Visibility and Women’s Rights: A Conversation with Oumayma Izm

Over coffee in Morocco, I sat down with Oumayma Izm of the Amal Center for Women and we talked about women, tradition, and what it looks like to navigate change from inside a culture rather than outside of it.

The Amal Center in Marrakech supports women navigating economic and social barriers through culinary training, education, and pathways to employment. But their work goes beyond job readiness. At its core, it creates visibility, a space where women often overlooked by formal systems can be recognized for their skills, ambitions, and full humanity.

When people are invisible in the narratives that shape institutions, their needs are easier to overlook. Policies and programs are designed without a full picture of the lives they are meant to support. Visibility, in that sense, is directly connected to women’s rights because it determines whose experiences inform decisions and whose voices shape access to opportunity.

For leaders, there is a broader lesson here. Advocacy is not only about advancing ideas at a policy level. It is also about building environments where people can recognize themselves inside the story of the work. When institutions take visibility seriously, they begin to design strategies that center the perspectives of those most affected. That shift strengthens both the credibility and the long-term impact of their efforts.

After our conversation, I kept thinking about how wide the gap can feel between policy conversations and everyday life. Decisions that shape opportunity are often made far from the communities that live with their consequences. Leaders like Oumayma narrow that distance. Work grounded in daily relationships with the people it serves carries insights that don’t surface in reports or strategy sessions alone. When policymakers and organizations treat community leaders as partners in learning, not just implementers of programs, the result is policy that is more humane, more informed, and more capable of supporting women’s rights in ways that endure.

Conversations like this are a reminder that the future of women’s rights is shaped not only by policy frameworks, but by the everyday spaces where women are seen, heard, and taken seriously.

If you’d like to learn more about or support the Amal Center’s work, you can find more about their programs here.