Female Modesty Research Articles

Shame and Safety Pins: Dress Controversy and ‘Moral Technologies’ in 1900s Urdu Magazines for Women

This article interrogates the changing bodily practices of shame (sharm) in colonial India at a time when a Muslim national identity was being shaped and gender expectations were being questioned with the growing presence of women in the public sphere. Focusing on a controversy on Muslim dress reform in two Urdu periodicals for women, Tahzīb un-Niswān (Ladies’ Culture, a weekly from Lahore) and Ḵẖātūn (Madam, a monthly from Aligarh) in 1905–7, I examine the way upper- and middle-class women navigated Islamic prescriptions and Western ideas of ‘progress’ while debating the contours of community identities. In the quest to safeguard their modesty, the new technology of the safety pin offered a creative solution. This article argues that it played an active role in allowing for new practices of female modesty and in creating tensions around group (qaum) formation in British India.

Negotiating the exigencies of nationalism: Tipu Sultan in Pakistani cinema

ABSTRACT Through an in-depth study of Razzaq Qaiser’s 1977 historical film Tipu Sultan, this writing explores and analyses the binaries involving women, clothes, morality, Islam and the nation state in Pakistan. The film is situated in the complex political matrix from which Pakistan emerged and is also read as a response to the ideological challenges of the 1970s when it was released. I will argue that Qaiser’s sartorial and choreographical choices for Tipu and his household, and for those beyond his austere Muslim family, represent the complex interplay of religious transcendence and sexuality. Mysore surrogates for Pakistan in the film, where undomesticated sexuality is taken as a peril to the nation state. My study will connect past and present through debates over female modesty and the frequent violence that women are subjected to for exposure and indecency in Pakistan. Concomitantly, this study will read Qaiser’s film (1977) for the popular anti-colonial story it relates, and also draw attention to the unsavoury and inconvenient one of Tipu’s quasi colonisation of the south that it represses, revealing an internal percolation between the binaries that the film upholds.

How Decriminalisation Reduces Harm Within and Beyond Sex Work: Sex Work Abolitionism as the \u201cCult of Female Modesty\u201d in Feminist Form

BackgroundSex work has a long history and takes different forms, but the associated precarity and danger, particularly where poorer women and minorities are concerned, is undeniable. There is growing evidence that decriminalisation reduces harm, and, indeed, it is the policy approach favoured by sex worker groups. Despite this, many feminists instead seek to “end demand” for paid sex, recommending legal penalties for sex buyers, with the aim of abolishing sex work altogether.MethodThis paper takes a comparative approach, examining why “end demand” is applied to sex work but not to care work. Abolition is typically justified both in terms of reducing harm to sex workers and to women more generally, with sex work’s very existence being thought to perpetuate the notion that all women are “sex objects.” Women are, however, not only exposed to harm within care work but are also commonly stereotyped as care givers, and in a way that has similarly been argued to contribute to gender inequality.ResultsBy comparing sex work with care work, this paper reveals the logical inconsistency in the “end demand” approach; unlike with sex work, there is little push to criminalise those who purchase care or other such domestic labour services. By revealing the moral nature of abolitionist arguments, and the disrespectful way in which sex workers are characterised within radical feminist literature, it argues that, rather than reducing harm, the “end demand” approach perpetuates harm, conspiring in the notion that “immodest” women are the cause of social ills.ConclusionsReducing the harm that sex workers—and women more generally—face requires feminists to challenge “the cult of female modesty”, rather than to be complicit in it.

Authentic Deception or the Ethos Paradox of Social Media Influencers: Female Emirati Consumers’ Perception of Instagram Models

Instagram is the fastest rising social medium used by young people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and therefore constitutes a superb means for companies to advertise their brands. To better inform the selection of the most well-targeted and effective models for advertising products, this research first analyzed UAE-based Instagram posts to explore the types of models used for different types of advertising content on Instagram. Individual interviews were then conducted with Emirati women consumers to determine the criteria they use when reviewing Instagram models in terms of the intention to purchase. Results reveal that there are three archetypal models connected with product ranges relating to (1) beauty, (2) health, and (3) fashion. Four determining factors in purchase decisions emerged, namely, (1) product effect, (2) product display, (3) the modesty of the models, and (4) the pose of the models. These last two, and most notably, the modesty of the model, is perhaps somewhat uniquely relevant to the region given the primacy of female modesty within the Islamic canon. Moreover, the majority of women interviewed stressed that they favor models who exemplify a realistic lifestyle and authentic beauty. While the goal of effortless perfection is a common one, this objective may be more dominant in this socio-cultural region, given the Islamic prescriptions on female modesty. Such a desire for an effortless perfection and authentic deception characterizes the essence of the ethos paradox of Instagram models. The value of this empirical investigation is that it highlights a potential pitfall for advertisers in making the assumption that featuring strong influencers in their advertising is necessarily an enhancement of sales potential. Moreover, it illustrates how Instagram endorsement functions in this geopolitical context and offers guidelines for optimizing Instagram advertising.

