Aicha Chenna

Chenna began her career as a social worker, a job that put her face to face with the devastating impact of traditional Islamic social, religious and legal discrimination against women who become pregnant outside of marriage. With no consideration for the circumstances of the pregnancy and with no accountability placed on the father, these women were routinely rejected by their families, denied medical and government assistance and even sentenced to jail or fines. Often illiterate, unskilled and lacking the financial means to raise a child on their own, many of these women made the difficult choice to abandon their babies to orphanages or hospitals.

In 1985 Chenna founded the Association Solidarité Féminine (ASF), the first organization of its kind for single mothers in the Islamic world. From its modest beginnings in the basement of a Casablanca women’s organization, ASF has grown into a multi-dimensional program that provides shelter, childcare, legal counsel, literacy classes, vocational training and other resources to thousands of single mothers seeking to keep their children while forging socially and economically independent lives. 

Alongside her work with ASF, Chenna fought to dismantle entrenched Moroccan social and religious taboos against single mothers and to win legal reforms in their favor. A significant victory came in 2004, with revisions to the Moudawana (family law) that expanded women’s rights in marriage, divorce and child custody while making Morocco the first Arab country where a man could be subject to a DNA paternity test.

Over the course of her career, Chenna endured criticism and even death threats from religious conservatives who claimed that her advocacy for the social inclusion and civil rights of single mothers amounted to promoting prostitution. Refusing to be intimidated, she insisted that her work was inspired by her own faith and by core Islamic values, famously describing herself as “secular in my head, Muslim in my heart.”

Beyond the controversy she generated, Chenna also received international recognition and numerous awards for her pioneering humanitarian work. In 2009 she became the first Arab Muslim woman to receive the prestigious Opus Prize, the world’s largest faith-based prize for entrepreneurship. Chenna died in Morocco in 2022, but the model of solidarity for single mothers that she created with ASF lives on.

Contributors: Maha Tazi, Erin Brown