GEOGRAPHIES OF MUSLIM WOMEN

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 Geographies of
MUSLIM WOMEN
Gender, Religion, and Space

Edited by
GHAZI-WALID FALAH
CAROLINE NAGEL

THE GUILFORD PRESS

New York London
© 2005 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
www.guilford.com

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

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Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Geographies of Muslim women : gender, religion, and space / edited by

Ghazi-Walid Falah & Caroline Nagel.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-57230-134-1 (pbk.) — ISBN 1-59385-183-9 (cloth)
1. Muslim women. 2. Women—Legal status, laws, etc.—Islamic countries.
3. Human geography. I. Falah, Ghazi-Walid. II. Nagel, Caroline Rose.
HQ1170.G44 2005
305.48′697—dc22
2004028841
For Mohammad-Allam and Philippa
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Contents

Contents

Introduction 1
Caroline Nagel

Part I. Gender, Development, and Religion

1 Growing Up in Gilgit 19
Exploring the Nature of Girlhood in Northern Pakistan
Sarah J. Halvorson

2 (Re)Defining Public Spaces through Developmental 44

Education for Afghan Women
Naheed Gina Aaftaab

3 A Space of Her Own 68

Women, Work, and Desire in an Afghan Nomad Community
Diana K. Davis

4 Changing Identities and Changing Spaces in Village 91

Landscapes of Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco
Susanne H. Steinmann

Part II. Geographies of Mobility

5 Transnational Islam 127

Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia
Rachel Silvey

vii
viii Contents

6 Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 147

Rethinking Freedom Discourse in the Moroccan Context
Amy Freeman

7 Negotiating Spaces of the Home, the Education System, 178

and the Labor Market
The Case of Young, Working-Class, British Pakistani Muslim Women
Robina Mohammad

Part III. Discourse, Representation,

and the Contestation of Space

8 Islamism, Democracy, and the Political Production 203

of the Headscarf Issue in Turkey
Anna Secor

9 Social Transformation and Islamic Reinterpretation 226

in Northern Somalia
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley
Abdi Ismail Samatar

10 Contesting Space 249

Gendered Discourse and Labor among Lebanese Women
Malek Abisaab

11 Writing Place and Gender in Novels 275

by Tunisian Women
Marc Brosseau and Leila Ayari

12 The Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women 300

in Daily Newspapers in the United States
Ghazi-Walid Falah

Index 321

About the Editors 333

Contributors 335
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GEOGRAPHIES OF MUSLIM WOMEN
Introduction

Introduction
CAROLINE NAGEL

I
n January 2004 thousands of Muslim women took to the
streets in Cairo, Tehran, Gaza, Amman, and Beirut to protest efforts by
French authorities to ban the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, in state schools
and other public institutions. A photograph published in the Economist
shows a group of young veiled protestors in Beirut holding a French tri-
color (which flew over that city for three decades after World War I) embla-
zoned with the words “Le Voile: Droit et Liberté” (The Veil: Right and
Freedom). In France itself Muslim women protestors similarly waved the
tricolor and sang the “Marseillaise” while carrying banners with slogans
such as “The veil: my choice” and “Beloved France, where is my liberty?”
(“Veil of Tears,” 2004, p. 34).
The French government has maintained for several years now that its
policies to restrict the wearing of religious attire in schools is not anti-
Islamic, but rather that it reflects France’s historical commitment to secu-
larism in the public sphere. Indeed, the ban covers not just the hijab, but
also Jewish skullcaps (or yarmulkes) and “large” Christian crosses. But
many Muslims in France and beyond remain unconvinced by the French
government’s position, and French authorities have been compelled to de-
fend the official line both to French Muslims and to Muslim leaders
abroad.
The French authorities’ sense of embattlement has been heightened by
criticism of the French headscarf policy from politicians on the other side of
the Atlantic. Seizing the opportunity to challenge French moral authority in
the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which France vehemently opposed,
U.S. officials have criticized France for not adhering to its own revolution-
ary principle of individual liberty. The Bush administration, having used

1
2 Introduction

the imagery of women in burqas in 2001 to condemn the oppressiveness of

the Taliban regime and to justify military action in Afghanistan, has more
recently championed the Muslim headscarf, declaring publicly that such re-
ligious displays constitute “a basic right that should be protected” (“Chirac
Backs Law . . . ,” 2003, p. A17). The U.S. Department of Justice, in partic-
ular, which has been otherwise noted for the targeting and harassment of
Muslim immigrants in the name of “antiterrorism,” has emerged as the
great advocate of Muslim women and their right to veil. In 2004, for in-
stance, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in a federal district
court in support of a Muslim girl in Oklahoma who had been suspended
from school for wearing her hijab. In the words of an assistant attorney
general, “No student should be forced to choose between following her
faith and enjoying the benefits of a public education. . . . Religious discrimi-
nation has no place in American schools” (U.S. Department of Justice,
2004).
Several observations can be made about this evolving controversy.
First and foremost, the headscarf issue in France and the tremendous politi-
cal response it has engendered worldwide, both among ordinary people and
among powerful politicians, is indicative of the centrality of women in
long-standing cultural politics that span and link together the Muslim
world and the West (Abu-Lughod, 2002). Clearly, the headscarf debate in
France is not simply about what French Muslim girls wear in French state
schools. Instead, Muslim girls and their attire have become a flashpoint in
wider debates about the relative worth of Western and Muslim culture that
have taken place since the era of European colonialism (Ahmed, 1992;
Fleuhr-Lobban, 1993). The gender discourses of European colonialism,
which assumed the inferiority of Arab and Muslim societies and which at-
tributed the colonial subjugation of these societies to the supposedly lowly,
cloistered status of Muslim women, generated a great deal of soul searching
and debate in the colonized Muslim world. For some religious scholars and
social reformers, the emancipation and revival of Muslim societies required
the transformation of women’s roles in society through education, legisla-
tive reform, and, perhaps more symbolically, the abolition of the veil. For
others, the rebirth of Muslim societies and freedom from Western domina-
tion required the achievement of greater cultural authenticity and stricter
adherence to gender roles prescribed by Islam (see Baron, 1994). In the
postcolonial era, these gender-centered debates continued and indeed inten-
sified as newly independent states struggled to set forth a new path of eco-
nomic, political, and social development (Haddad, 1998; Hatem, 1995;
Hijab, 1998). At the same time, the growth of Muslim populations in Eu-
rope through labor migration and subsequent family reunification brought
the “woman question” to the West itself. Today issues relating to women
and gender—for instance, headscarves, sex segregation in schools, and ar-
Introduction 3

ranged marriages—remain intertwined with discussions about the assimila-

bility of Muslims and Islam in Western societies.
In the post-September 11 geopolitical context, these cultural politics
appear ever more complex. While some commentators—Muslim and non-
Muslim—speak in dualistic terms of a “clash of civilizations” between Is-
lam and the West, the actual political engagement between Muslims and
non-Muslims reveals a multitude of contradictions and ambiguities. Thus,
as we see with the recent headscarf controversies in France and elsewhere,
Muslim women are using the language of religious freedom, citizenship,
and universal human rights to defend practices like veiling, which some see
as inimical to Western secularism and liberalism (Soysal, 1997). At the
same time, the United States asserts its commitment to liberal democratic
values and defends its military intervention in Muslim regions by champi-
oning Muslim women’s cultural practices.
Another observation that emerges from the recent headscarf contro-
versy is that while women have typically been objectified in the cultural
politics of Islam and the West, they are also increasingly visible and active
in shaping gender discourses or practices. One important set of voices to
emerge in recent years has been that of Islamic feminists who have sought
to reclaim the emancipatory message of the Qur’an and to recover the
rights bestowed upon them in the earliest Muslim communities. Islamic
feminist viewpoints have often defied Western conceptions of feminist poli-
tics by contesting male-dominated interpretations of Islam and the subjuga-
tion of women while at the same time embracing gender divisions as natu-
ral and desirable (Hatem, 1998; Poya, 1999). To be sure, many of those
women involved in the protests to support the headscarf might not think of
themselves as “Islamic feminists,” as Islamist, or even as participants in a
political movement. Yet they are intent upon publicly reclaiming Islam on
their own terms, and in a manner, as described above, that draws upon a
variety of political discourses.
But despite the growing visibility of veiling practices in the Muslim
world and the West, it must be emphasized that not all Muslim women ad-
vocate the incorporation of Islam into public life. In fact, while the contro-
versy at hand has been portrayed as one pitting Muslims against a secular
(and anti-Islamic) French state, a recent survey reported by the Economist
(“Veil of Tears,” 2004) suggests that more French Muslim women support
the headscarf ban than oppose it. It also appears that the debate has led to
conflicts within major Muslim organizations in France, as Muslim groups
grapple in different ways with competing imperatives of secularism and re-
ligious freedoms and obligations. This leads us to a final observation that
the voices and viewpoints of Muslim women and Muslims more generally
need to be understood as highly differentiated and not easily reducible to
notions of “religion” or “culture.” There is no single perspective among
4 Introduction

Muslims on any political or social issue, just as there is no single perspec-

tive among Christians or any other group.

ABOUT THIS VOLUME

By highlighting the centrality of Muslim women’s position in the gendered

cultural politics taking place within and between the West and Muslim
countries, their complex and often ambiguous roles within these cultural
politics, and the diversity of their voices and viewpoints, the French
headscarf controversy underscores our motivation for putting together this
collection of writings on Muslim women. The contributions to this volume
reflect the important efforts by feminist scholars in various disciplines to
elucidate the contentious position of women and gender relations in the
Muslim world and in the geopolitical engagement between Western and
Muslim societies. This scholarship has taken the category of “Muslim
woman,” so often invoked in public debate and discourse, and has sought
to destabilize it by revealing the ways in which women’s lives are compli-
cated by economic inequalities and class relations, distinctive regional cul-
tural practices, and ideologies of race and ethnicity (Kandiyoti, 1996;
Khan, 2000). As such, this scholarship has emphasized that Muslim
women’s experiences are not definable solely in religious terms, and that Is-
lam itself serves as a repertoire of social practices and ideals articulated in
different historical and geographical contexts, rather than as a monolithic
belief system with causal power (Moghadam, 1993). Muslim women’s ex-
periences, we have been urged to recognize, are, like all women’s experi-
ences, ambiguous and highly variable, marked by subordination and op-
portunity, mobility and immobility, security and insecurity.
This book attempts to build upon this scholarship by presenting specif-
ically geographical perspectives on the experiences of Muslim women. The
discipline of geography, as many geographers concede, is rather difficult to
define, as it encompasses a multitude of subfields that, to many outside ob-
servers, seem to bear no relation to one another. The contributions to this
volume represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives—
cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration
studies, and historical geography—each with its own set of debates and
methodologies. But what is common to geography scholars is a concern
with space and place, and, more specifically, with (1) the way in which so-
cial relationships are inscribed in and organized through space—be it the
space of a home, a village, a nation-state, or the globe; (2) the way in which
specific places become imbued with particular social meanings; and (3) the
way in which the meanings and representations associated with certain
places are contested, negotiated, and transformed through individual and
collective action. Geographical themes have emerged in a great deal of re-
Introduction 5

