Morocco's first female prime minister caught between the king, clerics, and feminists

El Mansouri (left) was named by King Mohammed VI (right) as the country's first female prime minister

The Islamic saying "a people who entrust their affairs to a woman will never succeed" has resurfaced in Morocco since King Mohammed VI named Fatima Zahra El Mansouri as the country's first female prime minister.

Mustafa Ramid, a former justice minister in an Islamist-led government, cited the saying earlier this month, in a lengthy Facebook post questioning whether a woman should hold the country's highest political office.

He argued that Morocco, a Muslim majority country, had found a balance between equality and the responsibilities of state leadership, as the highest office - that of the king - continued to be reserved for men.

Morocco operates as a constitutional monarchy. Yet executive power remains in the hands of the 63-year-old monarch.

El Mansouri's Authenticity and Modernity Party (Pam) won the most seats in September's parliamentary election and has since announced a coalition with three other parties. Together, they hold 207 of the 395 seats in parliament.

El Mansouri, 50, presented her appointment as a milestone for Moroccan women

El Mansouri's royal appointment was historic but it exposed persistent reservations about women in positions of power.

The day after her appointment, local broadcaster Chouf TV took to the streets to ask Moroccan men "what they thought" of a woman heading the government.

Several men, mostly middle-aged or older, hesitated before answering. Some said they accepted the decision because it was the king's choice.

One grey-haired man, who did not give his name or age, said: "It feels strange to have a woman as head of government. I'm not sure if it sits well with me."

Criticism of the monarchy carries legal risks in Morocco. The penal code criminalises certain forms of offence or insult against the king, the royal family and the monarchy.

Online, the appointment became fodder for political satire.

A video showing two women pulling each other's hair was widely shared, with captions suggesting that this is what parliamentary disagreements between El Mansouri and her colleagues might look like.

However many younger Moroccans, especially women, welcomed her appointment.

While attitudes are changing in Morocco, conservative, religious views still hold great weight.

Some of the country's most contentious debates over gender equality centre on family law, including inheritance, marriage and divorce.

Under existing inheritance rules, a daughter typically receives half the share of a son in comparable circumstances.

The Higher Council of Ulemas, the country's body of religious scholars, has resisted calls for equal inheritance, citing Islamic jurisprudence.

It has also rejected proposals to abolish taasib, a rule that can require female orphans without brothers to share their inheritance with male relatives, including distant ones.

In a 2022 report, Morocco's National Human Rights Council said unequal inheritance rules contributed to poverty among women.

Polygamy is also legal under certain conditions. Proposed changes to the family code have included allowing women to stipulate in their marriage contracts that their husbands cannot take another wife.

But exceptions remain, including provisions relating to a first wife's infertility or illness, which women's rights groups have criticised on grounds of privacy and medical confidentiality.

These issues are at the heart of proposals to reform the Moudawana, Morocco's family code, which governs marriage, divorce and child custody.

A package of changes was announced in 2024, but the reforms have yet to become law.

As well as family law, some young women hope the new prime minister will try to improve education for girls.

Morocco's High Commission for Planning, the country's official national statistics agency, found in 2025 that just 55% of girls aged 15–17 were going to school in rural areas, where poverty, early marriage and dropping out of school remain key barriers. In urban areas, it was 100%.

"Many girls in rural Morocco drop out of school early because schools are far away, transport is unsafe or unavailable, and families with limited means often keep their daughters at home," Chifae Laazouzi, a young Moroccan woman, tells the BBC.

She says one reason is that many girls in poor and rural areas cannot afford menstrual sanitary products.

"Menstrual health is still treated as a taboo... I would like to see free menstrual products in schools," Laazouzi says.

El Mansouri is no newcomer to politics. Over more than two decades in public life, she has served as mayor of Marrakech, held government posts and sat in parliament.

For the past five years, she served as minister for national territory planning, urban planning, housing and city policy under the previous Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch.

After her appointment, El Mansouri presented the moment as a milestone for Moroccan women.

"Being the first female head of government is not just a source of pride for me, but for all the women of the kingdom," she said.

Since her appointment, she has not indicated whether she plans to try and push through the reforms to the family code.

In her political career so far, she has not made any prominent public statements about women's rights, even while changes to inheritance rules, polygamy and the family code were being widely debated.

The king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, holds the title of Commander of the Faithful, a traditional Islamic title embedded in the Moroccan constitution

Dr Irene Fernandez-Molina, an expert on the Global South at the University of Exeter in the UK, sees the appointment in the context of the monarchy's broader political interests.

"Two headlines have dominated coverage of [September's] parliamentary election in Morocco: a two-decade low turnout and King Mohammed VI's appointment of a woman as prime minister for the first time in this country's history," she tells the BB…