Oasis women in Morocco: key players in the survival of the oases

Morocco's oasis regions face continuous changes due to factors such as water scarcity, migration, and urbanization, all of which are affecting the survival of these age-old spaces. Nevertheless, women's activities and their social and economic contributions to these changes are seldom considered in the academic world and by public policies. The question remains to understand how women experience these transformations and how they contribute to them. To answer it, we draw on an ethnographic study conducted between 2019 and 2023 in the oases of southeastern Morocco (Dr & acirc;a and Todgha valleys). The results underline the continuous role of oasis women in the survival of the oasis affected by water-scarcity. As their day-to-day activities are disrupted, they engage in economic and social activities while seeking to meet their aspirations, desires, and needs. Through new services linked to the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, such as beauty stores, cooperatives, and sporting activities, oasis women renew and diversify the oases. Through these new activities, they attempt to perform new feminine identities, as traders, presidents, members of collective organizations, farmers, and creators, which they seek to combine with their identities as mothers, wives, daughters, and rural women by re-negotiating existing gender relations and roles. Our analysis allows to decentralize the role of agriculture in rural dynamics and reveal other trends and areas that play an equally important role in rural development. At the same time, our results hint at the fragility of these activities and the difficulty women have in crafting new rural female identities.