Pakistani Muslim Women Research Articles

Using hybrid qualitative analysis to explore lived experience of motherhood and postnatal depression: A thematic-dialogical approach

This paper illustrates a novel hybrid approach to analysis which offers unique insights into the experience of postnatal depression in British Pakistani-Muslim women, through the prioritising of voice. To do so, we combine thematic and dialogical analysis, using data from a study on motherhood and postnatal depression. Participants were part of the birth cohort ‘Born in Bradford's Better Start’. The rationale for developing a hybridised approach is discussed. The ensuing analyses highlight the role of internal voices and chronotope, which give a detailed insight into women's meaning making of psychological distress and motherhood during the postnatal period. We go onto discuss the strength and limitations of hybridising thematic-dialogical analysis in the context of health research.

An intersectional reflexive account on positionality: researching Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim lone motherhood

Engaging in ‘reflexive practice’ throughout the research process (Benson and O’Reilly, 2022) and a ‘reflexivity of discomfort’ (Hamdan, 2009) through an intersectional lens, this article presents a reflective account of accessing and conducting observations and interviews at a South Asian women’s organisation, in North England, to explore Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim (PBM) lone motherhood. It critically explores how researchers’ own subjectivities and intersecting identities – in this case, my intersecting identities and positionalities as a young British Pakistani Muslim women, researcher and volunteer – impact interactions in different circumstances with different groups of participants and the importance of having continuous critical self-awareness. Moving beyond simplistic insider–outsider debates, the paper contributes towards further developing reflexivity debates taking an ‘intersectional reflexivity’ approach. It argues for thinking about the research process and engagements in the field as socially constructed, changing, adapting and negotiated overtime and to utilise intersectionality to unpick broader categories. Finally, it encourages researchers to adopt reflexivity in their research practices.

“It is like second nature”: informal giving among Pakistani Muslims in an English city

This article explores how the Islamic principles underpinning zakat and sadaqah aid the development of localised informal support networks in an English city. The article draws on interviews conducted with Pakistani Muslim men and women living in areas of high deprivation. Participants self-identified as a ‘community’ that was multigenerational yet built largely on traditional and conventional Muslim practices. Presenting empirical data that demonstrate the existence of Muslim philanthropic activity, participants provide their own interpretations of zakat and sadaqah while making a distinction between ‘charity’ and more general ‘good deeds’. The findings address a gap in knowledge surrounding the role that informal support plays in supporting Pakistani Muslims in Britain who possess a lower socioeconomic status. The data reveal that the motivations surrounding engagement in informal support have consequences for (dis)engagement with some formal welfare support services.

Voice against Instrumentalization of Shame in Sanghera’s Daughters of Shame: A Feminist Perspective

The primary aim of this research is to explore how the female protagonists of the novel, Daughters of Shame by Jasvinder Sanghera resist the patriarchal trend of instrumentalizing women as shameful creatures, marginalizing women and how they struggle to establish their identity. Through the close reading of the text from the perspectives of Materialist feminism, the paper focuses on how the major women characters, along with the writer herself, like Shazia, Fozia Maya, Shabana and Yasmin help each other by giving psychological and physical support to fight against exploitation by men. These characters represent the dominated Pakistani Muslim and Sikh women in the modern city in Derby in particular and the Sikh and Muslim communities in general. The memoir has presented women as the object to be used for convenience, the satisfaction of men, and as unpaid domestic laborers. The chief finding is that the memoir depicts the social reality of how Muslim and Sikh women living in Western countries are compelled to tolerate domestic violence, honor-based crimes, and forceful marriage. It is expected that the article will encourage other researchers to apply materialist feminism in other fictions.

Problems faced by Pakistani Muslim women in peace and reform and their solution in the light of Islamic teachings

Human's life cycle began with a man and a woman. The women breed the human race with her blood and children's care, home management, preparation of food and clothes have been remained in her duties. Peace is the substitute of security and reformation is the name of correction. So, it must be in view that where Islam wants collective reform, it never ignores person's correction but it declares that man's correction is truly a social reform. No doubt, the feminist part is called a spinal cord of society, if they come forward in this field to improve the work of reform, unite each other with the concept of every correction, the destination of our society will be reversed. In reality, the society will become a practical model of peace then it can be called a reformed and welfare community. This article will highlight, the problems related to Muslim women in peace and reform in Pakistan with their solutions in the light of Quran and Sunnah.