cent literature about Muslim women—most clearly in discussions about

women’s use of various veiling practices to negotiate and to transform the
nature of public space (e.g., El Guindi, 1999; also see Ask & Tjomsland,
1998; Macleod, 1991). But, for the most part, the spatiality of gender rela-
tions, identities, and practices has seldom been explicitly theorized or made
the focus of attention. The aim of this book therefore is to bring issues of
space and place to the forefront of accounts of Muslim women’s lived expe-
rience in a variety of regional contexts.
While the purpose of compiling this volume is to explore the complex
spatiality of women’s lives, it must be recognized that this venture carries
the risk of validating the very category of “Muslim women” that it seeks to
unhinge. There are few social categories today that generate as much inter-
est, attention, and scrutiny as that of “Muslim women.” To illustrate, in
2001, an informal book search I conducted on Amazon.com generated a
list of 292 publications on Muslim women. In contrast, a search on Hindu
women generated only 47 books (Nagel, 2001). In 2004, in the wake of the
“War on Terrorism,” I repeated this exercise and found that the number of
publications on Muslim women had increased to 383, while the publica-
tions on Hindu women had increased more modestly, to 58. If the public’s
fascination with Muslim women seems boundless, so too is the capacity for
scholars and popular commentators to analyze their lives and experiences,
largely for the benefit of non-Muslims.
So while I have relished the opportunity to coedit a book about the ge-
ographies of Muslim women, I have also been acutely aware that this vol-
ume may further reify the category of “Muslim woman,” thereby reducing
the identities and experiences of these women to their religious affiliation.
Yet, as with many contentious social categories, the social currency of the
“Muslim woman” category—not least of all in the eyes of many Muslim
women for whom Islam serves as a moral code and a source of identity—
requires that it be addressed as such, even as it is shown to be highly prob-
lematic. In the present political climate, in which Muslim women more
than ever are subject to stereotypes, negative representations, and constant
scrutiny within their own societies and by others, it becomes important to
present more complicated readings of the Muslim woman category, even if
this means, in a sense, legitimating the category itself.
A final issue to be raised is that only a few of the contributors to this
volume are themselves Muslim women, reflecting the underrepresentation
of Muslim women in geography and other social science disciplines. The
limited presence of Muslim women in this volume and in the academy more
generally is highly problematic given the amount of literature generated
about them, and it raises troubling questions about the accuracy and repre-
sentativeness of accounts given of Muslim women’s lives. At the heart of
the matter is who controls the production of knowledge—that is, the for-
mulation of research questions, the gathering and interpretation of data,
6 Introduction

and the validation and publication of findings—about Muslim women.

How is knowledge being produced, who is producing it, and for whose
consumption?
Such issues have been the subject of intensive discussion at least since
the 1980s, when feminist scholars began to challenge notions of objectivity
and scholarly detachment found in mainstream social science approaches
(Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1991). As a result of such critiques, many femi-
nists have adopted a reflexive approach to research that considers the ways
in which the researcher’s position in various social categories and hierar-
chies (e.g., class, “race,” and gender) affects research encounters (e.g.,
McDowell, 1992; Moss, 2002). While embracing reflexivity in research,
however, feminists have also questioned their own ability to truly elucidate
the complex relationships involved in the research process. Some have sug-
gested that being an “insider” in a particular group gives one greater in-
sight and authority to speak about that group (Collins, 1991). But others
argue that identities and human interactions are so complex and contingent
on different circumstances that the impact of the researcher’s social posi-
tion can never fully be elucidated or understood (Rose, 1997). So while
they have not abandoned reflexivity, feminist researchers have increasingly
suggested that one is never fully an insider or fully an outsider, but usually
some combination therein, giving the researcher access and insight in some
respects but only a very partial understanding of a particular research sub-
ject in other respects (Mullings, 1999).
What this means is that the outcome of any research encounter is inev-
itably incomplete, regardless of the authorship. Each contributor to this
volume, whether male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim, has brought to
his or her research different viewpoints, experiences, and identities that
have shaped the knowledge presented in the chapters. While we maintain
that the lack of visibility of Muslim women in this volume is highly prob-
lematic and indicative of wider inequalities in the production of knowledge
about Islam and women, we also reject the notion that having a particular
identity gives any scholar privileged access to knowledge or total authority
to speak on behalf of others. I would therefore urge readers (as have several
of the contributors) to approach these accounts not as the definitive expert
“truth” about Muslim women, but as limited, unfinished accounts that are
subject to multiple interpretations, including your own.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS

This collection has been divided into three main sections addressing differ-
ent geographical themes. These divisions are somewhat arbitrary, in that
there are many common themes across sections and many differences
within them in terms of the contexts, issues, and experiences being de-
Introduction 7

scribed. But each section reflects a particular cluster of research in geogra-

phy and is intended to expose readers to some of the different theoretical
approaches and empirical concerns that have been brought to bear on this
topic.

Gender, Development, and Religion

The first set of chapters considers the intersections between gender, devel-
opment, and religion. Geographers have played an important role in
critiquing mainstream models of “Third World” development and uncover-
ing the unequal power relations inherent in the development programs
often imposed on the global South (Routledge, 1995; Slater, 1995). Femi-
nist geographers, in particular, have been instrumental in illustrating the
gendered character of development policies in terms of their formulation,
implementation, and outcomes (see, e.g., Chant & Gutmann, 2002; Law-
son, 1998; Radcliffe, 1999). Such concerns have often led feminist geogra-
phers to explore local experience and the ways in which policies, often gen-
erated at a national or a global scale, are mediated and transformed by, as
well as transformative of, gender divisions of labor and women’s access to
resources at more localized scales (e.g., Rocheleau, 1995).
The authors of the four chapters in this section examine the intersec-
tions between gender relations and development processes as they are medi-
ated by Islamic practices and discourses. Sarah J. Halvorson’s study of
Gilgit, a community in northern Pakistan, for instance, uncovers the differ-
ent life options made available to boys and girls as households face more
intensive marketization. In her conversations with Gilgit’s mothers, Halvor-
son finds that girls are becoming increasingly important to household and
farm management as families become more dependent on local and exter-
nal cash economies and markets. But the increasing value placed on girls’
labor does not necessarily translate into expanded opportunities for them.
While some girls are able to take advantage of new educational and em-
ployment opportunities, it is usually boys who are given familial resources
to gain the education necessary to secure off-farm employment. Indeed, the
region’s growing religious conservativism—reflecting ideological influences
from Iran and Saudi Arabia—has, in some instances, placed girls’ behavior
under greater scrutiny, thereby increasing constraints on their spatial mo-
bility.
The ambivalences of development processes described by Halvorson
are also highlighted in Naheed Gina Aaftaab’s chapter on girls’ education
in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The overthrow of the Taliban was widely
viewed, especially in the West, as a victory for Afghanistan’s oppressed
women, and many anticipated an improving “quality of life” for women as
a result of their expanding educational opportunities. Yet in Afghanistan,
Aaftaab suggests, new institutions for women’s education appear to be re-
8 Introduction

inforcing culturally and religiously sanctioned roles for women rather than
freeing them from such constraints. Insofar as rural communities look fa-
vorably upon female education, it is to improve girls’ marriageability and
domestic competency in the private sphere rather than their employability
in the public sphere. The main change engendered by the education system,
from Aaftaab’s perspective, is not “freedom” and mobility in a Western
sense, but rather women’s enhanced ability to navigate existing social sys-
tems and spaces in ways not imagined by liberal development discourses.
Diana K. Davis’s chapter also deals with Afghanistan, and, like
Aaftaab’s chapter, reveals the limitations of mainstream development dis-
courses and the unintended consequences of Western-led policies. Re-
visiting research on livestock management programs in rural, nomadic
communities conducted prior to the rise of the Taliban, Davis argues that
such programs tended to disempower women, as they operated under the
assumption that Muslim women are not significantly involved with the
raising of livestock. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Western-led develop-
ment agenda, which is focused on privatization and commercialization, is
more likely to hurt rural women by eroding their basis of subsistence than
to free them from oppression. Moreover, the growing control over rural ar-
eas by so-called warlords, many of whom uphold deeply conservative inter-
pretations of Islam and women’s roles in society, is likely to further curtail
women’s productive spaces and capacities. Socially just development pro-
grams, Davis concludes, need to consider the ways in which gender divi-
sions of labor and attitudes toward women and their work in particular
communities may differ markedly from the views espoused by either con-
servative Islamic leaders or Western development agencies.
Susanne H. Steinmann’s research on sedentarized pastoralist commu-
nities in eastern Morocco reiterates Davis’s point that standard discourses
about gender roles and gender segregation in Muslim society—discourses
propounded both in the West and in the Muslim world—fail to capture the
ways in which gender divisions of labor and gendered spaces are constantly
negotiated in particular contexts. Steinmann’s study of the sedentarization
of the Beni Guil people in two towns uncovers distinctive land-use patterns
and gender divisions of labor. In one town Steinmann notes the increasing
importance of agricultural—rather than pastoral—livelihoods and of women’s
work in household gardens, while in the other town she observes the grow-
ing reliance on men’s labor migration and women’s investments in live-
stock. In both instances, gender roles and identities have been negotiated in
different ways that simultaneously challenge and uphold established pat-
terns and discourses of Islamic gender relations.

Geographies of Mobility
The second section of this volume deals with issues of mobility and migra-
tion, which in the present era invariably include transnational identities and
Introduction 9

linkages. The first two chapters engage with new theoretical approaches to
migration that complicate the view of migrants as individual, rational, eco-
nomic actors by focusing on the ways in which gender relations, political
structures, cultural ideologies, and economic processes intersect to shape
migration flows and experiences (e.g., Lawson, 1998, 2000). The third
chapter in this section examines the labor market experiences of “second-
generation” women living in the diaspora—in this case, the Pakistani
diaspora in Britain. For the authors of these chapters, as for other feminist
migration researchers, the use of migrants’ personal narratives becomes
crucial to understanding how everyday decision making takes place at the
intersection between gender, culture, and political–economic processes
(e.g., Dwyer, 2000; Yeoh & Khoo, 1998).
Rachel Silvey’s chapter, to begin, examines the growing number of
low-income Indonesian women—most from rural areas of Java—migrating
to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants. Silvey’s research focuses on the ways
in which religious beliefs and practices, which intersect with gender roles
and ideologies, inform and shape every aspect of the mobility experience.
She notes, for instance, that the recruitment of Indonesian women often
takes place in girls’ Islamic boarding schools, where strict religious obser-
vance and the teaching of Arabic are viewed as producing ideal workers for
the Saudi labor force. That Saudi Arabia is strictly Muslim—unlike other
potential destinations in Asia—and that working there brings the possibil-
ity of making the pilgrimage to Mecca, serve as selling points for recruiters,
who must counteract frequent testimonies of hardship and abuse in the
Gulf. At the same time, the Indonesian state has built on the moral author-
ity of Islam to encourage the migration of these young women. Specifically,
it has recast the ideal of the domestically located Muslim wife and mother
to include the migratory income-earning woman, who is portrayed as sacri-
ficing her own interests for the sake of national economic development.
The migration of Indonesian women, then, is not simply a matter of pure
economic calculation on the part of individual migrants. Instead, it reflects
the confluence of economic need, religious identity, gender discourses, and
state development aims.
Amy Freeman’s chapter similarly critiques traditional economistic
analyses of migration and examines how Moroccan women’s mobility—
both transnational and more localized—is both constrained and enabled by
cultural and religious practices and discourses, and by one’s material cir-
cumstances. Freeman is particularly interested in the idea of “freedom,”
and she notes that in the Muslim world—as in the West—anxieties about
women’s freedom have been related to the desire to control, socially and
spatially, women’s sexuality to ensure their purity. But she, like other con-
tributors to this volume, cautions against rigid views of gender segregation
and public/private dichotomies, arguing that the “moral geographies” in
which Muslim women are situated are, in some ways, fluid and open to in-
terpretation. Thus, she shows that women, particularly those in migratory
10 Introduction

and transnational situations, constantly move in and out of geographies

where “freedom” takes on different meanings and where they must adjust
their behavior to accommodate different norms. For the most part, Free-
man’s interviewees express a desire for greater freedom to control their
own lives and mobility, but they also reject notions of freedom that imply
disregard for community norms and religious beliefs.
The construction and negotiation of transnational moral geographies
is also a key theme of Robina Mohammad’s chapter on Pakistani-origin
women in Great Britain. For Mohammad, the continuous interchange be-
tween Pakistani communities in Great Britain and the homeland has rein-
forced a conservative interpretation of Islam among British Pakistanis that
posits women as guardians of collective identity and that requires the regu-
lation of women’s spatiality. For young British Muslim women, the empha-
sis on female purity has a profound influence on educational outcomes and
labor force participation. Mohammad finds that women from less educated
backgrounds seem to face much tighter spatial constraints than those from
better educated backgrounds, who may be permitted to pursue higher edu-
cation away from home. In general, though, the types of jobs that young
British Pakistani women perform are circumscribed by community impera-
tives to control women’s presence in public spaces, and women’s ability to
pursue and to advance in particular careers requires their careful negotia-
tion of parental and communal strictures.

Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

While all of the chapters discussed thus far deal in some way with the pro-
duction and circulation of discourse, the final set of chapters focuses more
directly on the representation of Islam, gender, and Muslim women by the
media, government officials, novelists, and Muslim women themselves.
Discourse and representation, of course, are not simply about imagery and
descriptive language. Instead, these concepts make reference to systems of
power that operate to shape knowledge of other people and places and, in
many cases, to justify political domination and social inequalities (Said,
1978). While certain discourses and representations can be thought of as
hegemonic or dominant in any given context, these are always subject to
the challenge of alternative ways of seeing and knowing. Geographers have
been especially keen to explore the ways in which dominant discourses and
representations are enacted by—and contested through—spatial practices
(e.g., Anderson, 1991; Cresswell, 1996; Nagar, 2000), and the authors of
the following chapters examine different kinds of spatial conflicts that
emerge from competing articulations of Islam and gender relations.
Anna Secor’s chapter, for instance, explains the intense debate over the
wearing of the headscarf in public spaces in Turkey. For those sympathizing
with Islamist movements, the Turkish state’s restriction on the wearing of
the veil in certain public spaces in the name of state secularism calls into
Introduction 11

question the state’s commitment to democratic freedoms. As with the

women protestors described at the beginning of this Introduction, Secor’s
interviewees speak of veiling not so much as a religious imperative, but as a
basic human right that cannot be denied by the state. Yet the articulation of
the headscarf as a human right belies complicated ideas about democracy
at the heart of Islamist discourse. For the advocacy of the right to wear the
headscarf in public is not necessarily accompanied by a more general desire
to abolish regulatory regimes of public dress and behavior. Instead, for
many of those participating in Secor’s study, the state’s views on headscarves
becomes proof of the need to Islamicize the public sphere—precisely what
the Turkish state and many secularists are seeking to avoid by exercising
rigid control over public space.
Abdi Ismail Samatar’s account of the formation of a women’s mosque
in the Somali town of Gabiley presents a very different instance of the
contestation of Islamic space. In the early 1960s, Samatar shows, the edu-
cation of girls had become a topic of intense debate in Gabiley, as govern-
ment efforts to promote girls’ education clashed with local discourses about
girls’ natural role as future housewives. Into this fray in the 1970s stepped
Sheikh Marian, a female Islamic scholar who brought religious education
to local women—a prerequisite for entry into state schools. A women’s
mosque was built under her leadership, but it continued to lack the support
of local townsmen, even after it was damaged in the civil unrest of the
1980s. At the heart of the controversy over the women’s mosque, Samatar
argues, has been a conflict over views of women’s rightful geographical
place and their place within Islam. As Samatar notes, the women who built
the mosque were not informed by Western feminist ideology or by anti-
Islamic sentiment. Rather, “they felt that Islamic practice in this society un-
duly restricted women’s opportunities to learn and interpret Islamic texts
and traditions,” and the radicalism of this project lay in its questioning of
the marginalization of women in local Islamic practice.
Like other contributions in this collection, Malek Abisaab’s chapter
questions dichotomous conceptions of public–private space that dominate
the literature on women in Arab/Muslim societies. Contrary to many ac-
counts that situate Arab and Muslim women squarely in the private domes-
tic sphere, Abisaab explores the urban factory as “women’s space” and as a
site of gendered struggles. His account focuses on the 1970 strike involving
female tobacco factory workers in Lebanon and the ways in which Arab
women in Lebanon—both Muslim and Christian—resisted public–private
dichotomies in their demands to be included in societal conceptions of fac-
tory as well as home. The particular shape their activism took, Abisaab
shows, reflected the integration of their factory labor with their roles and
experiences outside the industrial workplace, thus calling into question the
division of space in Arab and Muslim societies into discrete male and fe-
male realms.
Marc Brosseau and Leila Ayari’s chapter is distinctive in its use of
12 Introduction

fiction—specifically, novels written by Tunisian women—to explore repre-

sentations of Muslim women and their geographies. Brosseau and Ayari
note the ambivalence with which Tunisian women writers view practices of
gender segregation experienced by many middle-class Arab/Muslim women.
The female characters often view their childhood homes with great nostal-
gia and tenderness, and yet, as adult women, bristle against their own sense
of isolation in the home and the feeling that their presence on the street is
an intrusion on men’s space. The novels also speak to women’s ability to
transgress spaces by describing instances in which female characters co-
vertly or openly defy gender boundaries. In doing so, their work resonates
with Malek Abisaab’s critical approach to understanding public and pri-
vate space. Paralleling Amy Freeman’s analysis of transnational Moroccan
women and Abdi Ismail Samatar’s interpretation of the Somali women’s
mosque, the authors caution against reading these novels as radically femi-
nist accounts of Muslim women’s lives, and suggest that the authors desire
a middle ground “which accommodates respect for tradition as well as a
woman’s need for empowerment and equality.”
The final chapter in the collection is Ghazi-Walid Falah’s analysis of
the visual representation of Muslim women in American newspapers be-
tween September 11, 2001, and the start of the U.S. attack on Iraq in the
spring of 2003. Falah’s main concern is the way in which supposedly objec-
tive reporting may in fact serve to promote particular geopolitical dis-
courses and agendas. Falah’s survey of scores of newspaper photographs re-
veals that images of women and girls tend to revolve around a few key
themes—for instance, women’s victimization at the hands of “terrorists” or
the slavish adulation of corrupt leaders. Significantly, editors seem inclined
to insert such images into articles that have little or nothing to do with gen-
der or women’s issues. The common deployment of these images, Falah
suggests, projects a view of Arab and Muslim societies as foreign, irratio-
nal, and in need of Western civilization and enlightenment. Even where edi-
tors are critical of U.S. military intervention in various Muslim contexts,
these images, in a sense, validate such intervention, while at the same time
hiding from view the root causes of conflict in Arab and Muslim states.

IN CLOSING

The diversity of topics, themes, regional contexts, and research approaches

covered by the contributions to this volume provide some indication of the
myriad challenges, dilemmas, and opportunities faced by Muslim women
today. In presenting such a diversity of accounts our aim has been to com-
plicate understandings of Muslim women and to reveal the different ways
Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and wider po-
litical and economic processes to shape women’s geographies.
Introduction 13

As indicated in the title, this volume makes a special attempt to ex-

plore the ways in which religious beliefs, institutions, practices, and dis-
courses shape women’s spatiality. Religion has taken center stage in many
popular accounts of global cultural change and conflict (e.g., Samuel Hun-
tington’s Clash of Civilizations [1996] and Benjamin Barber’s Jihad versus
McWorld [1996]). Yet religion remains curiously absent from many aca-
demic accounts of cultural transformation, especially in the discipline of ge-
ography. It is our hope that this volume helps to remedy this situation by
making religion a more explicit factor in analyses of human experience and
spatiality, while at the same time countering views of religion as a mono-
lithic entity or “civilizational” force. The significance of Islam—and in-
deed, any belief system—varies a great deal between and within societies,
and should not be treated as a causal force in and of itself, a point that
seems to be lost on many contemporary social commentators both in the
West and in predominantly Muslim societies. Our intention is that this vol-
ume, against the tide of current events and contemporary discourse, enables
and encourages dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, men and
women, and helps them to identify commonalities in their experiences
rather than only difference and otherness.

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159–186.
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Gender, Development,
Growing Up in Gilgit and Religion

Part I
Gender, Development,
and Religion
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Gender, Development,
Growing Up in Gilgit and Religion

1 Growing Up in Gilgit
Exploring the Nature of Girlhood
in Northern Pakistan

SARAH J. HALVORSON

T
he geography of girlhood remains understudied in much of
the so-called Islamic world. My aim in this chapter is to consider the
relationship between Muslim girlhood and rural livelihood in a mountain
community in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In recent decades this rela-
tionship has undergone a dramatic transformation as the mountainous
northern part of the country has transitioned from a subsistence-based to a
market-oriented economy. This transformation is acutely manifested in the
deepening integration of the lives of rural girls into market and civil society
relations of the global economy and the increasingly arduous and impover-
ished circumstances under which they work and contribute to their fami-
lies’ survival. One challenge presented by the unprecedented social trans-
formation in mountain communities of northern Pakistan has to do with
the complexities of “growing up” as the specific meanings of Muslim girl-
hood are (re)interpreted by families, secular and religious development ac-
tors, and the state.
The body of knowledge addressing the geographies of Muslim girls is
fragmented and parallels the incomplete nature of evidence on Muslim
women in the region (see, e.g., Kandiyoti, 1991; Papanek & Minault,
1982). In Pakistan relatively little has been written about girlhood or the
role of female children in the history of the country’s development trajec-
tory. Additionally, very little scholarship has given attention to the role that
religious discourse plays in shaping constructions of gendered childhoods

