participate less in politics than women with a less negative meta-stereotype, can be confirmed.

Hypothesis 4: A negative meta-stereotype causes Moroccan women to participate less in politics mainly if

these women have low internal political efficacy

The last hypothesis dealt with the moderating influence of internal PE in the relationship between a negative

meta-stereotype and the political participation of women. In order to see if there is a moderating influence of

internal PE, several steps need to be taken. First, I computed standardized values of internal political


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efficacy. Second, I repeated the same procedure for the variable meta-stereotype. Subsequently, I

constructed a new variable by making a product variable of the standardized internal PE variable and the

standardized variable of meta-stereotype. Thereafter, I did a regression analyses by first adding the

standardized variables of internal PE and meta-stereotype and in the second step adding the product

variable. This analysis revealed that the interaction term had no significant effect on top of the main effect

of internal political efficacy (t= -0.16,p= 0.87). Therefore, this hypothesis could not be confirmed (see table

3).

Table 3: Betas and p-values for the two main effects and the interaction effect

Beta t-statistic p-value

Main effect Internal political efficacy 0.24 2.10 0.04

Main effect Meta-stereotype 0.43 3.98


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5. Discussion

Interpretation of research resultsThe present explorative study revealed several interesting results, such as an effect of meta-stereotype on

political participation; an effect of stereotype endorsement on political participation; and the fact that

religious attitudes do not have any influence on political participation. However, before discussing the

results in more detail, I would like to mention a few caveats with respect to the present data.

First, participants were quite suspicious when they read the questions presented to them. During the

time that participants filled in the questionnaires, the hired questioner had to answer many times questions

from the participants regarding the objective of the research. Also participants wanted to know whether she

had political interests herself. I believe this truly reflects the distrust Moroccan women have regardingpolitics, especially when viewing the results of the external political efficacy measure, which was very low.

It appears that Moroccan women have little trust in the Moroccan government in that they perceive that the

government does not (sufficiently) respond to the concerns of their citizens.

Second, the used research method (by means of questionnaires) has certain advantages (such as a

smaller chance at social desirable answers), but this method also has unfavorable consequences. In order to

participate in a questionnaire survey, participants have to be literate. However, in Morocco illiteracy is still a

big problem. According to an estimation of UNESCO in 2006, 58.8 % of the women in Morocco are

illiterate

1

. This means that more than half of the women in Morocco can not read or write and therefore thisgroup could not participate in this research. Research has shown that if women are more educated they

participate more in politics (Childs, 2004; Jones-Correa & Leal, 2001). As a result, this research might be

biased by not taking into account illiterate Moroccan women. This might explain why the percentage of

participants who voted in the elections of 2007 was much higher (84.9%) than the national voter turnout

(37%), because based on the research of Jones-Correa and Leal (2001) and Childs (2004) it is expected that

illiterate women would show less interest in voting. Therefore I suggest that future research at the political

participation of Moroccan women would use other methods, such as qualitative methods like interviewing,

to make sure that illiterate women can participate.Finally, I would like to make a comment concerning the reliability of the scales. However some

scales had an excellent reliability (such as meta-stereotype and stereotype endorsement, respectively 0.98

and 0.96 Cronbachs Alpha), other scales showed low reliability. Especially the reliability of the scale with

respect to gender roles was low (0.65 Cronbachs Alpha), but also the scale for religious beliefs (0.67

Cronbachs Alpha) was relatively low in reliability. Therefore, these results should be interpreted with

caution. I suspect that the reliability of the scales was low, because these concept are somewhat different

1A report with the UNESCO estimates can be found on http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer
http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewerhttp://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer


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for women in Morocco than for women in the western world. To me, this truly reflects the idea that western

concepts can not be applied without any problems to non-western people. I will further illustrate this issue

below.

Having discussed some caveats of the present research I want to discuss the research results in more

detail. First, it could not be proven that if women have a more traditional view of how roles should be

divided between men and women, they tend to show less interest in political participation (hypothesis 1).

There were no differences between women with traditional views of gender roles and women with less

traditional views of gender roles in political participation. The reason why this outcome is difficult to

interpret is the reliability of the used scale considering views of gender roles. The reliability was low (0.65

Cronbachs Alpha) and as a consequence, this implies that the used scale does not measure the view of

Moroccan women on gender roles sufficiently, or it may measure another concept. Therefore, it is difficult

to draw clear cut conclusions with respect to the views Moroccan women have on gender roles and its

relation to political participation of these women.