Design Practice: A Fusion of Faith and Fashion in Pakistan

This study aimed to design a unique gown collection for Pakistani Muslim women. Qualitative data were collected to identify the Islamic dressing requirements and demands of Pakistani Muslim women. Thirty Pakistani Muslim women were interviewed, and three key themes emerged, including (a) a new proposition is needed for Pakistani women’s fashion; (b) Modesty is the priority; and (c) Faith, Fashion and Fusion. Findings revealed that women in Pakistan want to adopt modern fashion trends as well as modesty. Pakistani women want to wear the styles of western evening gowns, but they are limited by the lack of modesty of these garments. Thus, women want designers to create a blend of Muslim clothing and modern evening gowns, so they can be modest as well as fulfil their desires to keep their attire trendy according to the trends of western evening gowns. Building on the interview findings, an abaya collection is designed by merging traditional Muslim abayas and western evening gowns.

Muslim female subjectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: disrupting the binary of the religious and the secular in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Muslim female subjectivity in Pakistan has mostly been defined through the dualistic perspectives of secular and religious standpoints. This paper, however, aims to examine and foreground the agentive efficacy of subjectivity, which is neither exclusively secular nor religious. Mohsin Hamid’s novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia presents a nuanced literary depiction of the Muslim female subject position. By taking the ‘lived’ experiences of major and minor female characters in fiction as case studies, this paper argues that the subjectivity of Muslim women is interstitial, rather than exclusively religious or secular. It argues that exclusive perspectives restrict and reduce Pakistani Muslim women’s agency and that negotiated identity built through performativity somewhere in a third-space is more agential, workable and socially accepted. Such negotiated identity can bring about transformation in women’s gendered subjectivity. This paper advances feminist discourse in Pakistan by foregrounding the epistemology of performativity and third-space to ascertain the efficacy and workability of Muslim women’s agency.

Young Muslim Women, Willfulness, and the Honor Crime.

In this paper I suggest that Muslim women’s emotional and affective relation to ‘culture’, ‘honor’ and Islam, often evident in transgressive acts but also attributed to them to serve other interests, becomes elided in feminist rhetorical and discursive struggles over the interrelationship between colonialism, Islam, gender and culture in existing scholarship on ‘the honor crime.’ As a Pakistani–Canadian Muslim woman, I draw from experiences in my own classes to reflect on young Muslim women’s emotional responses to cultural and honor-related regulation. Conceptualizing Canada and Pakistan as culturally, politically and affectively entangled transnational sites, I consider a strategy to validate the emotions of my students in Toronto by describing, sharing and theorizing the story of young Pakistani Muslim women’s disruptive acts, as demonstrated in Aurat (Women’s) March. I draw on Sarah Ahmed’s concept of willfulness as one possible strategy for young Muslim women to understand their own – and other Muslim women’s – transgressive desires, emotions and acts, which may run counter to identitarian constructs of Muslim/Western, Islamic/unIslamic, good/bad women. In doing so, this paper draws upon, but also diverges from, postcolonial and critical feminist approaches that have responded variously to the dilemma of confronting honor-related violence against Muslim women, which is (always) intersected by colonialism, racism and imperialism.

Those Glass Chains that Bind You: How British Muslim Women Professionals Experience Career, Faith and Family

AbstractThis paper contributes to gender and diversity research through proposing a new theoretical construct: glass chains. We develop ‘glass chains’ as a metaphor to illuminate how highly educated British Pakistani Muslim women professionals in the UK negotiate a fine balance between faith, family and personal ambition. Using a qualitative approach, we highlight tensions between religious and familial guidance within Islam, and workplace practices. Drawing upon the construct of ‘glass chains’, we articulate how 37 British Pakistani Muslim career women felt bound, by invisible glass chains, to the tenets of their faith. We show how the pull of glass chains obliged these women to resist certain career‐advancing opportunities. In so doing, we borrow from French philosopher Michel Foucault ideas about self‐oriented moral codes, engaging with his arguments that individuals may prioritize, over other obligations, the ties (or glass chains) which bind them to personal value sets in order that they may become ‘ethical selves’. While previous glass metaphors highlight barriers to female progression from external and structural angles, ‘glass chains’ are, by contrast, concerned with the potential for internal and personal constraints on women's ambitions. The metaphor ‘glass chains’ may be extended to enhance understanding of career constraints among other workers.

