Gender and Coloniality: the ‘Moroccan woman’ and the ‘Spanish woman’ in Spain’s Sanitary Policies in Morocco

Approaching from a perspective that takes discourse as a tool of power in arranging and shaping the ‘social body,’ the article shows the importance of looking at gender when addressing the issues of coloniality and the colonial difference in general and when addressing the issue of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco in particular. This reflection and analysis concentrates on the relevance of gender relations, and of women, in the medical-sanitary discourse and practices of the colonial period. Some central points include how health influenced the shaping of gender relations under colonialism and how these gender relations were implicitly or explicitly part of sanitary initiatives, serving to establish a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The author also underscores that these relations were not only of gender, and that they enabled colonial power to be exercised, while simultaneously permitting relationships of complicity between certain groups of colonized and colonizers.