ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with instrumental relationships among women mainly in Morocco, but also in other Mediterranean areas. It aims to provide evidence that such relationships exist, contrary to the Parsonian dictum that women’s roles are mainly ‘expressive’, and to that of a Moroccan acquaintance who claimed, ‘Women are made for love’. The chapter shows however, that relationships among women carry considerable weight in Moroccan society. Moroccan women engage in a series of relationships with other women which assure to them and their children the minimum requirements for life and help in crises, whether such crises are of a social or an economic kind. Yet it is considered just as shameful for rural women as for townswomen to work for wages where there are ‘stranger men’, and there are few places of work where there are only women. In none of their family roles can men be seen as a reliable source of economic and social support for women.