Redesign of Functional <i>Kaba</i> (Blouse) Apparel for Ghanaian Breastfeeding Mothers

Kaba is considered to be a kind of traditional apparel worn by the women in Ghana. Though, it’s worn to accentuate female modesty, chastity and elegance among the women folks. The modern day woman faces a lot of physical and emotional challenges when it comes to breastfeeding. There is a need to redesign and improve upon the kaba apparel for breastfeeding purposes. This study, therefore, sought to redesign functional kaba apparel for breastfeeding mothers. Based on the apparel design framework of Lamb and Kallal, design requirements were identified from breastfeeding mothers and incorporated into the designed apparel. Five prototype designs were made and tested by three selected mothers towards effective breastfeeding. Findings revealed that the prototype apparels made of fasteners and openings in the horizontal, diagonal and vertical directions with zippers and buttons were said to be suitable, comfortable to use and hence acceptable for implementation. This added functional part of the apparel boosted the comfort and confidence of the mother without compromising on their expressive values.

The Vulnerable Data Subject: A Gendered Data Subject?

Vulnerability is an emerging topic in many different fields, but in data protection and privacy the discussion has rarely engaged with gender studies. This paper investigates the notion of the ‘vulnerable data subject’ from a gender perspective, to question whether gender should be regarded as factor of vulnerability at all, and, if yes, how. In addition, what do these reflections tell us about the (gendered or un-gendered) notion of ‘standard data subject’? In the EU data protection law (GDPR), even though the term ‘vulnerable data subject’ is only incidentally mentioned and referring explicitly just to children, several Data Protection Authorities (e.g., in Spain and Poland) have considered “being female” as a potential source of data subject’s vulnerability (e.g., in case of consumers victims of sex-related crimes). The US privacy tort - as originally conceived - was built off gendered notions of female modesty, suggesting women were vulnerable, and thus connecting women’s privacy claims to the ‘wrong kind of privacy’. Looking at the history and foundations of privacy and data protection law, surface questions such as whether the ‘average data subject’ in privacy and data protection legislation is, by default, a man, and, whether women might have to be regarded as vulnerable data subjects just because they are women. This article then look into law and economics analysis of consumers’ behaviour, but also political philosophy and, in particular, gender studies, where we can observe a real intellectual polarisation: on the one hand the vulnerability universalist approach, according to which every human is vulnerable, otherwise vulnerability would be a stigmatizing label; on the other hand the particularistic approach, according to which some subjects are more vulnerable than others (in particular, women are more vulnerable - i.e., subject to adverse effects - than men in many contexts: workplace, education, etc.). A third way might be the theory of Luna, based on a contextual and relational (even situational) nature of vulnerability. This solution is compatible with the layered risk-based approach in the GDPR, but also with the intersectional approach in gender studies. This “third way” might be also a cautious solution to the ambiguous and inconsistent focus on vulnerability both in the European Commission documents and proposed legislation (e.g., the EU Regulation AI) and in the EU data protection practice (considering, e.g., the ineffective protection of children).

Political Embodiments of the Hijab in Narratives of Iraqi Refugee Women in Diaspora

This article explores how young displaced Iraqi Sunni Muslim women negotiate religious identity in diaspora, and how veiling becomes an expression of a new politicised Islamic feminism. Veiling continues to be the focus of ideological debates about Islam and women’s rights in the Muslim world and in the global diaspora of displaced refugees. Young refugee and migrant women find themselves at the intersection of new and old Muslim communities, secular and religious feminisms, and first- and second-generation ideals of female modesty. Based on oral histories conducted with Arab and Kurdish Sunni Iraqi women now resettled in the Toronto and Detroit areas, the article traces a new trend in grassroots religiosity among young women in diaspora. New forms of a politicised religious subjectivity, in this case through veiling, suggest that these young women actively mobilise around a religiously constituted political consciousness. As a ‘speech act’ wearing hijab can in part be understood as a political performance that embodies the intersections of religious and non-religious symbolism. As the article argues, it is as migrants located at the intersection of new and old imaginaries of a global Umma that these reimagined religious subjectivities are forged.

