المستخلص: |
Women’s representation in popular proverbs is an important area of inquiry within cultural and gender studies. Popular proverbs, as a crucial component of intangible popular culture, are worth studying in meticulous detail. They indeed constitute a fertile ground for patriarchal ideology, and hence normalize the socio-economic, cultural, and political status of women in a certain society. Their power resides in their far-flung corollaries resulting from their taken-for-grantedness by the grassroots. Therefore, proverbs can reproduce a negative or positive image on gender across cultures. With this idea in mind and contrary to previous studies which have dealt with the negative portrayal of women in most Moroccan folk proverbs, the present study lays emphasis on those Moroccan popular proverbs which portray women positively. The aim is to promote a balanced proverbial discourse that gives justice to women’s overriding role in society. The data of this study were collected through an e-mail questionnaire, which targeted 60 respondents from Chouabib Doukkali University, the School of Humanities, El Jadida. The findings show that all the respondents (100%) agree that most popular proverbs on women are negative, and the large majority of them believe that men use more negative proverbs in daily conversations than women do.
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