19
20 Gender, Development, and Religion

and gendered spatial ranges at the local scale. While true of the historiogra-
phy of development in Muslim societies in general, this lacuna presents special
problems in a nation like Pakistan where Islam has long been the predomi-
nant social framework of a culturally and ethnically diverse population.
In this chapter different aspects of girls’ lives are examined, including,
first, the highly spatialized constructions of girlhood in a Muslim commu-
nity, and second, the changing nature of girls’ social relationships in the ev-
eryday spaces of the home, field, school, and community at large. The re-
search described here took place between 1996 and 1998 in a mountain
village near Gilgit, the regional capital of the Federally Administered
Northern Areas, which is located near the northeastern border with
China.1 To explore the concept of girlhood, I carried out life histories of 30
women, all mothers of at least two children at the time, from a range of so-
cioeconomic and religioethnic backgrounds. In all cases they were married
and bearing children by their early or midteens, during which time their
mobility within public spaces was sharply curtailed. The women belonged
to one of two prominent sects among the Shiite Muslims who have settled
in this region and who identify themselves as Shia or Ismaili. I conducted
the interviews in respondents’ homes while carrying out semiparticipant
observation. Each life history interview was conducted either in Urdu or in
one of two local languages—Shina or Burushaski—with the assistance of
two local field assistants. Translations of the 4- to 6-hour taped interviews
were done with the help of a professional translator. The life histories were
supplemented with five focus-group interviews with community women,
and shorter interviews and conversations with village elders, shopkeepers,
community activists, religious leaders, teachers, development workers, and
community health workers. I also analyzed policy documents and reports
of state agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in
the region.
The intent of the life history approach employed in this research is not
to create a “representative” experience of girlhood in northern Pakistan.
Rather, the narratives are intended to impart vital information about social
and economic context, personal conceptualizations of childhood, and com-
munity values, thereby challenging dominant development paradigms,
which tend to mask the very textured local-scale experience (Nagar, 1997;
Personal Narratives Group, 1989). While this research is directed at explor-
ing experiences that have been “out of sight” historically and geographi-
cally, the process of conveying these experiences raises complex questions
about interpretation and representation. For example, some of the richness
of individuals’ expressions, language, and imagery is inevitably lost in
translation. Furthermore, my retelling of these narratives within an aca-
demic framework represents another level of translation to make these nar-
ratives fit within a particular analytical framework. In spite of these short-
comings, it is out of these life histories that a local discourse connecting the
Growing Up in Gilgit 21

meanings of childhood, Islamic ideals, gendered spatial ideology, and rural

change emerges.
The discussion that follows draws on a discursive analysis of study
participants’ personal narratives to examine the embedding of girlhood in
local and global processes over time. The associations between gender
norms and expectations and the broader concerns about moral uprightness
and the maintenance of codes of family honor have practical and ideologi-
cal consequences for girls’ geographies, including their use of space, the de-
mands placed on their labor, and the opportunities they face as they grow
older. Here I argue that an analytical focus on social change and its interac-
tions with religious discourse can enable us to develop a nuanced perspec-
tive on girls’ geographical experiences. This focus demonstrates how girls’
lives are defined by the specific contexts of livelihood, gender relations, and
religion, and how girlhood is constructed in relation to shifting views and
visions of girls’ place in rural mountain society.
The majority of the people in the Northern Areas of Pakistan face ex-
treme isolation, limited income-generating opportunities, and deprivation
in basic needs such as a proper diet and potable water (Streefland, Khan, &
van Lieshout, 1995; World Bank, 1996). In spite of their marginal position
geographically relative to the center, girls living in the relatively remote
Northern Areas are integrally connected to processes of change within the
country, particularly as they affect household livelihood systems, gender re-
lations, and current religious transformations such as the rise of Islamism.
The region as a whole is being increasingly integrated into the national
economy, yet for the most part it remains on the periphery of national de-
velopment initiatives. The manner in which girls in this mountainous area
have been impacted by these forces and the ways in which these impacts are
tied to current religious discourse and gender politics is less clear.
The argument in this chapter is that an adequate analysis of the posi-
tion of girls in Muslim societies must be grounded in a detailed examina-
tion of socioeconomic and historical transformations. I propose that the
operation of Islam in relation to discourses of girlhood is of central rele-
vance to an understanding of the roles and position of girls in Pakistani so-
ciety. The representation of children in national and local discourses, the
modalities of children’s participation in economic life, and the nature of the
childrearing practices that lead to their socialization into adult roles are in-
timately linked to the conditions of Pakistan’s current economic crisis and
are responsive to the religiocultural context.
The chapter begins with a discussion of the theoretical framework of
the research, which argues that a focus on gender and Islamic influences is
critical for shedding light on the social construction of childhood in Mus-
lim societies today. This section is followed by an overview of the national
discourse regarding the relationship between “the girl child” and the state
of Pakistan. Since girls also belong to families, neighborhoods, and commu-
22 Gender, Development, and Religion

nities, it is necessary to examine how adults, and in this case their mothers,
conceptualize and influence their daughters’ lives. Hence, the following sec-
tion presents an analysis of women’s narratives concerning their daughters’
childhoods to shed light on what it means to be a Muslim girl and how this
articulates with other discourses of work, mobility, religion, family, and fu-
ture. In looking at the case of northern Pakistan I hope to broaden our
thinking about child–society relations in an Islamic context as well as the
shifts in girls’ geographies as they become, and as their families and com-
munities become, inserted into the global economy.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
ENGENDERING MUSLIM CHILDHOOD

“In Islam a child belongs to everyone. A child does not just belong to one
family. Everyone is responsible for looking after that child.”

The above statement by an elderly man in the District of Gilgit recorded in

the spring of 1998 serves as a starting point for theorizing connections be-
tween Islam and childhood that may help to account for the variations en-
countered in girls’ circumstances within Pakistani society. Specific concepts
of girls’ and boys’ roles have long-standing bases in Muslim cultural norms.
Muslim children are trained early and at length in the tenets of Islam and
the roles of Muslim men and women. In the case of Pakistan, Muslim
norms have historically placed extensive restrictions on the lifeworlds of
girls. As Sathar (2003, p. 41) puts it:

For adolescent males, school, waged work, and recreation are likely to take
up most of the day, while females are most likely to be involved in house-
hold chores with less time for going to school and little potential for recre-
ation. Clearly, young females in Pakistan lack the opportunities of school-
ing, work, and recreation afforded to males. While males in urban and rural
areas across socioeconomic groups have uneven opportunities as well, it is
the gender differences that are most striking.

The idealized girl stays close to home, helps her mother, serves the boys and
men in her family, takes care of her younger siblings, contributes to the
family livelihood, and upholds the honor and reputation of the family. The
“everyone” (i.e., the extended family and even neighbors) to whom the vil-
lage elder refers in the quotation above is involved in socializing girls to ad-
here to these norms. Importantly, a girl is expected to emulate the behavior
and attitude of adult Muslim women in conformance with purdah: the
practice of modest behavior and seclusion from the view of men outside the
family, described by Weiss (1998, p. 125) as “the practical as well as figura-
Growing Up in Gilgit 23

tive curtain separating the everyday worlds of women and men.” In many
parts of Pakistan it is practiced through the use of veiling in public or
through limited access to public space and limited mobility outside the
home (Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987).
The relationship between girls’ status and purdah is highly complex
and varied depending upon the sociocultural context within the country
(Ibraz, 1993; Mumtaz & Fatima, 1992; Weiss, 2002). For the most part,
this powerful ideology of seclusion begins to strictly define the parameters
of girls’ access to geographical spaces even before puberty. In rural parts of
the country, it underpins many public-sector decisions that ultimately dis-
enfranchise girls from access to education, healthcare, and economic op-
portunities. For example, various local and regional governments have sug-
gested a need for separate girls’ schools, but many girls in rural areas of the
country will never go to school because of the nonavailability of such
schools (Sathar et al., 2003). The socioeconomic transformations taking
place within households and livelihood systems in rural parts of Pakistan
have given rise to reinterpretations of purdah, gender roles, and expecta-
tions of girls. As purdah bolsters gender discrimination within the commu-
nity at large, it helps to institutionalize and to reinforce girls’ low secondary
status and dependency within the household. Conflicts emerge over the
roles girls are encountering in society and the ways in which their families
and communities accommodate these roles. Indeed, parental and state in-
terpretations of religious and social values regarding girls’ marriage, educa-
tion, seclusion, veiling, and mobility intersect with broader debates about
the compatibility of Islam, modernity, and globalization.
Recent feminist writings on Pakistan have begun to trace the manner
and extent to which the spatial experiences of girls are shaped by the influ-
ences and intersections of gender discourses, ideals of Islamic practice, and
development policies adopted in different parts of the country (Alam, 1995;
Durrand, 2000; Hafeez, 1993). Some questions remain: How do these fac-
tors affect, for instance, girls’ experiences, the nature and meaning of their
livelihood work and responsibilities, their control and access to space, and
their visions of their futures? If the predominant notions of gender are inex-
tricably linked to religious discourse in Pakistan, how do processes of glob-
alization and development inform and complicate Muslim girls’ current re-
lations to household struggles for survival? One place to begin answering
these questions is to draw upon academic theories of childhood and youth,
especially the theoretical developments coming out of the “new social stud-
ies of childhood” (see Holloway & Valentine, 2000).
In recent years our theoretical understanding of girlhood has been en-
riched by scholarship that has recognized the multiple and contested as-
sumptions and realities of childhood (Boyden, 1990; Mayall, 1994; Stephens,
1995). A major achievement of this scholarship over the last two decades is
the recognition that the organization and meanings of childhood are not
24 Gender, Development, and Religion

simply a given, but are in fact historically and socially constructed in accor-
dance with local realities (Scheper-Hughes & Sargent, 1998). Indeed, every
society has a certain way of thinking about childhood. Recent feminist
scholarship has brought to the fore the idea that the historical, geograph-
ical, and social variability of childhood should be seen as part of complex
social and economic processes that are crosscut by relations of gender,
class, religion, region, ethnicity, and other forms of difference (Holloway &
Valentine, 2000; Nieuwenhys, 1994). A number of empirical studies have
found that gender norms are a key part of early socialization and education
in childhood (Holloway & Valentine, 2000). Furthermore, it has been rec-
ognized that girls and boys themselves participate in the (re)construction of
childhood and the (re)production of their place in society (Woodhead,
1998).
Relatively few empirical studies, however, examine the specifics of
children’s geographies in Muslim societies. A notable exception is Katz’s
(1993) research on children in rural Sudan. Katz argues that children’s ev-
eryday lives are produced through particular institutions, ranging from
global political–economic structures to families and communities. Katz’s
ground-breaking study of children’s access to and control of space in the
Muslim context of rural Sudan suggests that shifts in the configuration of
households that have been brought about by socioeconomic and cultural–
ecological changes can have profoundly different impacts on girls’ and
boys’ spatial ranges. Another example of work on specifically Muslim
childhood is Fernea’s (1995) look at children’s lives in the Middle East.
This work supports the idea that gender relations and globalization have
implications for shifting societal attitudes toward Muslim girls and boys,
their labor, and their livelihood contributions. Furthermore, this research
foregrounds the ways in which an Islamic framework influences the moral,
cultural, political, and gendered contexts and assumptions about children.
This is also the case in Pakistan, where approximately one-half of the popu-
lation (49% of 140 million people) is under 18 years of age (UNICEF,
2003).

THE GIRL CHILD, ISLAM,

AND THE STATE IN PAKISTAN

Since the International Year of the Child (1979) and the World Summit for
Children, held in New York in 1990, the international children and devel-
opment and child rights lobbies have put pressure on national governments
such as Pakistan’s to implement programs and policies to promote and im-
prove the situation of children, especially that of girls (UNICEF, 1990,
1996). Governments have been encouraged to eliminate all forms of eco-
nomic, social, and legal discrimination based on the sex of the child. The
Growing Up in Gilgit 25

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, explic-
itly states in Article 2:

State Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Con-
vention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of
any kind, irrespective of the child’s . . . race, color, sex, language, religion,
political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, dis-
ability, birth or other status.

