Gender, space and identification in Femmes du Maroc and Citadine

Abstract

This article is a study of two French-language Moroccan women's magazines, Femmes du Maroc and Citadine. The article assesses the extent to which the female gender identity presented in these magazines is spatially contingent and also whether it derives from the classic binary division between masculine and feminine space which is increasingly contested in Moroccan society The article also analyses how the Moroccan woman portrayed in these magazines reconciles the opposing attractions of tradition and modernity. Finally, the article assesses whether these magazines advance a rhetoric of allegiance to Moroccan values or whether they, in fact, encourage adherence to the dominant western European discourse about femininity and the feminine gender role promoted in major western glossy magazines.