The T-Hiya team recently encountered a piece by Dounia Z. Mseffer that refuses to stay quiet about the conspicuous absence of domestic labor from the formal economy. As Morocco stands on the cusp of a new Family Code (Moudawana) amid an electoral year, Mseffer’s analysis pokes at a question that many would rather leave unspoken: what do we name, value, and legally recognize women’s domestic work?

 

A stark data point that undergirds the argument is drawn from a 2012 time-use study by the High Commission for Planning (HCP). The numbers hit hard: 95% of women devote an average of five hours daily to domestic tasks, while only 45% of men contribute, averaging about 43 minutes. Rajaa Hamin, who leads the “Ch9a dare machi 7ogra” project within ATEC (Tahadi for Equality and Citizenship), frames this labor as “real work, for life, without rest, fixed hours, or holidays,” and laments its lack of social, institutional, and legal recognition. The call is clear: update the national figures with a fresh survey.

 

Yet the piece is less about statistics and more about urgent social signaling. In May 2025, with support from UN Women Morocco, ATEC launched “Ch9a dare machi 7ogra,” a campaign designed to dismantle entrenched stereotypes about household labor. The project targets young men in Casablanca-Settat and Marrakech-Safi, plus key influencers—teachers, journalists, religious figures—seeking to mobilize more than 50,000 youths and shave an hour off women’s daily domestic workload in participating homes. The methods are deliberately performative and educational: a May Day march where protesters wore aprons emblazoned with “imaginary job descriptions” (cook, educator, nurse, housekeeper, etc.), school-based awareness activities reaching 5,000 students, a 1,000-strong summer program, a Marrakech hackathon on the care economy, and university talks paired with a city-wide digital campaign in Casablanca. Most strikingly, the launch of the Ntqassmo Ch9a app—an instrument to chronicle real-time time-use—was presented as both data collection and a digital reminder to rethink daily routines.

 

The piece turns to ESPOD president Khadija Janati to articulate the social emergency that motivates this work. Janati points to two major realities: a striking rise in divorces (around 43,000 per year) that often leaves women in precarious, uncompensated domestic labor; and a legislative moment sparked by a socialist-proposed asset-sharing bill in divorce, which could reopen the debate about valuing women’s contributions to the family patrimony. For Janati, this isn’t merely a wage issue; it’s a moral-legal reckoning rooted in a historical thread. She cites a 16th-century fatwa from a Fes imam and judge that already urged recognizing and valuing a woman’s home labor—arguing that a modern society should not shy away from extending that justice.

 

But here’s where Mseffer’s analysis leaves us with an unfinished debate: what does “recognition” actually entail, and how do we operationalize it? Janati insists that reforming the Moudawana should not be a matter of if but how to implement. ESPOD pushes for concrete mechanisms—salary for homemakers, health coverage (AMO), and pension rights—so that domestic work becomes part of the social contract and, crucially, part of asset division and constitutional discussions. Hamin reinforces the advocacy: bringing domestic labor into the conversation is essential for reforming family law and the legal status of women who perform this invisible work.

 

The operational challenge remains the same as the political one: once the debate shifts from moral obligation to legal calculus, how will the law quantify and recognize invisible labor? Mseffer notes that while domestic work is part of reform discussions, political will is not yet fully aligned, and the path from advocacy to implementation is fraught with practical hurdles—financing, measurement, and, fundamentally, the redefining of worker status within the constitution.

 

In sum, Dounia Z. Mseffer’s analysis foregrounds a paradox at the heart of reform: there is a growing moral and empirical case to recognize women’s domestic labor, yet a gap between recognizing its importance and embedding it into law. The unfinished debate around the word “reconnaissance”—how we name, value, and enact protections for this labor—remains the crucial hinge. If the current movements succeed in turning rhetoric into policy, we may witness a transformation not only in family law but in the everyday lives of households that have long carried this labor in silence.

 

Source attribution: Original text by Dounia Z. Mseffer  Via Egalité-Mag

 

Photo credit : Spencer Plouzek on Unsplash