This declaration has helped to place children’s concerns, and the plight of
girls in particular, on the broad policy agenda of the Pakistani government.
In 1990 Pakistan became a State Party to the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child. Since that time, the Children’s Division, a part
of the Education and Social Welfare Division of the Government of Paki-
stan, has been charged with the explicit responsibility of implementing the
goals of the Declaration of the 1990 World Summit for Children and the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child within the binding strictures of
the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah. In response to international discussion,
Pakistan launched the Girl Child Project (UNICEF, 2001). In addition, a
number of documents, such as the National Programme of Action for the
Goals of Children and Development in the 1990s (Inter-Ministry Task
Force, 1992) and the Islamabad Declaration on the Survival, Protection,
and Development of the Child (Government of Pakistan, 1991), were put
forth to outline the roles of girls and boys in perpetuating Islamic social
values and in actively participating in the promotion of economic and so-
cial development. Central to the policies regarding children and develop-
ment, as spelled out in these documents, is the idea of “[assuring] every Pa-
kistani child a bright and better future.” This aim includes

[highlighting] the rights of the child, especially the Girl Child, within the
framework of the Islamic social order in Pakistan and the need to promote
greater awareness of the important role that the Girl Child has to play in na-
tion building after adulthood. (Government of Pakistan, 1991, p. 40)

Statements such as this one assert the centrality of Islam in the lives of chil-
dren as well as the centrality of children, and “the girl child,” in the devel-
opment, national identity, and progress of a Muslim nation. In a country
where 98% of the population is Muslim, the girl child is constructed as
playing an integral role in engendering Muslim civil society. Assumed to be
future wives and mothers, girls are placed at the very heart of upholding Is-
lamic values, a Muslim religiocultural identity, and notions of family and
nation that are seen as crucial to the maintenance of social order and the
resolution of wider socioeconomic dilemmas.
Before going further in broadening our understanding of the situation
26 Gender, Development, and Religion

of girls in northern Pakistan, I think it is important to not obscure the pro-

cesses through which Islamic traditions and Islamisms are invented and
transformed in Pakistan. Just as gender and childhood are socially con-
structed and reconstructed, Islam undergoes change and is reinvented to
meet new needs and challenges (see Ahmed, 1992; Bernal, 1994; Haddad
& Esposito, 1998). Islam, in the context of development in Pakistan, is rec-
ognized as pivotal to modernity. However, competing notions of modernity
crosscut Islamic discourse and practice, scripturalist interpretations, and
vernacular understandings, and have resulted in tremendous political ten-
sions between the two predominant sects in the country, the Sunni and the
Shia (Ahmad, 1992; Zaman, 1998). These tensions, in part, have been
shaped by national-level dialogue that has politicized Islam, issues of gen-
der, and the roles and places of girls and women in society (Jalal, 1991;
Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987).
While pressure has come from the international arena to improve the
conditions confronting Pakistani girls, Pakistan continues to search for a
workable way to implement its goals and directives regarding the girl
child. This is in part related to the issue of women’s rights, which has be-
come a focal point in national political discourse (Government of Paki-
stan, Ministry of Women’s Development, Social Welfare, and Special Edu-
cation, 1998; Jilani, 1998; Weiss, 2003). Since 1979, when General Zia
ul-Haq and his military government announced its intentions to create an
Islamic state, conservative Islamic laws have limited girls’ and women’s
roles in the public sphere (Haq, 1996). This “Islamization” campaign re-
sulted in many negative ramifications for women’s legal status, participa-
tion in the political process, and protections against gender-based dis-
crimination and violence. Significantly, this program issued a set of
legislative policies that effectively supported and justified state-sanctioned
discrimination against girls and women in the name of Islam (Commis-
sion of Inquiry for Women, 1997). Today the issue of girls’ and women’s
rights and position within the larger social order remains highly conten-
tious. Gender disparities in the legal, economic, and political realms con-
tinue to constrain girls’ choices and opportunities in many aspects of life.
Moreover, some segments of society have adopted strict regulation of
girls’ lives and bodies.
When we review the economic and social indicators for Pakistan, it is
evident that girls’ marginalized status is in part a result of the state’s gender
ideology manifested in development policies and draconian laws. Nearly
every social and economic indicator for the country describes significant
differences in opportunities for girls and boys and for women and men
(Government of Pakistan & UNICEF, 1992; UNICEF, 2003). The gender
bias at a state level significantly impacts policies regarding education, ma-
ternal and child health, and social and political organizing. According to
UNICEF (2003),
Growing Up in Gilgit 27

Nearly one third of the country’s 140 million people live in poverty. The girl
child faces greater risks to survival, is more subject to violence and abuse,
and has less access to education, proper nutrition and health services. The
low status of children and women is a manifestation of low literacy levels,
wide gaps between legislation and enforcement, and limited participation
in civil society.

The gender bias is also evident in the inverse sex ratio of 91 women for ev-
ery 100 men, the reverse of a global norm where females typically outnum-
ber males. As one of the lowest in the world, the sex ratio in Pakistan sug-
gests unequal access to healthcare, proper nutrition, and a nurturing
environment. Access to education is also strikingly limited for girls and
women in the country. The basic literacy rate for females over the age of 15
is 28%, compared to a literacy rate among males of 51% (United Nations
Development Program [UNDP], 2002). A 1995 study of the situation of
girls in especially difficult circumstances concluded that girls “are poorly
fed, do not get health care, are married early, get beaten, face sexual harass-
ment, are overworked, have no recreation, and are in short, deprived of
childhood to which they have an inherent right” (Alam, 1995, p. 10). In
spite of the growing recognition of the ways in which Pakistani girls’ expe-
riences have been influenced by gender-based discrimination perpetuated
by the state, many questions remain regarding some of the most egregious
problems of poverty and changes in family structure faced by girls today.
The points raised in this section about gender disparities embodied in
state policies and their implications for Pakistani girls’ experiences apply to
the local context. Several social, economic, and political trends that have
emerged in the District of Gilgit are critical to shaping girls’ lives today.
These trends are integrally linked to the opening up of this mountainous re-
gion since the late 1970s through the development of transportation net-
works, including the Karkoram Highway. The expansion of government in-
frastructure, and the subsequent movement of goods and people, have been
integral to a program of mountain development that has been pursued
since the late 1970s and early 1980s—a program motivated by the strategic
and economic importance of the Northern Areas for Pakistan. These
sociospatial shifts have gender and livelihood implications for girls and
their families in rural, predominantly farming, communities of the District
of Gilgit, in northern Pakistan.

ON AND BEYOND THE FARM:

VIEWS ON GIRLS’ GEOGRAPHIES

In northern Pakistan the interpretations of how girls and boys should be

raised are conveyed among mothers around the hearth, in the garden or
28 Gender, Development, and Religion

field, and so on. While carrying out this research, it became apparent to me
that these types of social interactions between mothers play a key role in es-
tablishing local norms about the acceptable behavior of girls, the types of
work they should do, and the places they can and cannot go. These spatial
constructions of girlhood are undergoing a profound alteration as a result
of changing social attitudes toward girls and new and emerging market re-
lations. Until recently, the mothers in the study site seem to have had few
reservations about childrearing goals or their aims as parents. Similar to
patterns observed elsewhere in the Muslim world (Fernea, 1995), widely
accepted notions about the structure of the family and the functions of fam-
ily members of all ages influenced the concept of childhood and child-
rearing practices in the past. However, as women themselves respond to the
social and economic changes going on around them, their views on the
place and roles of girls are being (re)interpreted and negotiated.

The Value of Girls

A major factor shaping girls’ life experiences is a strong gender preference
for sons rather than daughters. These attitudes are similar to those docu-
mented elsewhere in the region (Das Gupta, 1987; Filmer, King, &
Pritchett, 1998; Sathar, 1987). Attitudes toward girls affect their ability to
control their lives and, since their status is typically interpreted as lower
than boys, they have little influence over decisions about their own educa-
tion or marriage. Many consider a daughter to be a financial liability,
someone who will, in the end, take away part of her family’s wealth.
In spite of the pervasive gender preference for boys, mothers’ narra-
tives suggest that attitudes toward girls are slowly changing. Over half of
the mothers interviewed said that girls are just as important to them per-
sonally as boys because of the significant contributions girls make to easing
their work burdens. Girls are generally seen as being useful doing tradition-
ally ascribed tasks such as helping with food preparation, taking care of
younger siblings, and working in the garden and fields. Two women ex-
pressed their perception of the value of girls as follows:

“They are equal. In the olden days they liked boys more. Now we treat
them the same because the girl can also have a job. Before there was no
education or employment for girls. Now there are many differences. If
some parents do not have a son, the daughter will be able to take care of
her parents.”
“Before I had a son, I thought to myself that a boy would be good. Now
that I have a son, I realize that girls are good. The boy does not help me
with work around the house. The son does not work, and the husband
does not work. This is why the girls seem more important to me now.”
Growing Up in Gilgit 29

The mothers’ narratives I heard highlighted the clear advantages of having

girls that have changed over time. Women emphasized their reliance on the
labor and assistance of their older daughters in the management of their
households. This reliance is related, in part, to substantive changes in rural
livelihoods. Cash incomes have attained a new degree of importance to
household economies, thereby delimiting new measures of wealth and dif-
ferentiating patterns of resource use and access within households and
communities (Azhar-Hewitt, 1998). Even though some transactions con-
tinue to be based on bartering, especially those conducted between women,
cash assumes a key role in people’s lives. Residents offer a range of reasons
to explain the growing need for cash: change in local dietary habits; popu-
lation growth; limited farm size; the need to purchase seeds, pesticides, and
chemical fertilizers; and home construction. Overall, increasing interest in
acquiring the growing array of jadeed (modern) products, coupled with the
need to supplement household production, have added to families’ growing
dependence on local and external markets. This growing importance of and
dependency on cash for survival, as well as new cultural orientations to-
ward large weddings, gift exchanges, and dowries,2 have heightened the
need for incomes (Halvorson, 2003).
To satisfy these needs, men and boys have been taking advantage of
off-farm employment and educational opportunities outside their villages,
thereby widening the divisions between boys’/men’s and girls’/women’s
contributions to farm maintenance. Given widespread unemployment in
the Northern Areas, many men and teenage boys migrate to the urban cen-
ters of Rawalpindi, Lahore, or Karachi. Some even find work in the Persian
Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Oman and send remittances back to their
families. The decision to work off-farm is usually made out of necessity and
is dependent upon family dynamics and access to financial or social re-
sources to facilitate a move away from the family. Furthermore, gender is
an important factor playing into the trend since men have the social mobil-
ity to take advantage of wage-earning opportunities in distant urban areas.
Some educated women have also found off-farm employment, primarily in
the areas of health and education; for the most part, however, cultural and
structural exclusions preclude rural women from working outside the
home.
The extent of men’s participation in wage labor, either domestically or
internationally, has perforce reshaped the quality of life and the workloads
of those remaining in the household (Halvorson, 2002). This pattern has
been observed elsewhere in Pakistan and South Asia (Azhar-Hewitt, 1989,
1999; Carpenter, 1991; Government of Pakistan, 1990; Joekes, 1995;
Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987; Raju & Bagchi, 1993; Sathar & Desai, 1996).
These changes have brought about important implications for the lives of
women and girls. My observations suggest that regardless of their house-
holds’ wealth category (i.e., poor, middle income, or wealthy), girls face in-
30 Gender, Development, and Religion

credibly demanding on-farm workloads and responsibilities as male family

members become increasingly engaged in off-farm capacities. Reconfigura-
tions in family structures are apparent. For example, there is evidence of in-
creasing numbers of women becoming the de facto heads of households
while their husbands are working in down-country cities. Women circum-
vent some of the time limitations on the essential tasks of the day by relying
on their daughters. For women who rarely participate in tasks that take
them outside the realms of the farmstead, the contributions of girls to
household reproduction and to enabling the practice of purdah are inval-
uable.

