OULAD SEBATA, Morocco — For most of her life, Saida Soukat’s days were filled with the routines of the farm, working the fields and minding the cattle. A recent Tuesday found her doing something far different, though, speaking before a group of women during their biweekly protests to demand a halt in the state-sanctioned privatization of traditional tribal collectives, called the Sulaliyyate lands.

“One foot up, one foot down. For my land, my blood will shed,” she chanted in a megaphone.

The Sulaliyyates, as the women are known, began their protests 10 years ago and have since assembled a powerful grass-roots organization fighting not only for the tribal lands but for equal ownership rights in a country where women, by law, inherit less than men.

“This is really the first movement that is shaking the patriarchal foundation of the society,” says Zakia Salime, an associate professor at Rutgers University who has extensively studied the movement. “They are saying no, you cannot give land to men, and they are asking also that, in case you privatize the land, we need to have our equal share.”

This is all happening against a backdrop of economic and social change in Morocco that figures prominently in the women’s movement.