In addition, it could not be demonstrated that religious beliefs influences political participation

(hypothesis 2a). As a consequence, the moderating role of the gender roles in the relationship between

religious beliefs and political participation (hypothesis 2b) could not be tested. It appeared that if women

have stronger religious beliefs this does not imply that they show less interest in participating in politics.

The correlation between religious beliefs and politic participation was zero. This may be found so because

the participants in general showed strong religious beliefs. In other words, the variation between the

participants in their religious beliefs could have been not extensive enough in order to distinguish between

weaker and stronger religious beliefs in relation with political participation.

Furthermore, hypothesis 3 could be confirmed. Meta-stereotype has a direct effect on political

participation, even when the variables stereotype endorsement, internal political efficacy and external

political efficacy (which had high correlations with meta-stereotype and with each other) were added in the

regression analysis first. In general Moroccan women tend to have a very negative view on how they think

men perceive women with respect to political participation and it appeared that the more Moroccan women

think that men perceive women as inappropriate to participate in politics, the less interest in political

participation they show.

Additionally, concerning hypothesis 4, there was no moderating influence of internal political

efficacy on the relationship between meta-stereotype and political participation. It appears that if women

belief they have the skills to participate in politics, they can not overcome the impact of a negative meta-

stereotype on their political participation.

Beyond of the results concerning the hypotheses, some also interesting results have been found. It

appeared that stereotype endorsement, just like meta-stereotype, explains a unique proportion of variance in

political participation above the variation explained by meta-stereotype, internal and external political


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efficacy. In general, the participants were uncertain whether they believe women are appropriate to

participate in politics or not. However, the more they believe that women are not suitable to participate in

politics, the less they themselves participate.

In addition, the very high correlation between meta-stereotype and stereotype endorsement

implicates that Moroccan women fully adopt what they believe about mens view regarding the political

participation of women. Moreover, research has already shown that what you think about yourself has a

great influence on what you believe how others perceive you (Albright, Forest, & Reiseter, 2001; Frey &

Tropp, 2006; Holland et al., 1998; Mendez et al., 2007; Vorauer, Hunter, Main, & Roy, 2000). This

implicates that the way in which Moroccan women perceive women as appropriate to participate in politics

is dismissive determinant for their political participation.

Taken together, this research indicates that there are at least two important factors that influence the

political participation of Moroccan women: the extend to which women believe men consider women as

appropriate to participate in politics (meta-stereotype) and the extend to which Moroccan women believe

women in general are appropriate to participate in politics (stereotype endorsement). Moreover, also internal

and external political efficacy correlated highly with political participation. However, they did not explain a

significant proportion of unique variance in political participation. Therefore, I assume that of the concepts

measured, meta-stereotype and stereotype endorsement are the two most important factors in the political

participation of Moroccan women.

Practical implications

The Moroccan government currently is deciding about a quota-system for women for the local elections of

2009. Although they did not set a percentage yet about how many local seats will be reserved for women,

they believe a quota-system will encourage the political participation of women. Based on the present

research, I believe this will not be the case. Although a quota system will give some women more influence

in politics, I believe that other things must change in order to get women more involved. Primarily, the

negative idea Moroccan women have about how men view women with respect to political participation (the

negative meta-stereotype) should change. Because the way you perceive yourself has a great impact in the

way you believe how others perceive you (Albright, Forest, & Reiseter, 2001; Frey & Tropp, 2006; Holland

et al., 1998; Mendez et al., 2007; Vorauer, Hunter, Main, & Roy, 2000), the way in which Moroccan women

view the political participation of women in general should change in order to reduce the effect of a negative

meta-stereotype on political participation. Although research has shown that self-regulation processes can

suppress stereotypical thoughts effectively, the capacity of people to suppress these thought depends on

limited resources and becomes depleted when it is used (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). However, it could

be that promoting education of women can cause women to believe that women in general are suitable to

participate in politics, since level of education was significantly positive correlated to stereotype


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endorsement. If Moroccan women can gain a more positive image of womens political participation

through education, women will have a more positive image about how men view women with respect to

political participation. Therefore, they will participate more in politics.

Moreover, because internal political efficacy correlated highly with both meta-stereotype and

stereotype endorsement, I assume that it is of great importance that Moroccan women gain confidence in

their political skills. It has been suggested (Semetko & Valkenburg, 1998) that political efficacy could be

improved by information acquisition, for example by attentiveness to political news on television.