Spatialized Constructions of Girlhood

The gendering of space in northern Pakistan has resulted in spatial and so-
cial boundaries marked in accordance to gender norms. Girls are rarely en-
couraged to go beyond the realms of house, garden, and field except when
accompanied by a parent, an older relative, or a brother. The roads, ba-
zaars, bus stations, and schoolyards are coded as male spaces of social in-
teraction. On holidays and weekends these spaces are dominated by men
and boys passing time by drinking tea, gossiping, or playing cricket and
soccer. Girls do frequent the bazaars, but they are usually accompanied by
elderly women, women in groups of three or more, siblings or neighbor-
hood children, or other male relatives. Other spaces of distinctly male inter-
action include hotels (restaurants) where men gather to watch satellite TV,
drink tea, and exchange ideas about news and politics. Girls and women
never frequent these places, and come together instead in women’s spaces
such as homes, gardens, and fields. The gendered nature of these spaces has
important implications for girls’ access to transportation services and
health facilities. A routine visit to the health center or school located in the
middle of town requires crossing these invisible boundaries into the male
domain. This experience of walking through the bazaar can be an incredi-
bly uncomfortable one for even young girls, and attempts are made to
avoid it altogether by taking back alleys through neighbors’ gardens and
fields.
An important theme that emerges from mothers’ narratives is the ways
in which girlhood is spatially organized around the household economy.
The contributions daughters make to livelihood and childcare represent a
critical strategy for mothers who are occupied during the course of the day
with livestock management, food production, fuelwood collection, food
processing, and other domestic tasks. The use of girl’s labor at the house-
hold level reflects gender-differentiated notions of entitlement that suggest
two significant patterns. One pattern similar to other rural contexts in the
developing world is that daughters are expected to perform a number of
gender-defined tasks around the farm and house. By 8 or 9 years of age,
Growing Up in Gilgit 31

girls are engaged in a routine variety of tasks around the household do-
main. For daughters, the list includes a range of what the women who par-
ticipated in this study call chota kam, “the small work” of daily domestic
chores and errands, such as sweeping, cooking, making roti (flatbread),
food preparation, washing clothes, tending the garden, and feeding and
milking cows. Adolescent daughters are expected to accompany the women
to the fields to assist with weeding and harvesting. They are called upon to
assist with the collection of firewood and fruit, tasks they often carry out
with girlfriends. Education and training in these tasks begins at an early
age. Four-year-old Safina,4 for instance, already has been taught to rid the
ears of the family’s goats of ticks and to collect fallen leaves for fodder.
Even at a young age the work girls are expected to do becomes routinized
for them, a process confirmed by Bano’s daughter when she said, “I started
making roti when I was 8.”
Daughters are particularly important because they assist their mothers
in the care of babies and younger siblings. From the age of 5, girls and, to
some extent, boys are socialized to hold, watch over, and play with small
children. Girls are also expected to develop other domestic skills such as
sewing, knitting, and making clothes for family members. For Khadija, the
labor contributions of her oldest daughter were so vital to her that she de-
cided not to send her daughter to school, thereby reserving other activities
such as playing and school attendance for the younger children. This work
is rationalized in the context of how best to prepare girls for their roles as
wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law after they are married. Mothers’ reli-
ance on their daughters for help around the house is reflected in their com-
ments about the necessity for girls to gain certain types of knowledge and
skills by the time they reach 12 years old:

“From early on the girl should learn how to do all of the work the women
do.”

“Right now my daughter is too small to help me, but when she grows up
she will lend a hand with everything. She will look after the young ones if
I am away from the house. She will bring the harvest from the fields. . . .
Girls should help their mothers in all the routine work.”

Recently, with the advent of education, girls are leaving the spatial range of
the household and neighborhood to attend school. The education of girls
has implied that mothers are losing the option of depending on their daugh-
ters during the morning school hours. However, girls are still expected to
resume their work upon returning home from school and are not at liberty
to explore the surroundings beyond the purview of their parents and rela-
tives. These types of cultural entitlements to girls’ labor are also reflected in
the way that parents periodically keep girls home from school or withdraw
32 Gender, Development, and Religion

them from school at an early age because of the necessity of their labor for
the family. Families with scarce financial resources, in particular, tend to
view the education of girls as a less viable long-term investment than the
education of sons. For most families in the community, it is a recent experi-
ence to send their children, both boys and girls, to school.
By the time girls reach the middle- and secondary-school levels—that
is, if they are provided the opportunity and resources to pursue their educa-
tion to this level—they experience a “triple day,” with school in the morn-
ing, farm and household labor in the afternoon and evening, and home-
work at some point during the evening (or not at all). Zenab, for instance,
explains that after school her daughters “make roti, sweep, clean, take care
of the younger siblings, and wash the clothes of the adults and children.”
To Zenab, girls today should be expected “to work in the kitchen, clean the
house, learn how to take care of children, keep children clean . . . and to
study.” Training in the mandatory skills of housecleaning and childcare
makes for a specific experience that is crucial for girlhood among the social
classes of Pakistani society. Early introduction in the female domain and
the sharing of the responsibility for the well-being of the family is funda-
mental to the socialization process of girls.
In contrast to girls’ work, the livelihood work of boys is constructed as
bara kam, or “the big work,” that frequently takes them outside the house-
hold compound or neighborhood. This work includes irrigation, chopping
fuelwood, harvesting crops, collecting branches and leaves for livestock fod-
der, and clearing fields of rocks. Boys frequently leave the community to assist
their fathers or grandfathers in selling produce in the market or doing er-
rands. It is notable, however, that while these livelihood tasks are constructed
as part of the domain of men and boys, women and girls regularly perform
these tasks as well. Tasks that require a monetary exchange or social interac-
tions outside the house—making purchases in the bazaar, borrowing a tractor
from the neighbors, or sending messages to people in the community—are
viewed as indispensable for enhancing the life skills of boys.
The rationale for sending boys outside of the home at a young age for
various errands underscores parental concerns about preparing sons to re-
sponsibly navigate new market relations and their social roles beyond the
home range. Frequently, people say, “A son should think about helping his
clan” or “Boys should learn to speak well and use accha zaban [good or
proper language].” These concerns are iterated by the following quotations
regarding what boys should be expected to know when they reach the age
of 12:

“They need to learn everything. To study their lessons, to learn to salaam

[greet] all neighbors, and to have manners with guests.”

“He needs to learn about his education, to learn to do some kind of work,
to do a business or a job after he has studied further.”
Growing Up in Gilgit 33

“A son needs to learn respect for his parents. He needs to learn about his
social environment and to think about his education.”

As these quotations suggest, local discourses on childrearing underscore the

necessity of education in preparing boys for their future roles as providers
and breadwinners. Here a second pattern in the relationship between moth-
ers and their children emerges. As sons are increasingly removed from their
menial labor roles because of the emphasis parents place on their schooling,
the social expectations of boys have concomitantly shifted in this rural set-
ting. For boys, this shift has meant a relaxation of their fieldwork and obli-
gations around the household and an elevation of their status within the
household. This patriarchal view of the superiority of boys raises a key is-
sue of gender inequity at the intrahousehold level. After school, boys are
granted the freedom to study, to meet with tutors, to play sports, and to
visit with their friends. Mumtaz, the mother of eight children and the pri-
mary caregiver for her two elderly parents, continues to rely extensively on
her daughters rather than her sons to help her around the house even
though both her daughters and her sons are going to school. She stated:

“The daughters help no doubt. They wash clothes. They wash the utensils.
They sometimes prepare the food and make tea for us. . . . The sons are
all going to school. They are unable to help us. Sometimes the oldest son
fetches a bucket of water from the nearby well. Nothing else. They spend
their time in schoolwork. They go to the public school as well as to the
deeni [religious] school at the mosque.”

Dil expressed a similar experience as Mumtaz, adding jokingly, “My son

does nothing, what can I do?” Most mothers feel that the loss of sons’ la-
bor from livelihood work is a reasonable and minor sacrifice for the contri-
butions they will make to family survival in the future. Dil explained:

“. . . I get help from those in the house, mainly my daughters. My husband

helps with the harvesting of the wheat. The son does not help me with
this work. He himself does no farmwork. We cannot force him to do
farmwork. Instead, we should be happy to have him work with us. We
are happy to leave him alone because he is the only son in the family.
When he marries and has children, then he will be responsible for
working.”

The engagement of boys with education and employment outside the

household is facilitated and sustained by the work and responsibilities of
girls within the household. The communication of these gender norms
takes place between mothers and daughters in everyday spaces. For exam-
ple, the training of girls in what it means to be an accha ami (good mother)
is constructed locally and within the household, and the interactions be-
34 Gender, Development, and Religion

tween mothers and daughters plays a key part in this process. Bibi empha-
sized the importance of the transfer of knowledge between mother and
daughter:

“She should . . . learn the good manner which our religion tells us. A girl
will be a mother in the future. She has to control the house in the future.
She must learn what her mother teaches her.”

As the above quotation suggests, Islamic belief and practice are key compo-
nents in the construction and negotiation of gender images and expecta-
tions, and they mediate the way mothers view the relationship between
children and the community context. The construction of Muslim ideals of
“good” boys and “good” girls and their roles in upholding these ideals are
reflected in expressions of Muslim identity. For example, in her view of
girls’ domestic education, Bibi emphasized not only the skills necessary for
the conduct of mothering, but also the social role Islam ascribes to girls and
women. Shara iterated a similar view as Bibi:

“According to our religious teachings, a girl is supposed to learn her reli-

gious responsibilities such as namaz [prayer] and roza [fast]. Then, she
must learn home management. . . . Education is very important for her
since she has to take over the responsibilities in the future. If she is edu-
cated she will become a responsible mother.”

In this quotation education and Islam are linked in the construction of girls’
preparations for adulthood. Taken as a whole, Islamic teachings represent a
moral discourse on roles and responsibilities that prescribes what girls
should know and be prepared to do when they become adults. In this way
there is an association between Islamic ideals, socially constructed responsi-
bilities, and the conduct of mothering that underlies the informal education
and training of daughters. Information about hygiene, childcare, gardening,
food preparation, and morality is transmitted in an ad hoc fashion and oc-
curs whenever mothers observe the need to provide instruction to their
daughters. The importance of this knowledge transfer should not be over-
looked in a consideration of the response to environmental and health
problems because it is this knowledge that permits girls to mediate the risk
environment for family members (Halvorson, 2002).

Visions of Girls’ Futures

The incorporation of the District of Gilgit into the global economy has led
many mothers to expand their vision of their daughters’ futures. What is re-
markable about much of what the women discussed is the strong statement
made about how girls’ lives are and will be radically different than in the
Growing Up in Gilgit 35

past. Mothers made very strong statements about how their children’s lives
will be vastly different from their own, in part because employment will
take them out of the community setting. One mother’s statement that “my
son could go to the moon” reflected tremendous optimism about her son’s
future. Many mothers were hopeful that in spite of high rates of unemploy-
ment in the country, their sons will find employment opportunities, espe-
cially if they are prepared to migrate out of the community.
The visions of girls’ futures, I would argue, are much more complex
and reflected two contrasting shifts in thinking about girls’ mobility. One
shift is the notion that mobility for girls is increasing. The idea that “my
daughter might be a teacher” represents in some ways a radically new idea.
Only recently have employment opportunities as teachers or government
health workers opened up to permit women to earn wages. Women’s wage
earning is a topic of great debate locally and is a source of conflict within
households. Such conflicts reflect fears that the loosening of control over
girls’ and women’s bodies and spatial boundaries will result in a moral tar-
nishing of the family and the community.
Another more recently introduced component of raising girls is formal
education. The main reasons given in support of girls’ education were so that
they are marriageable, could get a job, be able to educate children, to be able
to properly provide good care of children, and to learn about the world:

“. . . If she is uneducated then she cannot learn anything. These days ev-
eryone is educated. An uneducated girl cannot get married. If she is edu-
cated she will be able to say something and learn something. The rela-
tives who come by who are interested in our daughter ask how far she
has studied in school.”
“. . . She will learn about caregiving. When she is educated and goes to
someone else’s house, she will learn all work in their house. She can teach
her children something.”
“. . . An uneducated girl does not learn how to respect her parents. When
she becomes educated she will be able to learn everything, how to respect
her relatives and parents.”
“[A girl’s] future will be good if she has been educated. If she is uneducated
her mother-in-law, her father-in-law, and husband will not respect her,
and they will scold her.”

