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An artisan never talks about art. She produces it. Tuned in to her instinct and the nature around her, she reframes and bears witness to the world by weaving paintings. Berber carpets are works of art in their own right, populated by signs, symbols, and imagination. This ancestral art form is transmitted from mother to daughter, like a coded feminine language across generations. In the secrecy of the mountains, women weavers are the guardians of the temple of tradition.
But reality still catches up with us, even through these women’s creative magic. Their skilled hands carry nimble fingers that have been damaged by life. They create works of gold that slip right through their hands—others appropriate this work and reap the benefits.
The life of an artisan is hard: tireless work in an informal sector to earn derisory sums. As these women lack knowledge of the rights and frameworks regulating work, the informal sector offers them the opportunity to earn a living but simultaneously exposes them to vulnerability and precarious working conditions.
A weaver in a douar
Finding a weaver is no easy task: these are unknown, invisible women from the depths of Morocco, mainly from the Middle and High Atlas, often illiterate. Traders categorically refuse to give us their contact information.
But as our efforts continued and one thing led to another, we managed to meet Mira, a weaver in her forties who works for herself from her home. She used to live in a village called Douar Lmnassra, near Kenitra.
“I learned to weave on my own, by watching my mother. It was a childhood passion. It started like a game, but after I turned 18, I made it my job and started weaving carpets for the women of the village,” Mira shares with us.
Mira only works for the women of the village. Like in many villages in Morocco, there are no cooperatives or associations in Douar. Left to her own devices, she spent years working alone with no support. And the work is strenuous: traditional wooden looms are heavy to assemble and difficult to handle alone. Conditioned by the purchasing power of the village women for whom she works, Mira sells her carpets at affordable prices but emphasizes the precariousness of her situation: “I sell carpets that are estimated to have a market price of 1,000 to 1,500 dinars at 300 dinars.”
Recently, after getting married, Mira moved to the city of Ksar El Kebir in northern Morocco with her husband, who is also an artisan. Together, they help each other and, having settled in the city, have more accessibility to increased carpet orders.
An exploited and precarious female workforce
Tourists have a high demand for Berber carpets, which are exported internationally at elevated prices. Yet despite this high demand, weavers receive derisory sums and barely manage to sustain themselves through their work. That’s because the middlemen, in charge of marketing, resell the carpets at prices that can be up to 30 times higher than the price the artisans were paid. It is estimated that 96% of the profit actually goes to the middleman, with a measly 4% going to the weaver.
And the exploitation shows no sign of waning. Women weavers don’t have direct access to demand, and they sometimes don’t even have any knowledge of the market prices in town. Add to that the language barrier: Berber weavers don’t master the darija (the Moroccan dialect spoken in the cities), which unfortunately sustains their dependence on intermediaries who get rich on their labor.
Moreover, by working in the informal sector, these women don’t have access to any sort of structured work, nor to any employment contracts, follow-up mechanisms, or social security coverage. Those driving up the demand for these carpets don’t have any liabilities either. This creates an environment where the weavers can be mistreated or badly paid or otherwise remunerated—with clothes, for example. Out of need, they don’t dare refuse, let alone try to impose decent working conditions.
Finally, weaving is a physically demanding job that endangers the weavers’ health. They generally weave from 4 PM to midnight, as the morning is kept for household chores, cooking, or harvesting and feeding the animals. Most of these women suffer from lower back pain: they have to stand for hours on end, handling traditional wooden looms that require a lot of energy and strength. It is also very easy for them to get injured while weaving, and they are not eligible for any kind of social protection to take care of their health.
Emancipation in a world of men
In the rural, patriarchal world, women’s primary role is to take care of the home. They are still very active outside this setting, working hard in the fields or weaving, at home, but it is the men who collect and manage the women’s money. In some villages, men even refuse to allow their wives to join any sort of cooperative, as this might drive the women away from their homes.
“I was not born to get married and have children,” says Kenza Ouraghda, a weaver with an atypical background. She knew how to overcome the social determinism governing her life and took charge of her destiny. Kenza is from a douar called Ait Hamza in the mid Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a few kilometers from Fez. “I was lucky to have a father who did everything for my sisters and I to pursue our studies.”
Access to education made it possible for her to clear a different path for herself from the beginning. As a student, she demonstrated a sense of leadership from a very young age and was very involved in all kinds of activities and volunteering opportunities. She also participated in several plays. During school vacations, she learned how to do different kinds of weaving from her mother. After passing her baccalaureate, she returned to the douar where she joined a program to combat illiteracy and started teaching the women in the village. She then joined the first association to open in her village. It was founded by her cousin, which made the job easier.
“I was the first woman in the village to join an association. So I was the only woman among men. This helped me overcome my complexes and free myself from the prejudices of our very patriarchal community. I then encouraged many women to do the same.”
Today, Kenza is President of the Tithrite Association, which she founded in 2008 for the benefit of women weavers in her village. She regularly participates in national exhibitions and organizes workshops and training courses for women in the douar, encouraging them to attain financial independence. Kenza is also a member of The Anou, a cooperative joining more than 600 male and female artisans from Morocco. The Anou has succeeded in setting up a fair and equitable labor ecosystem for artisans. It is also what introduced Kenza to e-commerce and opened her business up to customers from all over the world.
“All throughout my journey, I’ve had to deal with a lot of judgment and hurtful accusations because of my social activity. I’ve been accused of alienating women from their husbands and homes. But today I’ve become able to earn their respect and consideration,” Kenza tells us. Indeed, she can legitimately boast about the unparalleled and progressive career she has forged for herself.
How can weavers be given the means to reclaim their work and find recognition for its true value?
In search of dignity and revaluation
“We were ashamed to say that we are weavers,” Kenza Ouraghda confides to us.
Women weavers lack self-confidence and do not consider the value of their work. And not only are they badly paid, but they suffer a lot of denigration. Their vulnerability is exploited. Today, the know-how is transmitted to others less and less. Rural women prefer to encourage their daughters to pursue an education and aspire to careers like teaching or midwifery.
How can the continuity of this ancestral know-how be ensured while still complying with contemporary requirements? How can weavers be given the means to reclaim their work and find recognition for its true value?
In recent years, several new initiatives have popped up in support of weavers, to help them on their path to emancipation by introducing them to new tools and technology. The Anou cooperative initiates and trains women weavers in e-commerce so that they can market their products on their own, without having to go through a middleman. This also opens them up to the international market. There are also many cooperatives run by women that aim to enhance weavers’ visibility: they do so by offering these weavers a platform for exposure and by introducing them to social media. This is the work carried out by the Dar Maalma cooperative, which brings together more than 5,000 artisan women from all over Morocco to help them market their products in the heart of Marrakech, ensuring that their profit goes to them in full.
In some villages, men even refuse to allow their wives to join any sort of cooperative, as this might drive the women away from their homes.
We also met Khadija Guedaz, a young entrepreneur who founded the Anaruz project that helps women weavers and reinvents the heritage of Khadija’s own mother, who is a weaver herself. “My mother taught me the basics of weaving when I was 7 years old. I learned the different techniques of how to weave wool when she was making carpets, and this continued until I turned 10. Then we moved to France. […] I saw my mother work hard, without resting, to try to get by, to feed and clothe us.”
The goal of Anaruz is to pay women weavers and grant them financial security with a good monthly salary, health coverage, and an employment contract. They are accompanied, given a framework to operate in, and equipped with modern looms. Khadija has been working with around thirty women weavers between 16 and 70 years old from several regions across Morocco since 2018.