One of the tenets of the Moudawana set a minimum marriage age for girls, increasing the minimum age from 15 to 18. Therefore, we asked respondents to cite which age they believe is the minimum acceptable age for girls to marry. A plurality of men (34%) mention age 18 as the minimum acceptable age for women to be married, and a sizable proportion (22%) mention age 20. Seventeen percent of Moroccan men still believe women can be married at 17 years of age or younger. When tallying different ages given by men, we see that the average minimum age for a girl’s marriage according to men is 20 (Figure 9).

• For women, the average minimum age is higher by almost six years, standing at 26. Indeed, a plurality of women (32%) believes the minimum age for a girl to be married is 20 and 22% believe it should be 18. Only 6% of Moroccan women believe a girl under 18 should get married, while men are almost three times as likely as women to accept a minimum marriage age of less than 18. In sum, 94% of Moroccan women are in line with the stipulations of the family law, in that they believe a girl should be at least 18 to get married, compared with 83% of men. Moreover, women are more likely than men to cite age 19 and above as an acceptable marriage age for girls: 66% of women cite age 19 or higher compared with 48% of men (Figure 10).