Visualising Female Authorship. Author Portraits and the Representation of Female Literary Authority in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Abstract This article discusses printed author portraits of women writers as vehicles of public image in the male-dominated eighteenth-century book market. It shows how Dutch women writers responded to the growing demand for author portraits and used their portrait engravings to shape their public image. It proved to be a fine line between showcasing literary aspirations and maintaining female modesty.

The centrality of the female body in Brazilian culture: Evangelical and Muslim responses

ABSTRACTThis article aims to analyse how both Evangelical and Islamic religions deal with a central aspect of the construction of the Brazilian national identity: the body. The Brazilian religious field is exposed to this cultural value and reacts to it in different ways. While Islam preaches female modesty, involving the ‘concealment’ of the body and its forms, Evangelicals reinforce part of the Brazilian culture of appreciation and care for physical attributes, albeit using the rhetoric of doing so with moderation and modesty. The data presented here were collected through interviews with religious leaders and through participant observation in the Baptist Church of Lagoinha, in Belo Horizonte, and the Islamic Youth League, in São Paulo, Brazil.

Gender, Everyday Resistance and Bodily Integrity: Women’s Lives on Delhi Streets

Despite a dramatic increase in homelessness globally, little attention has been paid to the effects of gender and other identities on unsheltered women’s lives in non-Western contexts. Like their housed counterparts, homeless women in India live with gender norms such as female modesty, marriage, motherhood, and economic dependence. This ethnographic study focused on the lives and surrounding environment of 10 women sleeping rough in Delhi, India. The primary goal was to explore how they enact or subvert gender norms in maintaining bodily integrity and autonomy and the influence of intersectional identities in mediating such enactments. Findings show that allegiances to marriage and motherhood are moderated by exigency. Acts of “everyday resistance,” including sexual freedom, mobility, self-sufficiency, and self-defense, brought negative and positive consequences. Intersections of religion or caste with gender were less salient, thus underscoring the influence of gender. Similarities and differences are noted in comparing their experiences to those of other homeless women globally. Implications for social work practice include greater attention to gender and other structural barriers while working with homeless women seeking to rebuild their lives.

‘Good Muslim women’ at work: An Islamic and postcolonial perspective on ethnic privilege

AbstractWithin sparse studies available on ethnic privilege at work, the emphasis is dominantly on ethnic privileges available to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual men and to a lesser extent white women. This paper presents and develops an Islamic and postcolonial perspective on ethnic privilege, which is unique not only due to contextual and cultural differences but also due to its postcolonial nature and composition. By postcolonial, the paper refers to cultural legacies of Arab colonialism and ideology in South Asia and elsewhere. Drawing on a qualitative study of Muslim female employees in Pakistan, the paper shows that religio-ethnic privilege represents postcolonial influences of a foreign (Arab-Salafi, ultra-orthodox Islamist) culture on a (non-Arab Muslim) society, and as such does not represent ethnic norms of a local mainstream society. The paper investigates the case of religio-ethnic privilege and female employment in Pakistan and examines how a foreign-influenced stereotype of female modesty is used to benchmark and preferentially treat ‘good Muslim women.’ The analysis shows that an Islamic and postcolonial lens may be needed to understand the nature and implications of religio-ethnic privilege at work in Muslim majority countries and societies.

Gender equality in employment in Saudi Arabia: a relational perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine gender inequality in Saudi Arabia by using a relational perspective that takes into account the interrelated nature of the multilevel factors that influence this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachA total of 21 in-depth interviews with female employees in Saudi Arabia were conducted and analysed using a thematic analysis.FindingsThe findings show how the interplay of factors on macro, meso and micro levels influences equal opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia, such as religio-cultural factors, the social power of wasta, the notions of female modesty and family honour and issues related to gender segregation, discrimination and harassment at work. Moreover, Saudi women’s experiences are varied on the basis of social class, family status and other dimensions of individual identity, adding to a growing body of intersectional research. The paper highlights the role of male guardianship system as well as the intersection of gender and class in pushing gender equality forward.Originality/valueThis study stresses the interrelated nature of the multilevel factors that affect gender equality and highlights the important role of individual agency and resilience.