These quotations reflect an important transformation in attitudes toward

girl children that is slowing taking place in the region. The new educational
trends can be seen as enhancing the roles and responsibilities of the family
in the preparation of Muslim girls. Most concede that education for girls is
a worthwhile pursuit if it supports their roles within the natal and the mari-
36 Gender, Development, and Religion

tal family. Education could potentially have an impact on the status of girls
within families. Younger mothers feel strongly that being educated provides
more power within the home, and perhaps more control over time and
work.
Religiously affiliated NGOs are playing an increasing role in expand-
ing the range of development and modernization options in the District of
Gilgit. NGOs (namely, the Aga Khan Rural Support Program,3 the Aga
Khan Health Service, Pakistan, and the Aga Khan Education Service, Paki-
stan), community-based self-help groups, and religiously affiliated commit-
tees play important roles in creating health, education, and livelihood op-
tions for girls and their families. The development “solutions” put forth by
these groups are often cast in Islamic idiom. For northern Pakistanis, Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and the Ismaili community are three different sources of
ideological and cultural influence on approaches to development. Their in-
fluence is transmitted through the funding of schools, mosques, health cen-
ters, agricultural extension offices, and microcredit and finance programs.
These forms of development interventions are associated with particular re-
ligious identities, and, for community members, with a vision of prosperity
and progress that may or may not be compatible with their own identities
and religiocultural perspectives.
It should also be stressed that while respondents’ statements express a
vision of their children’s future, they mask the desperate need felt by most
parents to have their children go to school and to enter the skilled labor
market. This desperation is an integral component of the articulations of
raising children and is a result of the major movement on the part of the
World Bank, UNICEF, and the Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan, to
create educational opportunities in the region. Many parents feel that
school fees are an additional pressure on top of their struggles to deal with
poverty, unemployment, and inflation, as well as complicated local reli-
gious politics. While girls are used to symbolize the aspirations of cultural
authenticity expressed in Islamic terms, they are also caught in contentious
negotiations as they are integrated into a new set of labor market relations
outside the home.
The question of the extent to which reforms such as literacy projects
and education will challenge gender relations remains to be answered in
light of restrictions on girls’ mobility. Communal controls over girls con-
tinue to flourish and in some instances have been intensified. This has taken
place in a context riddled with contradictions over what girls should and
should not be allowed to do. The reorganization of the social structure has
intensified tensions that are expressed in gender, religious, and ethnic terms.
Some mothers commented that today girls are expected to stay close to
home, should no longer play with boys, and should begin learning purdah
at an early age. According to one mother named Lal, there have been major
changes in rural expectations regarding the mobility and dress of girls. In
Growing Up in Gilgit 37

describing what seems to be an increasing pattern of segregation between

girls and boys, she commented:

“When I was growing up boys and girls played together. No one minded at
all if we did not wear a chaddor [head scarf]. This zamana [era] is bad.
The tradition has changed. Back then, men and women worked together
and no one cared. Now they have to be separated. In the past we did not
have to hide our faces.”

Here, she expressed her sense that the social expectations placed on rural
girls and women have changed over time. The quotation also indicates a
sense of the tightening of social controls on girls’ and women’s bodies and
space. Similar impressions were revealed by Zara, a mother of two small
children. In describing her childhood, Zara drew comparisons with what
her mother had recounted about her experiences growing up, saying:

“When she was younger, our mother went to the mountains to collect
wood, to the pastures to graze the animals, and she used to play with
boys and girls together. People did not mind when the boys and girls were
together. We do not go to the mountains, or to the pastures, or play with
anyone. . . . The situation today for us is not good. The boys are very
naughty, and this is why no one lets their girls out of the house.”

This excerpt from Zara’s life-history narrative demonstrates a concern that

many rural women experience regarding controls on their spatial mobility
in the face of religious conservatism and rapid social change. The tensions
existing between generational views on women’s mobility (especially girls’
and young mothers’ mobility) within and outside the community have been
critical to day-to-day decisions for Zara and the other rural women I inter-
viewed. Since the various development interventions in the region have
been undertaken, women’s experiences have been increasingly influenced
by gender and intergenerational struggles to define the appropriate codes of
izzat (honor) and respect in the context of shifting gender norms associated
with socioeconomic development. Even young men from both Shia and
Ismaili sects have become active participants in recent local struggles cen-
tered on conceptualizations of purdah and girls’ and women’s access to
public space. Some of the most vivid examples of intense contestations be-
tween the two groups surround the painting and effacing of graffiti por-
traying certain ideals of female piety and behavior (see Halvorson, 2002).
Sectarian relations and tensions have become a salient force in precipi-
tating changes in social relations and interactions between religious com-
munities at the local scale. Conflict and rivalries sometimes of a violent and
militant nature between Muslim sects have a long and bitter history in
Pakistan (Zaman, 1998). One of the most noticeable areas in which sectar-
38 Gender, Development, and Religion

ian differences play out is in the context of women and development pro-
grams. Opposing visions of women’s roles and participation in develop-
ment processes have emerged as a powerful divisive force within and
between communities. For example, the activities of the Aga Khan Rural
Support Program (AKRSP), especially the women’s microcredit services and
participatory model, have come under opposition from a segment of the
Shia population. Claims have been vociferously raised that local women are
being corrupted by “outsiders” and female staff who are not upholding
purdah. The dilemma within the Northern Areas that has come to light is
that there is no one interpretation of girls’/women’s roles in society that is
embraced by the full range of sects living in the region. Rather, there are
multiple and oftentimes competing interpretations of development, notions
of the family and community, and gender relations manifest in the develop-
ment policies.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: BLURRING THE SPACES

BETWEEN MUSLIM GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD

As this chapter reveals, girls in the District of Gilgit are now facing new
challenges stemming from the region’s participation in a cash-based econ-
omy and in the complex processes of rural development. Islam is one of a
set of powerful ideologies that influences the geographical experiences and
options of girls in the region. Children in this part of the Hindu Kush–
Karakoram–Himalaya have long participated in the sustenance, mainte-
nance, and religious lives of their families. However, the shifting livelihood
practices combined with development discourses are spurring yet another
realm of gender politics that shapes Muslim children’s lives and the differ-
ent ways in which parents and children exercise their agency in response to
these forces.
While the cultural and economic changes in the Northern Areas have
increased the spatial ranges for some girls, for others the changes affecting
gender relations have actually resulted in the reduction of girls’ access to
the social and physical environment beyond the household. As religious
ideology has continued to be associated with the promotion of various de-
velopment patterns, the residents of the Northern Areas have faced intensi-
fied sectarian tensions. Tensions surrounding the meaning and practice of
purdah have intensified both within the household and the community
scales, placing heightened social pressure on some women and girls to stay
within the char diwar. Boys, on the other hand, have experienced a stretch-
ing out of their ranges to even include distant urban centers.
There are practical consequences of these processes for girlhood and
for gendered spatial ideology. For most girls, their day-to-day activities are
spatially structured around the maintenance of the household. As a result,
Growing Up in Gilgit 39

gendered notions of work and skill are reinforced. This also serves to rein-
force Islamic notions of purdah. The continuing trend toward increases in
girls’ and women’s subsistence and nonsubsistence farm activities in north-
ern Pakistan further highlights the complex features of girlhood at the local
level. Traditionally domestic and farm responsibilities were ascribed to
men/boys and women/girls in fairly equal proportions. Today, girls’ roles in
feeding families, managing agricultural resources, and maintaining the eco-
nomic and physical health of households has become even more visible and
salient. Increasing pressure for cash has led some girls to take up additional
income-generating activities that are viewed as socially acceptable (e.g., tai-
loring or assisting at the health clinic). Similarly, many girls assist their
mothers in the cultivation of cash crops such as potatoes, onions, and fruit
to sell in regional markets. Overall, girls’ labor has intensified due to the
expansion of the cash economy, their mothers’ reliance on their daughters
to share the work burden, and the partial to complete release of men and
boys from the work on the farms. For sons who were once highly engaged
in farm tasks, these changes have meant a lightening of their responsibilities
as their parents place a heavy emphasis on their educational advancement.
The evidence in this chapter suggests that contemporary children’s ex-
periences of rural development are very different from the experiences of
their parents when they were growing up. In exploring reasons for why pat-
terns of girls’ mobility have changed between generations, two distinct ar-
eas can be identified. First, the assessments of the women, as well as others
with whom I spoke, suggest that changes in the relations between sects
have resulted in a reinterpretation of girls/women’s access to space. As sec-
tarian violence has deepened throughout the country and in the Northern
Areas, the possibilities for involvement and participation open to these girls
have changed, as have the ways that women conceive of and negotiate their
own daughters’ geographies.
Second, the ideological stance toward the seclusion of women in many
of the study households further legitimized girls’ lower status and depend-
ency within the boundary of their households. The limitations on girls’ mo-
bility depend on the norms of the religious community to which they be-
long and to the particularities of their respective families. Within these
limits girls were expected to help meet livelihood needs. The significance of
their lack of control over their workloads, so evident during planting and
harvesting seasons when mothers decide the work schedules of their daugh-
ters, cannot be overemphasized.
Finally, the process of religious change at least in Pakistan does coin-
cide in often ambiguous and multifaceted ways with the integration into
capitalist relations of production and exchange. There is tremendous diver-
sity of responses to the modalities of children’s participation in economic
life. The emergence of new secular and religious notions of gender differ-
ence as they affect childhoods in this Muslim setting are direct results and
40 Gender, Development, and Religion

responses to economic, political, and ideological conditions of globaliza-

tion. In this respect, it is important not to overlook the ways in which local
discourses also help to shape Islam as an important context for the articula-
tion of girlhood and girl–society relations under conditions of change.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My very deepest thanks go to all of the individuals and families who participated in
the research and who shared aspects of their lives with me. I would especially like to
thank James L. Wescoat, Jr., who has been and continues to be an inspiration. I
would also like to thank Rachel Silvey and Richa Nagar for their constructive and
insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Thanks to Zeba Rasmussen
who introduced me to my field site and many individuals who played a role in see-
ing this research to fruition. I would also like to express my appreciation to Caro-
line Nagel and Ghazi-Walid Falah as editors for their patience, encouragement, and
good humor. This research was supported by grants from the University of Colo-
rado Graduate School, Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council,
and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

NOTES

1. The territory that is today the Federally Administered Northern Areas is offi-
cially disputed territory with India. The region came under the control of Paki-
stan at the time of Partition in 1947. I have used the name “Northern Areas” in
accordance with the contemporary use of this term in Pakistan. Because it is not
an official province within the nation-state of Pakistan, the Northern Areas lack
representation in national legislative bodies and the residents of the Northern
Areas do not have the right to vote in federal elections. Since 1972, elections for
local government in the Northern Areas have been held. Only recently, in 1995,
did a legislative body, the Northern Areas Council, come into existence to repre-
sent regional interests at the national level of policymaking in Islamabad.
2. Spending money on large, elaborate weddings, formal gift exchanges during en-
gagements, and dowry requirements are symbolic of social change and the infu-
sion of Punjabi and Sindhi culture into rural, mountain society. With the intro-
duction of Hindi films and exposure to Punjabi culture through magazines and
TV, these traditions are growing in importance. Dowry is now seen as a way to
enhance family status and represents a new form of social contract between fam-
ilies.
3. The most ambitious program addressing poverty and underdevelopment in the
Northern Areas has been spearheaded by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program
(AKRSP), an NGO with bilateral and multilateral support. Through a bottom-
up participatory approach to defining local problems, priorities, and interven-
tions, AKRSP’s initiatives introduced new possibilities for addressing livelihood
concerns. AKRSP began working in northern Pakistan in 1982. Following a
model of participatory development, AKRSP introduced the idea of village orga-
Growing Up in Gilgit 41

nizations (VOs) to function as institutional arrangements through which com

munities could address their development needs and priorities. In addition to village
organizations, women’s organizations (WOs) were formed in the mid-1980s.
4. To preserve anonymity, names of research participants have been changed.