Being an insider and outsider: whiteness as a key dimension of difference

This article demonstrates the significance of engaging with whiteness as a key dimension of difference shaping research in multi-faceted ways. I critically reflect on a research project that included interviews with Muslim men in Rotherham, a northern English town that had experienced a child sexual exploitation crisis involving Pakistani Muslim men. It raised significant methodological and epistemological issues regarding my position in the research, as a white female researcher, and my relationships with local Pakistani Muslim men and women. I highlight the fluidity of my insider–outsider position through exploring political and ethical dilemmas involved in carrying out the research and structural and experiential aspects of researcher subjectivity. I show how being white both facilitated and obstructed the research as I steered my way through a highly sensitive set of circumstances and how engaging with whiteness is key in democratising research and shedding light on unequal power relations in knowledge production.

Young Muslim Pakistani Women's Lived Experiences of Izzat, Mental Health, and Well-Being.

This article explores how six Pakistani Muslim women interpret cultural concepts of izzat (honor and self-respect); what role, if any, it has in their lives; and whether there is interplay between upholding izzat and the participants' help-seeking strategies for mental health and well-being. Semistructured interviews were conducted and analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analytic framework. Three themes were identified: (a) "the rules of izzat," (b) "negotiating tensions," and (c) "speaking out/breaking the 'rules.'" Findings highlighted new insights into the understanding of izzat and the implications these cultural concepts have for strategies in managing or silencing of psychological distress. Interviews illustrated tensions the participants experience when considering izzat, how these are negotiated to enable them to self-manage or seek help, and possible life experiences that might lead to self-harm and attempted suicide. Notably, cultural codes, in particular izzat, appear to vary over the life course and are influenced by migration.

Reframing agency in abusive contexts: beyond ‘free choice’ and ‘open resistance’

South Asian women’s experiences of family abuse are not fully understood by state policy, particularly in relation to women’s ‘choices’ in response to abuse. Leaving an abusive relationship tends to be deemed the most, if not only, appropriate response. By drawing on the experiences of 11 Pakistani Muslim women, this paper argues that these simplistic assumptions overlook the diverse strategies women employ in response to abuse. These strategies range from compliance to overt forms of resistance, and they are complex and, at times, can be counterproductive and self-destructive. However, they challenge notions of passivity, and bring to light agentive behaviour best understood in the context of subordination and oppression that created the conditions of its enactment. What is important is that this paper should not create complacency in policy makers by reframing women as agents perfectly capable of altering the structures and constraints within which they are embedded. This paper proposes that government policy and service provider practice be shaped by an alternative perspective on women’s agency, one that recognises ‘exit’ as laden with difficulties and consequences for abused women, and one that does not insist upon physical acts of resistance to oppression as markers of agentive behaviour.

South Asian women’s experience of abuse by female affinal kin: a critique of mainstream conceptualisations of ‘domestic abuse’

Mainstream conceptualisations of domestic abuse that focus on an intimate relationship within a nuclear household do not reflect the experiences of abuse of many women, and this is particularly evident when exploring South Asian women’s experiences of family abuse. Drawing on the experiences of 11 Pakistani Muslim women interviewed for my doctoral research, I elucidate the role of the mother-in-law in instigating and perpetrating abuse against daughters-in-law. The sociocultural norms in extended family households, such as a preference for sons and maintaining a joint virilocal household, can cause tensions and hostility between mothers- and daughters-inlaw. These tendencies have potential for violence that is best understood as everyday practices of power and control. I argue that policy and practice, and research, must incorporate a deeper understanding of the family as a potential source of abuse, and particularly the role of female affinal kin, if women are to be protected from such abuse.

What is Food Without Love? The Micro-politics of Food Practices Among South Asians in Britain, India, and Pakistan

This article draws on Morgan’s theorisation of family life as consisting of political, moral, and emotional economies to examine the interplay of women’s control over resources, gender norms, and expectations of intimacy in the context of household food consumption. The research that informs the article focuses on findings from 84 interviews with two South Asian groups: Pakistani Muslim and Gujarati Hindu women with at least one dependent child and from a variety of occupations and household compositions. In examining everyday food consumption, the research demonstrates how gender hierarchies are reproduced by parallel, mutually reinforcing, political, moral, and emotional economies. The women in the study sometimes struggled to subvert gender oppression and negotiate more powerful positions within the household through food management and/or employing manipulative and deceptive tactics. The article argues that, while access to economic resources is important if women are to achieve desirable food and nutritional outcomes, it is not in itself sufficient to meet this aim. Instead, the interplay of resources, gender norms, and conjugal relations are central to household food consumption.

