Muslim womanhood, education, and empowerment: ethnographic reflections from Pakistan and India

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn contemporary times, the status of Muslim women has become a lens to approach and engage with Muslim societies. Embedded in these narratives is an image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their patriarchal families and societies. In this article, we focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women from Pakistan and India to examine what empowerment means for them. We are particularly interested in examining how these participants, being some of the first and only educated women in their rural and low-income communities, employ their distinct educated status to construct what it means to be empowered Muslim women in their contexts. This focus on the lived experiences is a departure from frameworks that offer universalistic and homogeneous understandings of Islam, education, and empowerment. Instead, it provides insights into the complex, and at times even contradictory, meanings and performances of gendered identities shaped by historical and social conditions.