If more women in Morocco enter the political arena in the future, Irondequoit can say it played a role in that change.
A delegation of four professional women from Morocco made a stop at Irondequoit Town Hall last week and spoke, through a translator, with Supervisor Mary Joyce D’Aurizio and Comptroller Annie Seeley.
The purpose of the trip, arranged through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, was to study gender issues and women in society. The delegation was hosted locally by Josephine M. Perini of the Rochester International Council.
At Irondequoit Town Hall, the four guests — Amina Benomar, from an office of the Ministry of Interior in the city of Rabat, Morocco; Amal Khaldi, a librarian from Rabat; Rajae Rouijel, chief of the division of library collection development for the National Library in Morocco; and Majda Saber, a journalist with a French-language daily newspaper in Morocco — wanted to hear D’Aurizio’s background, about her leadership skills and why she chose to run for elected office.
“My greatest surprise is that most of the skills I used day in and day out as a teacher for 30 years are the same ones I’m using now. Those are skills like supervision, management and decision-making,” D’Aurizio said.
Asked to speak about obstacles women in public office have to overcome, D’Aurizio said that “very traditional males” still have more confidence in other males, “but we are making great headway. ... Women need to become stronger advocates for women.”
After hearing from D’Aurizio and Seeley, Rouijel, who admitted that she had no interest in politics at all, said, “I may be changing my mind ... maybe I needed to travel to start participating and becoming more involved.”
The delegation arrived in the Rochester area July 9 after stops in Washington, D.C., Indianapolis and San Francisco. The women visited Niagara Falls July 10, then attended a High Falls laser show in Rochester that evening. They attended a dance festival at Nazareth College July 11, then spent Monday meeting with businesswomen from the Rochester Business Alliance and the Rochester Women’s Network prior to stopping in Irondequoit.
After lunch on Monday, the delegation was scheduled to tour Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony House, and on Tuesday the women were scheduled to meet with Supervisor Sandra Frankel at Brighton Town Hall. Also on the itinerary: the Rochester Regional Library Council, Garth Fagan Dance and the new Museum of Kids Art in Rochester. They were scheduled to leave Rochester for their final tour stop, in Miami, on Wednesday.
Noting that they learned the U.S. Senate is made up of only 17 percent women, and that in six years Morocco has gone from fewer than a half a percent of women holding elected office to 12 percent, Benomar reflected, “Maybe we’re not as far behind as we thought we were.”