Moreover, in this present study, level of education correlated with internal political efficacy; therefore if the

government would stimulate political information acquisition and would take steps in order to stimulate

education of women (especially considering the high rate of illiteracy under Moroccan women), I believe

the political participation of Moroccan women could improve considerably.

Furthermore, as a consequence of the significant positive correlation of external political efficacy

with political participation, I assume that this factor also can play a role in the promotion of political

participation of Moroccan women. The Moroccan government should restore the trust of women in the

responsiveness of the Moroccan government towards its citizens, since the external political efficacy of

women was low. If women do not perceive that the government will listen to them and does something

about the problems they experience, women have less the intention to participate in politics.

Taken together, I assume on the basis of the results of this present research that stimulating

education of Moroccan women, changing Moroccan womens beliefs about female political participation,

raising their trust in the political system and political information acquisition could improve the political

participation of Moroccan women more than a quota system, which only allows certain well educated

women to have some more influence in politics. The average Moroccan woman, especially considering the

high proportion of Moroccan women that is illiterate or has little education, is more benefitted from such

interventions than of a quota system. Moreover, these implications might also apply to similar other non-

western countries.

Suggestions for further research

I assume that the present explorative research can serve as a basis for further research through which future

researchers can create a deeper understanding of the political participation of women in Morocco, as well as

women in other comparable non-western countries. On the basis of the present research I want to offer

several suggestions. I believe the present research truly demonstrates that western concepts can not be

applied to non-western people without any problems. This present research showed some difficulties with

the interpretation of the results, because of low reliability of the scales for political participation, gender

roles and religious beliefs. This problem may be caused be the fact that there is little cross-cultural research

considering perceptions of non western women (or non western people in general). This became especially


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obvious with respect to the scale of gender roles and religious beliefs. What does it mean for Moroccan

women to be equal to men? In the western world, we assume that equality of men and women does not

mean that women are supposed to be the only ones responsible for the household. However, when looking at

the answers of the participants at the questions regarding gender roles, it suggests that Moroccan women

may have another view of what it means to be equal to men. 94.5% of the participants answered strongly

agree to the statement I believe God perceives men and women as equal. Of those participants, 88.4%

also answered strongly agree to the statement I believe God gives men and women different purposes in

their lives. This would suggest that Moroccan women believe that women have different purposes in their

lives than men, but that this doesnt mean that women are not equal to men. Future cross-cultural research

could investigate how Moroccan women view gender roles in order to develop a more reliable and valid

measure for measuring the view of gender roles of Moroccan women.

Concerning the scale of religious beliefs, the questions in which the word meditation was used

caused the scale to be very unreliable. It appears that, in contrast to western people, Moroccan women in

general do not understand what meditation is, do not practice meditation or do not see it as a part of their

religion. However, even when removing the items which included the word meditation, the reliability

remained relatively low (0.67 Cronbachs Alpha). This also is an example of the fact that western

measurements can not always be applied without problems to non-western people.

Furthermore, I believe qualitative methods, such as in-depth interviews are needed, not only to be

able to include illiterate women, but also in order to investigate how the strong the relationship between

stereotype endorsement, meta-stereotype and internal political efficacy is formed in Moroccan women.

Qualitative methods could provide a deeper understanding of these concepts. Why would Moroccan women

believe they lack political skills (or not)? Why and how is it related to the extent to which Moroccan women

believe men consider them less appropriate to participate? Why is the focus of traditional gender roles

important in Morocco? How come Moroccan women are uncertain about if women are appropriate to

participate in politics? How do Moroccan women form an image of the responsiveness of the Moroccan

government? Since there is little cross-cultural research with respect to psychological concepts in Morocco,

such questions are important to be answered in order to gain a clearer image of how such concepts are

manifested in Morocco. Moreover, such questions are important in understanding why and under what

social-psychological conditions Moroccan women will participate in politics or not. Finally, such questions

are especially relevant in developing further ways in order to promote the political participation of women

in Morocco and may also help womens participation in comparable countries.

Finally, the used statistical method to test the hypotheses was mostly correlation. Because

correlation does not imply causation, further research could focus on the political participation of Moroccan

women in a cross-sectional design through which it is possible to draw causal conclusions. Future research

could further test the influence of meta-stereotype and stereotype endorsement on political participation, as


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well as the relationship between internal and external political efficacy and political participation. Moreover,

research could focus on other causal relationship(s) between concepts measure in the present study. For

example, could the believe of Moroccan women that they lack the skills to participate in politics be a

consequence of adherence to traditional gender roles or conservative religious beliefs? The detection of

causal relations can further help to take measures in the promotion of the political participation of Moroccan

women.