Politic sacrifice in Lucrecia y Tarquino

This paper analyses Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla's comedia, Lucrecia y Tarquino, in relation to the fraught body politics of an absolutist age. Diverging both from the eroticized Lucretias of Renaissance painting and from the antique Roman portrayal of Lucretia's martyrdom as a pathos-ridden public spectacle that fueled Republican revolution, Rojas's Lucrecia is adapted to a conservative courtly milieu in which corporeal display is ridden with problematic connotations. By combining compelling performance and stringent decorum, Lucrecia embodies the ideals of an epoch marked at once by the recognition that the incitement of truculent emotion is a powerful political tool and by the belief in strict disciplining of the senses. While some have read Lucrecia's embodiment of female modesty as denoting a lack of agency, I show her to be a model of heroic action well suited to the conflicted post-Machiavellian world where messianic idealism coexists with political pessimism.

Reflections on Cultivating Community-based Participatory Research Partnerships with the Afghan Immigrant Community.

Reflections on Cultivating Community–based Participatory Research Partnerships with the Afghan Immigrant Community Mehra Shirazi Background Using a community–based participatory research (CBPR) approach, we describe the process of a first–time campus–community partnership between UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the Afghan Coalition in California. Objectives: We reflect on lessons learned in cultivating a unique community health partnership to provide a preliminary understanding of how Afghan immigrant women view their breast health, and to determine and assess their barriers to breast cancer screening. This story will emphasize the importance and challenges of (1) negotiating equitable collaborative relationships, (2) recruitment and retention of participants by community members and ways to overcome cultural and language barriers, (3) training of community members, and (4) data dissemination. Conclusion Conducting meaningful community partnerships should be driven by a social justice agenda where community has control over the production of knowledge and engaged in all phases of research. There is also a need for transparency and mutual agreement around roles and responsibilities where researchers take on facilitative roles and do not attempt to control the research process. These are the reflections of the first community/campus partnership between the Afghan Coalition of Alameda County, CA and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in an effort to provide a preliminary understanding of how Afghan women view their breast health. This was done through in–depth semi–structured interviews conducted with non–English speaking first–generation immigrant Afghan women above the age of 40. This narrative aims to describe the experience of engaging in community–academic partnerships that brought forth essential information pertaining to the breast health [End Page 21] screening practices of Afghan women which then led to a five–year breast health education intervention program funded by the National Institute of Health. My mother, my sister, my aunt, my daughter . . . In telling their stories, the women were speaking about their struggles, their pain and resilience. They painted an accurate picture of breast cancer in their communities, which remained a subject considered taboo in Afghan culture. It was clear this was more than a “make sure everyone gets a pamphlet” intervention. No intervention was going to work unless it was a part of the community itself; not for them or about them or even from them. In a refugee community struggling against the label of terrorist as the United States entered its second decade of war in Afghanistan, information and access to preventative healthcare, including breast cancer screening, was minimal. And the stories kept coming. My niece, my daughter–in–law . . . Working with the Afghan community of Alameda County, CA, the largest Afghan refugee population in the United States, two–thirds of whom are female, meant we were approaching a long–established community with its own politics, social and cultural norms, and community leaders. It can be easy, and expedient, to paint broad circles in the name of increased access, but it was clear that previous research on immigrant Muslim women and breast cancer hadn’t addressed the scope of what we were facing. The women here were less literate, unaware of screening recommendations, and hampered by their immigrant status, cultural valuation of female modesty, and a necessary wariness of any dealings with officialdom in the age of the “War on Terror” wherein the community was consistently approached for informants. My mother–in–law, my cousin, my wife . . . Establishing any partnership is part act of faith and part extended learning curve, but the development of a true partnership across culture, language, religion, and deep societal mistrust required more than good intentions. The high rates of breast cancer anecdotally reported in the population, as well as the lack of access to care still faced by an established community (mean residence in the US was 16 years) pointed to the need for a culturally based intervention program to establish and address attitudes toward breast cancer screening among a population with limited English language usage, high rates of illiteracy in any language, cultural concerns around female modesty, and limited access to healthcare providers. Two groups, from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the community via the non–profit Afghan Coalition came together for a...

