In March 2003, Morocco's recently crowned King Mohammed VI, eager to turn the page on his father's dark past and pressured by feminist groups, launched a significant reform of the Mudawana (family code). The process that led to the adoption of the revised personal status code in January 2004 was marked by unprecedented and heated debates between various political and social actors, including secularists, Islamists, theologians, and various feminist groups. These debates accelerated the feminization of public space that had already started with the proliferation of feminist movements and women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the 1980s and 1990s (Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006; Salime 2011). In the same period, despite important economic and legislative reform in Morocco and neighboring countries, young people and marginalized groups continued to grow dissatisfied with sluggish and uneven economic development, the justice system's lack of accountability, and official abuse and corruption enabled by the ruling elites. On December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, took the radical step of setting himself on fire to protest the police confiscation of his vegetable cart and goods. Bouazizi and his action epitomized popular anger and despair caused by what has become known in colloquial North African Arabic dialects as the hogra, or humiliation and deprivation of dignity. The event, which sparked a series of uprisings that profoundly shook the Middle East and North Africa, also subsequently brought about an unprecedented liberalization of speech and expression of dissent. The protests taking place in the streets and on social media also made visible two crucial facts: women’s role as agents of change and the fact that they continued to suffer from multiple systems of oppression.

In Morocco, this ambiguous position was inscribed in events and negotiations involving dissenting groups and the state. The strong presence of women in the protest movement forced leading actors such as the Mouvement du 20 février (February 20 Movement) to include gender issues in their agenda. It also prompted the state to inscribe gender equality in the 2011 constitution. Yet Morocco kept many articles in the reformed Mudawana and in the penal code that contradicted the new constitution's inscription of gender equality. Even after the passage of the new constitution, women continued to be marginalized in the streets and public forums, and to see their representation constantly threatened.