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9. Enclosures

9.1 Measure of Political Participation (14 questions) with points being given to the answers

Never Incidental Regularly Often Very often

1 Do you discuss political issues with your friends? 0 1 2 3 4

2 Do you discuss political issues with members of yourfamily (husband, siblings (grand-) parents, partner)?

0 1 2 3 4

Yes No

3 Did you ever attend a protest meeting ordemonstration?

1 0

1 time 2 times 3 times 4 times 5 times ormore

3a If yes to question 3: How often did you participate? 1 2 3 4 5

Yes No

4 Have you ever signed a petition? 1 0

1 time 2 times 3 times 4 times 5 times or

more

4a If yes to question 4: How often did you sign apetition?

1 2 3 4 5

Yes No5 Did you vote in the parliamentary elections of 2007? 1 0

6 Are you a member or have you been a member of apolitical party?

1 0

7 Have you been or are you a candidate inparliamentary and/or local elections?

1 0

8 Have you been or are you a member of anassociation/NGO?

1 0

Certainly

not

I dont

think so

I dont

know

Maybe I

will

Certainly

yes

9 In the future, will you consider attending a protestmeeting or demonstration?

0 1 2 3 4

10 Do you have the intention to vote in the coming localelections of 2009? 0 1 2 3 4

11 In the future, will you consider signing a petition? 0 1 2 3 4


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Certainly

not

I dont

think so

I dont know Maybe

I will

Certainly

yes

12 In the future, will you consider being a member of apolitical party?

0 1 2 3 4

13 In the future, will you consider being a member of anassociation/NGO?

0 1 2 3 4

14 Do you have the ambition to be a candidate inparliamentary and/or local elections?

0 1 2 3 4

9.2 Measure of Religious Beliefs (10 questions) with points being given to the answers

Stronglydisagree

Disagree I dont know Agree Stronglyagree

1 I feel certain that God in some form exists.4 3 2 1 0

2 I pray to God for help during bad times.4 3 2 1 0

3 Ones life and death follows a plan from God.4 3 2 1 0

4 I believe God protects me from harm.4 3 2 1 0

5 During times of illness, my religious or spiritual beliefshave been strengthened.

4 3 2 1 0

6 Prayer or meditation has helped me cope during times ofserious illness.

4 3 2 1 0

7 I believe God will not give me a burden I can not carry.4 3 2 1 0

8 I have experienced a sense of hope as a result of my

religious or spiritual beliefs.4 3 2 1 0

9 Religion is important in my day-to-day life.4 3 2 1 0

10 I have experienced peace of mind through my prayersand meditation.

4 3 2 1 0

9.3 Measure of Gender Roles (5 questions) with points being given to the answers

Stronglydisagree

Disagree I dont know Agree Stronglyagree

1 I believe God perceives men and women as equal. 0 1 2 3 4

2 I believe God gives men and women different purposesin their lives.

4 3 2 1 0

3 I believe God perceives that the role of women is to bemore at home than men.

4 3 2 1 0

4 I think God believes men and women can fulfill thesame tasks in life equally well.

0 1 2 3 4

5 I believe God perceives that the role of men is to bemore outside home than women.

4 3 2 1 0


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9.4 Measure of Meta-stereotype (5 questions) with points being given to the answers

Strongly

disagree

Disagree I dont know Agree Strongly

agree1 I believe most Moroccan men find it inappropriate if

women attend a protest meeting.4 3 2 1 0

2 I believe most Moroccan men consider womeninappropriate candidates in political elections.

4 3 2 1 0

3 I believe most Moroccan men find it inappropriate ifwomen discus political issues.

4 3 2 1 0

4 I believe most Moroccan men find it inappropriate ifwomen sign petitions.

4 3 2 1 0

5 I believe most Moroccan men consider itinappropriate if women vote during elections.

4 3 2 1 0

9.5 Measure of Internal political efficacy (5 questions) with points being given to the answers

Strongly

disagree

Disagree I dont

know

Agree Strongly

agree

1 Sometimes politics and government seem socomplicated that a person like me cant reallyunderstand whats going on.

4 3 2 1 0

2 People like me are generally well qualified toparticipate in the political activi ties and decisionmaking of our country.

