In Morocco, only 15.4% of women aged 15 and over were in paid employment or self-employment in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 61.1% of men. These findings from the High Commission for Planning (HCP), cited in its analysis published on 23 October, place the challenge well beyond the difficulties of finding a job alone. Understanding access to an income from work also requires looking at what comes before the job search.
Labour market participation stands at 18.1% among women, compared with 66.5% among men. It includes people in employment and those actively seeking work while being available to take it up. A large share of women therefore remains outside this group. Difficulties in accessing income arise both in the search for a job and in the very ability to begin that search or to make oneself available.
Employment needs beyond unemployment
The report counts 374,000 women in strict unemployment, to which is added a separate group of 316,000 women belonging to the potential labour force. These women want to work but do not simultaneously meet the conditions of active search and availability. Some are looking for a job without being able to start immediately; others are available without having taken active steps. Their situation falls outside the unemployment rate alone, yet it also reflects a need for work.
These two groups should not be confused with the full set of women who are distant from the labour market. In a narrower age band, that of 15 to 64 years, the HCP records around 9.7 million women outside the labour force. Studies or training are among their reasons for not participating, as is health. Not all of them are therefore either seeking work or immediately available to take up a job.
This diversity matters for how access to employment is supported. For women who are already searching and available, the challenge is to find a job. For those who want to work but cannot start, it is also necessary to understand what limits their availability. The distinction used by the International Labour Organization makes this second need visible, without assuming that a job offer alone would be enough to meet it.
Women's participation nonetheless rose between the first two quarters of 2026, from 17.5% to 18.1%, while strict female unemployment fell from 16.1% to 14.8%. This quarterly improvement, measured in the HCP's new survey, qualifies the picture of limited access to employment. It is not enough to establish a lasting trend, but it shows that low participation and improving indicators can coexist.
The household plays a central role in declared constraints
The reasons given by women aged 15 to 64 outside the labour force give concrete content to availability constraints. Housework and household responsibilities are cited by 61.6% of them, and child-rearing by 50.3%. A single woman could give several reasons, so these proportions do not add up. They nonetheless show how central the home is in the responses collected.
The time absorbed by these activities was measured in another HCP survey, conducted between October 2021 and February 2022 among 12,000 households. Women aged 15 and over then spent an average of 4 hours and 17 minutes a day on housework, compared with 38 minutes for men. This historical observation sheds light on how time is divided within households; it does not describe how the women surveyed spent their time in 2026.
The burden also varied by place of residence. In this panel, rural women spent 4 hours and 43 minutes a day on housework, compared with 4 hours and 04 minutes for urban women. The national average therefore masked different daily routines. To understand the possibilities for access to paid work, the time already devoted to the home is thus a dimension to examine alongside the situation in the job market.
The absence of paid employment does not, moreover, mean the absence of work. International standards, presented notably by the World Bank, distinguish employment for pay or profit from other productive activities, including production intended for household consumption. Domestic tasks also take up time without providing an income from work. This boundary explains why employment figures need to be read alongside activities carried out in the home.
Services that matter before and after entry into employment
Family composition sharpens these differences. In its study of women's economic empowerment in Morocco, the OECD draws on the time-use survey for 2011-2012. Women with no child under 15 then spent fewer than four hours a day on domestic activities, compared with more than six hours for those with three or more children. These older data document a contrast between households, without allowing its current scale to be inferred.
The OECD links these gaps to the conditions in which tasks are carried out. Access to childcare, pre-school provision and care for dependants matters, as do running water, electricity and labour-saving household appliances. The organisation also notes that the use of paid domestic help varies with household resources. Needs therefore cannot be met by a single solution for all women.
The reasons declared in 2026 and these historical surveys thus shed light on two complementary dimensions of access to income. Finding a job presupposes the possibility of work, but also the time to carry it out. The documents do not make it possible to quantify how many additional jobs would result from a new supply of childcare or a better sharing of tasks. They do, however, make visible the role of household organisation in professional availability.
This question remains after entry into employment. In the HCP panel of 2021-2022, women who were working still devoted 3 hours and 17 minutes a day to household chores alone inside the home, notably cooking, washing up and laundry. Paid work was therefore added to a domestic burden that was already significant. Services and the sharing of these tasks also concern the conditions under which women can continue to pursue their activity.