For the first time in its history, Morocco has entrusted the leadership of its government to a woman. Beyond the change of power, a symbolic frontier has fallen: the frontier of what is possible.
Four months ago, I wrote about it. Today, Morocco has done it.
Some texts are written to comment on the present.
Others are eventually overtaken by time.
Four months ago, I wrote a few lines about the place of women in the Morocco that is taking shape before our eyes. I was not backing a party or a candidate. I was describing a far deeper shift: a country in which merit would gradually stop having a gender.
Today, those words carry a weight I had not imagined would arrive so soon.
On 29 September 2026, His Majesty King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri Head of Government, after her party, the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), came first in the legislative elections of 23 September, winning 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives.
For the first time in the Kingdom’s history, a woman has been called upon to lead the Moroccan government.
This is not a detail.
It is not simply a change of government.
It is a ceiling that has just come down.
This is about more than one woman
For too long, in our Mediterranean, African and Arab societies, certain responsibilities were regarded, consciously or not, as naturally belonging to men.
Women could be doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, judges, ministers, ambassadors, police officers or business leaders.
But somewhere, one last invisible frontier always remained.
The top.
Today, Morocco has crossed that frontier.
Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri becomes the first woman to lead the Kingdom’s government.
Her appointment also places Morocco among the few countries in the Arab world to have entrusted the leadership of government to a woman.
Its symbolic reach therefore extends far beyond Rabat.
Morocco wins a major battle for equality
Let us be precise: no single appointment can, on its own, complete the struggle for equality.
Inequalities remain. Cultural resistance remains. There are still professional, economic and social ceilings to break.
But there are moments when a society takes a step from which it becomes very hard to turn back.
Today is one of them.
Morocco has just won a fundamental battle: the battle of the possible.
Because from today, no one can seriously tell a young Moroccan girl that certain responsibilities are closed to her simply because she is a woman.
Yesterday, she could dream of getting there.
Today, she knows it is possible.
And that difference is immense.
Four months earlier
When I published that first piece, some may have found the vision too optimistic.
I was simply reading the signals.
Moroccan women were already everywhere in the real Morocco: in business, public administration, diplomacy, medicine, the police, universities, local government and civil society.
The question was no longer whether they had the ability.
The real question was when the last ceiling would fall.
Today, we have part of the answer.
And many of the arguments we have heard for years suddenly become much harder to sustain.
Not because anyone silenced them.
But because the facts have spoken.
A message that reaches beyond Morocco
This decision must also be seen from the other shore.
At a time when Morocco is seeking to assert its role between Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Arab world, institutional symbols matter.
A country does not project power only through its infrastructure, its ports, its investments or its major international events.
It also projects an image of the society it wants to become.
With the 2030 World Cup, which Morocco will co-host with Spain and Portugal, only a few years away, the Kingdom will be watched as rarely before.
The world will look at its stadiums.
Its trains.
Its airports.
Its cities.
Its economy.
But it will also look at its model of society.
And the sight of a woman at the head of the Moroccan government sends an extremely powerful signal: that of a Muslim, Arab, African and Mediterranean country capable of moving its own social boundaries.
Morocco is setting an example that deserves attention far beyond its borders.
Modernity is not imitation
This may be the most interesting lesson of all.
Modernity does not necessarily mean becoming someone else.
Sometimes it means having enough confidence in yourself to evolve without disowning who you are.
Morocco does not have to choose between its identity and its progress.
Between its traditions and its daughters’ ambitions.
Between its history and its future.
A strong country can carry both.
This is precisely what I call strategic interdependence: understanding that societies move forward when they stop artificially setting against each other things that can, in fact, strengthen one another.
Now the hardest part begins
A woman at the head of government should not be judged more leniently because she is a woman.
Nor more harshly for the same reason.
She must be judged on her decisions, her results and her ability to meet the considerable challenges awaiting the next government: jobs, purchasing power, young people, social cohesion, investment and preparations for 2030.
With her party short of an absolute majority, set at 198 seats, building a coalition is already her first political test.
That, precisely, is equality.
No longer asking whether a man or a woman can govern.
Simply asking:
Is he governing well?
Is she governing well?
Tonight, I am thinking of our daughters
Four months ago, I ended my piece with a conviction:
a nation’s progress is also measured by the place it gives to its women.
Today, I would not take back a single word.
But I would add a few.
Morocco has not finished the journey towards equality.
No country has.
But today, it has crossed a historic threshold.
And sometimes, real progress begins exactly like this:
a ceiling falls,
a door opens,
and a whole generation discovers that it can now walk through.
Today, that door opened in Morocco. 🇲🇦
Abderrahim Ouadrassi
Tangier → Mallorca
Strategic Interdependence · Europe–Africa · The Strait
Further reading: Moroccan woman · The Border