0 1 2 3 4

3 I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the

important political issues in our society. 0 1 2 3 44 Todays problems are so difficult I feel I could not

know enough to come up with any ideas that mightsolve them.

4 3 2 1 0

5 I feel like I could do as good a job in politics asmost of the politicians we elect.

0 1 2 3 4


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9.6 Measure of External political efficacy (9 questions) with points being given to the answers

9.7 Measure of Stereotype endorsement (3 questions) with points being given to the answers

Strongly

disagree

Disagree I dont know Agree Strongly

agree

1 I believe that men and women are not equally

qualified to participate in politics.

4 3 2 1 0

2 I believe men are more suitable to participate inpolitics than women.

4 3 2 1 0

3 I believe that it is inappropriate for women toparticipate in polit ics.

4 3 2 1 0

Strongly

disagree

Disagree I dont

know

Agree Strongly

agree

1 I dont think public officials care much about what people likeme think about politics.

4 3 2 1 0

2 Generally speaking, those we elect to public office loose touchwith the people pretty quickly.

4 3 2 1 0

3 Candidates for political positions are interested in peoplesvotes, but not in their opinions.

4 3 2 1 0

4 There are plenty of ways for people like me to have a say inwhat our government does.

0 1 2 3 4

5 Politicians are supposed to be servants of the people, but toomany of them try to be our masters.

4 3 2 1 0

6 It hardly makes any difference who I vote for, because whoevergets elected does whatever he or she wants to do anyway.

4 3 2 1 0

7 In this country, a few people have all the political power andthe rest of us have nothing to say.

4 3 2 1 0

8It doesnt matter what a person does: if the politicians want tolisten the will, and if they dont want to listen they wont.

4 3 2 1 0

9 Most public officials wont listen to me no matter what I do. 4 3 2 1 0


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9.8 Questions to describe the sample (5 questions) with points being given to the answers

1.Are you married? O Yes (0) O No (1)

2.With how many family members do you live (excl. yourself)? family members

3.What is your age? years old

4.What is your level of education? O Primaire (0) O Secondaire (collge) (1)

O Niveau Bac (lyce) (2) O Bac et plus (3)

O Universitaire (4)

5.Can you give an indication of the monthly income of your household?

O Less then 3500 Dhs (0) O 3500 5000 Dhs (1) O 5000 10000 Dhs (2)

O 10000 15000 Dhs (3) O 15000 20000 Dhs (4) O More than 20000 Dhs (5)


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9.9 Questionnaire in French

Questionnaire: lopinion des femmes

Introduction

Nous vous remercions de votre volont de remplir ce questionnaire sur lopinion des femmes. Le questionnaire est divis en quatre catgories de

questions (I, II, III, IV). Avant le dbut de chaque catgorie il ya une petite explication du type de questions auxquelles vous devrez rpondre. S'il vous

plat lisez toutes les instructions et toutes les questions attentivement et assurez-vous de remplir toutes les questions. S'il vous plat ne pas discuter des

questions ou vos rponses avec les autres pendant que vous remplissez le questionnaire, je suis intresss seulement par votre opinion personnelle.

Ensuite, vous tes libre de discuter le questionnaire avec qui vous le souhaitez.

Chaque rponse que vous remplissez sera totalement anonyme. Cela signifie que nous ne pouvons en aucune faon lier les rponses votre personne ni

votre personnalit. En fait, nous nous intressons des tendances qui deviennent visibles travers un large groupe de participants, et non pas dans

l'analyse des rponses dune participante.


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Questionnaire lopinion des femmes

Partie I: Les questions suivantes sont propos de votre nature avec la politique. Suivant les questions, plusieurs options de rponses sont indiques. S'il vous

plat rpondez aux questions en fixant une croix dans la case de la rponse de votre choix. Donnez la rponse qui traverse en premier votre esprit. Il n'y a pas

de bonnes ou de mauvaises rponses.

Jamais Occasionnelle-

ment

Rgulirement Souvent Trs souvent

Vous discuter de la politique avec vos amis?

Vous discutez de la politique avec dans votre famille (avec votre mari, vos parents,votre sur, votre frre)?

Oui Non

Vous avez dj particip une manifestation/runion de protestation/sit-in? ** Si votre rponse est oui, veillez continuer le questionnaire. Si votre rponse est non, veillez passer la question daprs.

1 fois 2 fois 3 fois 4 fois 5 fois ou plus

Si oui, combien de fois vous avez particip?

Oui Non

Vous avez dj sign une ptition? *

* Si votre rponse est oui, veillez

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