Young British Pakistani Muslim women’s involvement in higher education

This article explores the implications for identity through presenting a detailed analysis of how three British Pakistani women narrated their involvement in higher education. The increased participation of British South Asian women in higher education has been hailed as a major success story and is said to have enabled them to forge alternative, more empowering gender identities in comparison to previous generations. Drawing on generative narrative interviews conducted with three young women, we explore the under-researched area of Pakistani Muslim women in higher education. The central plotlines for their stories are respectively higher education as an escape from conforming to the “ good Muslim woman”; becoming an educated mother; and Muslim women can “ have it all.” Although the women narrated freedom to choose, their stories were complex. Through analysis of personal “I” and social “We” self-narration, we discuss the different ways in which they drew on agency and fashioned it within social and structural constraints of gender, class and religion. Thus, higher education is a context that both enables and constrains negotiations of identity.

Transnationalism, social capital and gender – young Pakistani Muslim women in Bradford, UK

This article considers the relationship between transnationalism and social capital amongst young Pakistani Muslim women in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The central aim of the article is to explore how second generation Pakistani Muslim women accrue faith based social capital to negotiate and resist transnational gendered expectations, norms and practices. In particular, they use faith-based social capital that is transnationally informed: to challenge the patriarchal expectations and norms of their families; to gain access to higher/further education and thereby improve their life opportunities; and to resist growing anti-Muslim sentiment. This paper draws on qualitative research (in-depth interviews) conducted in Bradford

The UK government’s conflicting agendas and ‘harmful’ immigration policies: Shaping South Asian women’s experiences of abuse and ‘exit’

In the context of the UK government’s immigration policies, this article argues that the secondary nature of gender equality compared to the UK government’s multiculturalism and assimilation agendas has directly impacted on South Asian women’s experiences of family abuse. By drawing on the experiences of 11 Pakistani Muslim women, this article explores the manner in which immigration rules can equip perpetrators of abuse with a powerful tool of oppression, where women can be faced with threats of deportation, or be left economically destitute when leaving an abusive relationship. This article also elucidates the overlooked experiences of UK-domiciled women of South Asian heritage with husbands on a spousal visa who are also being adversely affected by these policies. By acknowledging the hidden nature of abuse, and the economic dependency that characterises women’s experiences of abuse, it is argued that the UK government must critically evaluate its immigration policies.

Use of Media as an Indicator of Modern Trend of Female Pakistani Dakwah Groups

This study looked into the organized use of modern media technology by female Dakwah (Islamic propagation) groups in Pakistan as an indicator of modern trends prevalent among such groups. The two groups selected for this study were the Women’s Wing Jamaa’at e Islami and Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation. The time period of data is from June 2012 to December 2013. As a predominantly inductive research, this study shows that the ideological ground prepared by Women’s Wing Jama’at-e-Islami in Pakistani Muslim women was utilized by Al-Huda with a selective approach and a progressive use of modern media. It argues that a proactive discourse on status of women in Islam and female religious scholarship can be anticipated by such groups for being independent and pluralist. The study suggests a synergizing of likeminded groups towards women’s empowerment under the rubrics of Islam.

Transnational shift: marriage, home and belonging for British-Pakistani Muslim women

This paper draws on an empirical study, based on interviews and observations, of youthful Pakistani Muslim women raised in Birmingham, UK, to explore transnational marriage practices and their potential for reworking sharply gendered patrilineal norms framing marriage conventions, implicating questions of identity, home and belonging. In the South Asian patrilineal system marriage signals migration for women, displacing home across the natal (maike) where they are symbolic outsiders, and the marital (sasural) home, where they are actual strangers. By contracting transnational marriage, women are able to avoid this dislocation and its disadvantages, transferred onto their overseas grooms which lays the basis for the negotiation of a more egalitarian gender dynamic. The paper explores women's narratives of transnational marriage from the arrangements through to the union and the processes of conjugal bonding and coupling constituted within the spaces of the natal home, circumscribed by the close proximity of the extended natal family. These processes involve the negotiation of differential expectations of the conjugal relationship, illuminating women's shifting aspirations for reconfiguring marital scripts characterised by more egalitarian gender relations. This is in part a reflection of the availability of new repertoires for remaking the self and women's assertion of modern, cosmopolitan, Muslim identities.

Pakistani Women as Objects of “Fear” and “Othering”

The study uses Said’s concept of Orientalism and van Dijks concept of socio-cognitive processes to analyze the framing of Pakistani Muslim women in the newsmagazine Time from 1998-2002. A critical discourse analysis of the selected articles of the magazine follows Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s guidelines. It uncovers how in a particular socio-political context, stereotyped images of Pakistani Muslim women were framed to project “superior American” ideals of “tolerance” and “democracy,” as against the “intolerant,” “undemocratic” values of Muslim as “others.” It also argues how in the process of “othering” Pakistan and particularly its youth are framed as intolerant, and source of fear.