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Susan Slyomovics (pictured here with her husband) studied
the education of Moroccan women before independence.
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During her nine-month research grant to Morocco, Susan Slyomovics,
a well-known scholar of the Middle East and chair of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's innovative program in the Study of Women
in the Developing World, studied the education of Moroccan women
during the French Protectorate.
Her study included interviewing women educated before Moroccan
independence or their families as well as a review of existing
documentary evidence. Much of the latter materials have not been
translated and have thus been inaccessible to many Western scholars.
One of Slyomovics's goals was to collect and translate these
materials, many of which contain quite moving accounts, such as
one by Fatima Benslimane Hassar, one of four Muslim women high
school graduates permitted to obtain the French baccalaureate
between 1945 and 1955.
Hassar relates how, "My grandmother told me that after independence
I could remove the veil, because women would be free, but study
and school were necessary to become men's equal."
The publications that ultimately will result from Slyomovics's
work will shed considerable light not only on the academic pursuits
of these women but on their political and social activism, as
well.
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