Young Muslim Women Research Articles

The Impact of Religio-cultural Norms and Values on the Education of Young South Asian Women

This paper is a discussion of how the educational attitudes, perspectives and experiences of young South Asian women in schools and colleges in the city of Birmingham, UK, are affected by domestic religio-cultural norms and values. Taking into consideration social class and the different types of schools they attend, young South Asian women were interviewed and surveyed to ascertain the effects of religion and culture upon education. The empirical findings show that all young South Asian women had supportive parents who actively encouraged them in education, irrespective of religion. For young Muslim women a strong bond between religion and individual was found, but for Hindus and Sikhs it was more tentative. For young working-class South Asian women, Hindus and Sikhs also regarded religion as less significant in their lives, but for Muslims it was again seen as crucial--but certain practices were argued to be more cultural than religious, and thereby problematic. For some young South Asian Muslim women, it leads to further marginalisation in education, given that they also originate from lower social class positions.

Change, Culture and Tradition: British Muslim pupils talk about Muslim girls' post-16 'choices'

This article explores interactions of 'race', gender and ethnicity within British Asian Muslim pupils' constructions of Muslim girls' post-16 choices. Dominant policy discourses have framed educational choices as rational and individualistic, against which, popular public discourses have positioned Muslim girls as having limited 'choices' due to restrictive gendered cultural values and practices. This article problematises both such conceptualisations through a focus upon the constructions of Muslim young men and women. It is argued that Muslim girls' post-16 choices are not simply or homogeneously 'restricted'. Instead, analysis reveals how the theme of 'choice' can be a site of emotion, power, and contestation, because it is intricately bound up with the re/production of identities and inequalities. The focus of the article is not so concerned with 'what choices are made' or 'what resources are drawn upon to make choices'. Rather, it addresses how pupils understand and explain notions of post-16 choice through themes of culture, change, identity and inequality. It is suggested that the young people's negotiations around Muslim girls' choices can be read as part of a process of 'doing' masculine and feminine racialised identities.

‘It's Easier that you're a Girl and that you're Asian’: Interactions of ‘Race’ and Gender between Researchers and Participants

This article is concerned with the ways in which ‘race’ and gender interact between interviewers and participants within the research process and the implications of differences/similarities between researcher and participants for feminist research and analysis. The paper discusses issues of power and representation within a research project conducted by the white female author and two Asian female interviewers with 64 British Muslim young men and women. Based on analysis of discussion group data, it is argued that ‘race’ and gender interact between researchers and participants in highly complex and unpredictable ways to produce particular accounts, but comparative analysis of accounts produced with different interviewers can help reveal ‘hidden’ structures of power within the texts.

The Heterotextual Body of the "Mora Morilla"

REVIEWS Heterotextual Body of Morilla. By Louise 0. Vasvari. London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1999. 116 pages. Heterotextual Body of by Louise 0. Vasvari is an engaging new study of ballad which begins Yo m'era mora moraima, morilla d'un bel catar. ballad has been analyzed with equal vigor as an example of ability of Christians to see Muslim point of view, even at height of frontier warfare, and as pro-Christian work with an ideological function. It receives here an interpretation that places it in context of analogous European folk tradition. Seen as dramatic ballad, it is a performative expression whose narrative structure is designed more as framework to suggest emotional experience than to develop details of coherent story line (8). ballad in question describes how when young Muslim woman is in bed at night, Christian claiming to be her uncle tricks her into opening door for him by telling her in algarabia that he is being pursued by Christian police because he has killed Christian. text ends abruptly, after young woman opens her door wide. Because earlier in text woman has referred to herself as mezquina and cuitada, it is largely assumed that morilla and Christian engage in sexual relations. What has been debated is whether morilla is truly victim of Christian violation, or whether she is somehow complicit in her own seduction. After brilliant and detailed discussion of how monUa has from start been portrayed as complicit in her own violation, Vasvari concludes that sexual selfaffirmation by morilla, combined with her protestations of victimization is the dramatized crisis of her self-consciousness as confession (22). Vasvari's evidence in support of her conclusion comes from recreation of universal poetics and semiotic system of text, recreation which relies on tracing cross-cultural and intertextual relationships of text and re-inserting it into context of traditional European folk genres. She looks at large number of analagous texts, including French, German, and Italian lyric, discussing with each comparison how manipulation of language functions to overdetermine sexual availability of young woman. book comprises eight chapters. Chapter i, The Heterotext and its Contexts, rehearses large body of scholarly interpretations of Mora morilla, and provides general picture of how connotative semiotic systems of folk poetry and other related oral genres may illuminate semiotic core of text. …

Modern Traditions? British Muslim Women and Academic Achievement

Participation rates in higher education for British South Asian Muslim women are steadily increasing. The aim of this article, therefore, is to explore motivations and influences for entering higher education and to consider how these may contribute to current discourses surrounding Muslim women in Britain. The possible impact higher education may have on their future relationships and lifestyle choices is also briefly considered. Various notions of 'agency' have been expressed that are characteristic of the ongoing complex assessments made by these women in relation to both perceived familial obligations and their own aspirations. Their articulations suggest that higher education is increasingly viewed as a necessary asset in maintaining and gaining social prestige. This preliminary research indicates that young South Asian Muslim women are continually negotiating and renegotiating their cultural, religious and personal identities and that these processes operate in complex and sometimes contradictory ways.

