Defining ‘Modern’ Malay womanhood and the coexistent messages of the veil

Abstract

The gender constructions and performances of Malay women are often perceived by outside researchers as ‘shrouded under a veil’ of increasing Islamic conservatism. Urban Malay women, however, argue that women actively engage in the construction and performance of gender identities. Based on research conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during 2001 and 2003, this article argues that women advantageously alter, transform and utilise the constructs placed upon them by Islam, by ethnic identification and by conceptions of ‘modernity’. Often one image of ‘womanhood’ is presented and in public – an image that is socially accepted, honoured and respected – while less publicly alternative forms of ‘womanhood’ articulate individual goals and aims. Using an agent-oriented perspective, this article further includes an analysis of women's individual renegotiations of larger cultural constructs and the ways in which the tudong, or headscarf, has become a symbol by which individual women express their understanding of social position and personal freedoms in an industrialised Islamic context.