Abstract

The study of the impact of the Covid-19 health crisis on well-being and living conditions must be differentiated by gender, given the position of women and their particular relationship to the different areas of life, notably the labor market and education, in the specific Moroccan context. Thus, the poverty experienced by women in Morocco must be addressed by taking into account the multidimensionality of their deprivation. In this context, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) approach to measuring and analyzing multidimensional poverty offers the advantage of being able to identify the primary sources of this form of precariousness among women. The data from the 3rd panel on the impact of the health crisis on households and the 2004 and 2014 population and housing censuses indicate that in 2021, more than two million women will be living in poverty. In terms of multidimensional poverty, 16.5% of the female population aged 18 and over are affected, representing a decline from 18.1% in 2014 and 40.4% in 2004. This apparent decline, however, conceals a significant slowdown in the rate of decline in this form of precariousness over the last decade, and even a slight worsening in urban areas where deprivation in the field of employment, particularly unemployment, accounts for a quarter of this form of precariousness.
In light of these circumstances, the situation of female poverty in Morocco in 2021 would be comparable to that of 2014 in rural areas and to that of 2013 in urban Morocco. Furthermore, a comparison of data on the two forms of poverty, monetary and multidimensional, revealed that 1.1% of women live in double poverty, monetary, compared to 2% in 2014.