"We Don't Sleep around like White Girls Do": Family, Culture, and Gender in Filipina American Lives

Au Etats-Unis, les immigres Philippins resistent a differentes formes de discrimination a travers l'affirmation de certaines specificites culturelles. Par exemple, la chastete des femmes avant le mariage est presentee comme une resistance au modele de la societe dominante blanche americaine, mais ceci se fait au prix de l'autonomie des femmes et renforce le pouvoir patriarcal dans ces communautes

Negotiating diasporic identities: Young british south asian muslim women

Recent work by cultural theorists has celebrated the “cultures of hybridity” associated with diasporic populations. This paper draws upon research undertaken with young British South Asian Muslim women to explore some of the everyday dilemmas of negotiating diasporic identities. I begin by emphasising the contextual and contingent ways in which diasporic identities are expressed. Diasporic identities are always configured through gender, and I illustrate how the respondents negotiate diasporic identities in relation to both changing familial gender ideals and gender relations and against racialised gender stereotypes. Finally, I consider how the young women are exploring possibilities for reworking gender identities by drawing on alternative diasporic identifications.

The politics of PACS in a transatlantic mirror: Same‐sex unions and sexual difference in France today

1989 was not only the year the Berlin Wall finally collapsed. In France, 1989 was primarily the year of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution—that is, at long last, the Revolution was over (at least, according to Francois Furet1). This meant that, henceforth, instead of opposing 1776 to 1789, a (good) liberal Revolution to a (bad) radical Revolution, French “neo-liberals” could invoke de Tocqueville to denounce the perils of democracy in America—thus turning around the transatlantic mirror: in contrast to a French tradition of civility fortunately inherited from a happy combination of the Old and New Regimes merging in the “Republique,” “democratic passions” (meaning the immoderate love of equality) jeopardized the American nation. This became intellectual common sense in Parisian circles in the following years, in response to American (so-called) political correctness, and shortly thereafter, to (so-called) sexual correctness. In France, 1989 was also the year of the affaire du foulard: should young Muslim women be allowed to wear a veil in public schools? The political choice was generally presented as an alternative between the principle of laicite (secularism) and a (somewhat unprincipled) cultivation of cultural difference. Language notwithstanding, this debate was not so much about religion: in fact, it reflected a growing concern about the “integration” of immigrants, or rather, second-generation immigrants, in French society. The defense of a national model against the perils of ethnic fragmentation was elaborated by public intellectuals such as Elisabeth Badinter, Regis Debray, and Alain Finkielkraut—in the name of the “Republique.” Resisting ghettoisation, they identified the French nation with what they defined as a universalist model of individual integration. In the process, they too drew on a transatlantic contrast: American differentialism (that is, the communautarisme of identity politics) was the mirror image of French universalism (that is, the individualisme of Republican politics).

Hyperemesis gravidarum during Ramadan

During Ramadan, adult Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. We frequently encounter young pregnant Muslim women with hyperemesis gravidarum who fast during this holy month. We have investigated whether there is an association between the prolonged fasting during Ramadan and excessive vomiting during pregnancy. Possible psychologic and physiologic explanations are presented and discussed.

Veiled Meanings: Young British Muslim women and the negotiation of differences [1

This article draws upon in-depth discussions conducted with young British Muslim women to explore the ways in which embodied differences are negotiated in the construction and contestation of identity. The author argues that dress is an overdetermined signifier for Muslim women, illustrating the role of clothing, particularly the veil, in the discursive formation of 'Muslim women'. The author explores some of the possibilities for reworking dress to create alternative femininities within different spaces, focusing in particular on the construction of 'hybrid' identities and the articulation of 'new' Muslim identities.

Contradictions of Community: Questions of Identity for Young British Muslim Women

The author addresses contradictions of community through a case study which explores how young British Muslim women construct and contest their identities. Drawing upon the work of Hall, and others, in their theorisation of ‘new ethnicities’ or ‘hybrid identities’, she examines the possibilities for reworking the idea of community as a dynamic process which has a discursive and political effectivity. Through an examination of the constructions of community negotiated and deployed by young British Muslim women she highlights the ways in which different imaginations of community can be both empowering and constraining.

‘Our Moslem sisters‘: Women of Greater Syria in the eyes of American protestant missionary women

From the mid‐twentieth century, American Protestant missionary women played a role in attempting to reach their ‘Moslem sisters’ in Greater Syria through the various missionary institutions established in the region. This article examines part of the encounter between these two groups of women — particularly the murky and often ironic nature of the exchange, and how primarily single, Protestant American women focused much of their efforts on training young Arab Muslim women to be good wives and mothers. American Protestant missionary women, in assuming they were ‘uplifting’ the status of Middle Eastern women, were in most respects involved in an attempt to modernize the domestic dimension of the latter's identity and imprint upon it a particular cultural stamp.

