What Fatima El-Mansouri’s historic rise means for Morocco

LONDON: In May 1993, the French journalist Anne Sinclair sat opposite King Hassan II on the television program “7 sur 7” and asked whether Morocco would one day have a female prime minister. The King answered with characteristic pragmatism. Nothing in the constitution or in Islamic jurisprudence stood in the way of it, he said, adding that “nothing can prevent a woman from being a prime minister in Morocco.” More than three decades later, the late King’s acknowledgment of the possibility has bec