Love in the Middle East: The contradictions of romance in the Facebook World

Romantic love is a social fact in the Muslim world. It is also a gender politics impinging on religious and patriarchal understandings of female modesty and agency. This paper analyzes the rise of love as a basis of mate selection in a number of Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey where we have conducted Web-based anonymous surveys of Facebook users. Young people increasingly want love in their married lives, but they and the communities in which they live remain uncomfortable with the mating practices through which such love has traditionally been achieved in the Western world. The paper explores the religious contradictions and the gender politics of modern heterosexual love.

From Rhetoric to Reality: a Multilevel Analysis of Gender Equality in Pakistani Organizations

Despite numerous governmental attempts to improve women's employment and equality in Pakistan, statistics suggest that these effortxs have not been entirely fruitful. Steps taken by the government are usually in response to pressure from international donors and rights groups. However, there seem to be important contextual and sociocultural differences at play when it comes to how gender equality is to be achieved in organizational practice. Such differences, as well as an apparent lack of genuine commitment at the policy level, may explain why there remains a gap between the policy and praxis of gender equality in Pakistan. Informed by structural and relational perspectives of gender, this article draws on in‐depth qualitative interviews with female employees to explore the multilevel issues related to gender equality at the macro‐national, meso‐organizational and micro‐individual levels. In particular, it highlights such issues as societal norms of female modesty and gender segregation (macro), sexual harassment, career‐related challenges and income gap (meso), and family status and agency (micro).

Norwegian-Somali parents who send their children to schools in Somalia

AbstractThe perplexing numbers of Somali children withdrawn from schools in Norway and sent to Somalia is the concern of this study. These students are often brought back and re-enroll later as adolescents with concomitant educational challenges. The findings are critically analyzed employing John Ogbu’s cultural ecology of minorities and a CHAT-based inquiry that approaches the Somali community and Norwegian schooling as interconnected activities that share commonalities and yet evince several contradictions. The findings reveal the need to engage with Somali symbolic cultural artifacts (e.g. deen (religion), dhaqan (culture), gaal (the infidel or “Other”), and hisho (female modesty) and arrive at interpretations/understandings that are more amenable to educational success. It is argued that given the gravity and scale of the conundrum, both sides will have to think creatively if the aim is to safeguard the educational integrity of Somali children.

“The King’s Daughter is All Glorious Within”: Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema

“The King’s Daughter is All Glorious Within”: Female Modesty in Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema

“How little I cared for fame”: T. Sparrow and Women’s Investigative Journalism at the Fin de Siècle

This article analyzes the work of an overlooked female journalist, T. Sparrow, arguing that her career reveals the difficulties female journalists faced when negotiating between the expectations of middle-class gentility and the demands of investigative journalism. Sparrow asserted her gentility rhetorically, in part because female reporters who took up investigative reporting were vulnerable to criticism for assaying beyond domestic subjects. Moreover, incognito investigative reporting often brought celebrity to its practitioners, which challenged the convention of middleclass female modesty. Sparrow, therefore, strove for a delicate balance in her career—assuming the stance of a middle-class woman who lived among the poor, someone who was selfsupporting and well-published but still decorous and respectable.

Uncovering Modesty: Dejabis and Dewigies Expanding the Parameters of the Modest Fashion Blogosphere

Since the early 2000s modest fashion blogs and social media and related e-commerce have constituted a zone of women-led fashion mediation fostering dialogue within and across faiths and between religious and secular practitioners. Premised on a discourse of modest fashion as individual choice rather than compulsion, modest fashion incorporates style considerations into the quotidian practices of “everyday religion” characterized by blending, syncretism, and contradiction. This article examines how modest fashion discourse responds to the increasing numbers of women who choose to discard what have come to be the key signifiers of religious female modesty in Islam and orthodox Judaism, the hijab and the wig or hat, made prominent online by the wardrobe changes of two transnationally prominent USA-based bloggers, Nina Cohen of alltumbledown and Winnie Détwa of winniedetwaland. Interviews and blog and social media analysis demonstrate that contra mainstream orientalist presumptions that women who remove the veil have been saved from Muslim civilizational alterity, online debates within modest fashion seek to regard these modified forms of self-presentation as widening, rather than quitting, the frame of modest embodiment.