Young Muslim Women in France: Cultural and Psychological Adjustments

Even though France has experienced increasing and inevitable feminization in its immigrant population since 1974, research has tended to ignore the role of immigrant women, especially Muslim women, in the migration process. Public attention has been diverted by concern over such relatively marginal issues as the headscarf affair, and insufficient attention has been paid to the important role Muslim women play in France, especially those coming from Algeria. These women function as cultural mediators between the traditional culture of the sending country and the modern one of the host country. They see themselves as both tradition‐bearers and integration proponents. The demands of immigration have given rise to the growth and development of different leaders, among them cultural mediators seeking a bridge between Islam and modernity, economic mediators seeking to establish women in the media and as entrepreneurs, and political mediators who seek access to power at the local level for the immigrants. These new mediators will eventually shape a new generation of female actors very far from the traditional countries of origin, although for the time being they still suffer from the inequality of rights for women and chances in their overall social life.

Muslim Women: Negotiations in the Third Space

L'A. porte son attention sur la condition de la femme au sein du monde musulman. Il analyse la notion de «troisieme espace». Il etudie la situation des femmes musulmanes en Europe et au Canada. Il presente un certain nombre de donnees collectees concernant la vie de deux femmes musulmanes installees au Canada et montre comment celles-ci envisagent leur identite

'I Want More Freedom, but Not Too Much': British Muslim girls and the dynamism of family values

ABSTRACT This article elucidates the dynamics of Muslim family life and the role of family values in shaping the present experiences and future aspirations of adolescent British Muslim girls. A group of Muslim girls in three schools, their parents and some of their teachers were interviewed. The research shows the dynamism of family values and the way British Muslims are socialising their daughters to construct a British Muslim identity by adopting and rejecting aspects of their Asian and British ethnicities and through a combination of freedom and control. It also argues that British Muslim young women are getting ambiguous messages about freedom and they feel ambivalent about various features of their Asian and British ethnicities. Furthermore, the research notes the stereotypical notions held by some of the teachers, which are apparently based on assumptions regarding the lives of British Muslim girls.

The pioneers of rural Pakistan: the Lady Health Visitors.

Since 1978, when the World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund called for urgent action by all governments to provide appropriate health care for the underprivileged, the world community has attempted to implement primary health care strategies. Pakistan, with a population of 118 million people, is one of those countries where the rural population and the underprivileged groups in the katchi-abadis (squatter settlements) of the urban areas lack appropriate and accessible health services. This article highlights the community experiences of a remarkable group of young Muslim women, the Lady Health Visitors (LHVs) of the Aga Khan Health Services, who deliver primary health care services to disadvantaged women and children in the northern mountainous areas and rural villages of Pakistan. The LHVs are the first contact with the health care system that these underprivileged women experience. The LHVs cure, care, teach, and train traditional birth attendants. In addition, they perform health promotion and document their findings. To provide their maternal and child health services, the LHVs travel by foot through miles of rough terrain to settlements and villages. Prenatal and postnatal care, anemia, diarrhea, and malnutrition are among the major health care problems of these rural women and their children under 5 years of age.

Religious and ethnic identity among young Muslim women in Bradford

Abstract This article explores the relationship between aspects of religious and ethnic identity for a group of young Muslim women from a school in Bradford. Previous work has tended to give a thematic account of such young women's attitudes to home, education, work, religion, marriage and relationships, and has often concluded that they are either ‘betwixt and between’ or the synthesisers of two distinct cultures. This article discusses then calls into question previous models by adopting a perceptual map which enables young women's testimonies to be analysed in terms of religious and ethnic orientation rather than the two cultures of home and school. As well as a general account of four religio‐ethnic orientations, the experiences of four young women are described. The authors do not see this approach as static, but as expressing the young women's negotiations of religious and ethnic factors at a particular point in time, their place on the perceptual map changing with time as their values and attitudes...

‘Race’ and ‘culture’ in the gendering of labour markets: South Asian young Muslim women and the labour market

Abstract This article attempts to develop an analytical framework for understanding the racialised gendering of labour markets. It is offered as part of an effort to theorise more adequately the place of paid work in the lives of Asian young Muslim women in Britain. Based upon in‐depth interviews with individual young Muslim women of Pakistani origin as well as group interviews it addresses their narratives as social biographies embedded within changing economic poitical and cultural conditions of present‐day Britain. Arguing against a general theory of gender that could then be applied to analysing specific instances of paid work the framework proposed highlights the importance of studying the intersections between gender, class, ethnicity, racism, religion and other axes of differentiations empiricallly and historically as contingent relationships. The young Muslim's women's narratives demonstrate the contradictory interplay of these articulations in their lives. Whilst the majority of women favour wome...