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Gender, Development,
(Re)defining Public Spaces
and through
ReligionDevelopmental Education

2 (Re)Defining Public Spaces

through Developmental
Education for Afghan Women
NAHEED GINA AAFTAAB

Education is the pathway to progress, particularly for women.

Nations where women are educated are more competitive,
more prosperous and more advanced than nations where the
education of women is forbidden or ignored.1

Both political activists and academics, whether proponents or

2

opponents of the attacks on Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, justi-

fied their arguments similarly by pointing to Afghan women as “mass vic-
tims.” What struck me was how a diverse and multivariant group such as
Afghan women was able to acquire a uniform and universal symbolic de-
piction. When I would suggest that representing Afghan women solely as
victims is limited, the overwhelming and often emotional response was,
“Then what are they if they are not victims?” How could one possibly ig-
nore the atrocities that have been committed against them? The figure of
Afghan women was thus constructed as a flattened trope that overlooks the
contradictions and complexities in global power relations, and it was used
to justify a masculine narrative that shows the United States to be the sav-
ior of the powerless women under the Taliban. Rather than discounting
these representations of “victim,” I will approach them critically and exam-
ine the power relations inherent in this view. I do not wish to deny the
atrocities committed in Afghanistan, nor do I want to reinterpret them
through a process of reidentification of the “Afghan woman.” My goal is

44
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 45

to challenge the inadequacies of the theoretical processes that support the

representation of Afghan women as victims, and thus legitimized their vio-
lent salvation by the U.S. military.
The “plight of Afghan women” during the Taliban regime was used in
the propaganda of the Bush administration to justify the “War on Terror-
ism” that led to the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan on October 7,
2001. There is not enough space in this chapter to examine the Bush ad-
ministration’s representation of Afghan women at length, but a couple of
examples will serve as a demonstration. On November 11, 2001, First
Lady Laura Bush delivered the first ever radio address to the people of Af-
ghanistan by a woman, expounding the atrocities against women done by
terrorists. The following is an excerpt from that speech:

Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world
is discovering: The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the ter-
rorists. Long before the current war began, the Taliban and its terrorist al-
lies were making the lives of children and women in Afghanistan miserable.
. . . Only the terrorists and the Taliban forbid education to women. . . .
Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no
longer imprisoned in their homes. (L. Bush, 2001)

As President Bush himself expressed in the following press release, the U.S.
military was not only bringing humanity and freedom to Afghan women, it
also was directly linked to humanitarian and development efforts:

Our soldiers wear the uniforms of warriors, but they are also compassion-
ate people. And the Afghan people are really beginning to see the true
strength of our country. I mean, routing out the Taliban was important, but
building a school is equally important. (G. Bush, 2002)

The Bush administration drew on an established understanding of Afghan

women3 and women’s role in development. While it is easy to critique the
Bush administration’s violent military actions and the propaganda that sup-
ported them, I want to draw attention to the gender development theories
that support and strengthen the justifications of violence. As authors of
these concepts, theorists need to continually stay critically engaged about
their own work.
My thesis is a critique of development theories as they are applied to
the education of “developing” women,4 I contextualize this thesis with a
case study of Afghan women in the process of nation building, social devel-
opment, and empowerment. In order to construct a universal understand-
ing of gender in development, some influential development theories do not
account for the ambiguities and multiplicities of gendered education pro-
cesses within various contexts. As an example of gendered development
46 Gender, Development, and Religion

theories, I will focus on the influential work of Martha Nussbaum (e.g.,

Nussbaum & Glover, 1995) and her philosophical contributions to the Hu-
man Development Report’s (HDR) discussion of “capabilities.” While de-
velopment theories posit education as necessary for incorporation into
mainstream development (Moser, 1993), for improved health conditions
(Bandarage, 1999), and integration in economic structures (ul Haq, 1995;
Nussbaum & Glover, 1995), education’s role in shaping “individual lib-
eral” subjects is seldom theorized. Theoretical examination of the intersec-
tions between education, the state, and international development illumi-
nates a number of power relations at multiple scales. By grounding my
theoretical critique on fieldwork in Afghanistan, I am adhering to feminist
thinking about critical development which advocates an examination of
interscaler relations informed by ethnographic fieldwork (Nagar, Lawson,
McDowell, & Hanson, 2002; Katz, 2001; Mohanty, 1991). By adding the
perspective of the case study, I want both to initiate alternative discussions
in response to the metanarratives that influence Afghan women and also to
think critically about the space of education in development.

BEGINNING WITH CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Development discourse assumes a priori that a segment of the world is in

need of improvement. These improvements are prescriptive and are in-
tended for specific results; it is a process that Crush (1995) describes as
“fundamentally about mapping and making, about the spatial reach of
power and the control and management of peoples, territories, environ-
ments and places” (pp. 6–7). Development’s control and management are
manifested through material relations, ideological shifts, and cultural and
political prescriptions. Increasingly, the result has led to militaristic mea-
sures. As Ferguson (1990) demonstrates, in postcolonial development one
of the unintended “outcomes of planned social interventions” (p. 19) is the
discursive construction (and privileging) of nation-state institutions in or-
der to enable the implementation of development projects. More simply,
development theories and institutions assume a strong state role. Mog-
hadam (1993, 1999) underscores Afghanistan’s weak institutionalized state
to explain the government’s inability to modernize its society, which is dem-
onstrated by the contests over mandatory education and land reform. I
argue that part of the reason for Afghanistan’s institutional inefficacy re-
sulted from a lack of domestic political representation as well as from its
powerless geopolitical position in comparison to the outside influences of
the Soviet Union, the United States, Pakistan, and others. Afghanistan’s de-
velopment process has been highly influenced by shifts in global develop-
ment practices and their incorporation into international political agendas,
which in Afghanistan’s case have compromised the position of the state in
relation to its nation(s).
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 47

Nussbaum’s Human Development:

Teach a (Wo)man to Fish . . .
Critiques of economic development have advanced a shift toward the incor-
poration of social interests in development planning and implementation
(Weaver, Rock, & Kusterer, 1997; Korton, 1995; Chambers, 1997). In
1995, Mahbub ul Haq, an advisor to the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the chief architect of the UNDP’s Human Devel-
opment Report (HDR), stated:

The human dimension of development is not just another addition to the

development dialogue, it is an entirely new perspective, a revolutionary
way to recast our conventional approach to development . . . Rather than
the residual of development, human beings could finally become its princi-
pal objects and subject—not a forgotten economic abstraction. (pp. 11–12,
emphasis added)

The revolution in development is concerned with increasing individual

“choices” (ul Haq, 1995, p. 14); “Fundamental to enlarging these choices
is building human capabilities” (UNDP, 2002, p. 27). The indexes of the
HDR are statistical measures of “quality of life” (Sen, 1999; ul Haq, 1995;
Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). The Human Development Index (HDI) is com-
posed of indexes on health (life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality),
education (literacy, enrollment rates), and economic measures (ul Haq,
1995, p. 62). Adjusting for gender disparity generates a lower HDI score;
the centrality of gender attests to the importance of this framework’s con-
nection to liberal feminist issues.
Martha Nussbaum’s (Nussbaum & Glover, 1995) work as a feminist
philosopher with the UNDP at the World Institute for Development Eco-
nomics Research (WIDER) has been identified as one of the philosophical
underpinnings of the quantified measures of the HDI. In place of relativist
assertions of difference, Nussbaum offers a list of universal functions that
enable development to improve the quality of life. In examining the gender
aspects of the HDR—as expanded by Nussbaum’s theorization of capabili-
ties and common humanity—I hope to instigate a dialogue about the seduc-
tiveness of gender development in UNDP’s HDR and its implications on
current development practices. Discourses drawing on liberal development,
democratic governance, and capitalist individualisms have formed a power-
ful trinity that support current power structures, though through dynamic
methods. Within this structure, the role of Muslim women as individual
symbols used for nationalist interests in an international development con-
text becomes an important focal point.
Nussbaum (Nussbaum & Glover, 1995) bases universal feminism on a
definition of common humanity that incorporates the capacity and needs of
all human beings through which the end goal is to address gender equity is-
sues by enhancing the capabilities of all people to improve their lives
48 Gender, Development, and Religion

(p. 63). This does not ignore developmental context insofar as programs
for enhancing capabilities are applied and developed according to the expe-
rience of specific contexts. But the aim is to create a common end goal of
benefits, a uniform environment in which specific capabilities, as defined by
Nussbaum, provide the highest return. She identifies indisputable universal
commonalities and capabilities such as needs of the body, mobility, imagi-
nation, and practical reason (pp. 72–78). Her basic claim is that develop-
ment’s “central goal of public planning should be the capabilities of citizens
to perform various functions,” thereby overcoming other adversities and
expanding their choices (p. 87, emphasis added). And while societies are re-
quired to develop their members’ capabilities, the choice of performing the
functions is left to the individual (p. 97).5
If the concept of capabilities is to be applied universally, then it must
be based on an understanding of humanity that is universally applicable.
Rather than differentiating individuals as members of a culture (Nussbaum
& Glover, 1995, p. 72), Nussbaum proceeds to define human life according
to capabilities that function to enhance all individual lives and are based on
a universal ethic—as opposed to nature or biology (p. 74). The first level of
functions concerns mainly physical needs such as mortality, nutrition, shel-
ter, sexuality, and mobility (pp. 76–80). The second level concerns the capa-
bility to, or “being able to”, meet identified physical needs (e.g., good
health, use senses, form attachments, etc.); a lack of ability to meet these
needs means the lack of a “good life” (pp. 83–85). Thus, a “good life” is
not the assurance of resources, but the capability to compete for and secure
resources. The ability to compete is measured by the HDI through the ex-
amination of income, political participation, education, and health.
In addressing development and the HDR specifically, Nussbaum
(Nussbaum & Glover, 1995) takes the nation-state as the basic unit of anal-
ysis and views the role of public policy to be one that enables the citizenry
to practice functionalities that would make a good life possible (pp. 86–
87). Governments can ensure active participation leading to these capabili-
ties through education. “Good governments, especially through education,
facilitate the formation of good capabilities, remove impediments to their
exercise, and provide means for their use” (Crocker, in Nussbaum &
Glover, 1995, p. 184). According to Nussbaum, the state enables citizens
with capabilities through education and employment; yet it must also pro-
vide certain freedoms (from cultural coercion) in order to promote these ca-
pabilities (pp. 94–95). The neutral state and its public policy become espe-
cially important since Nussbaum’s gender framework depends on the
efficiency and power gained from education leading to well-paid employ-
ment for women in the development process (pp. 92–93).6
Nussbaum asserts that the quantitative measurements of HDI focusing
on capabilities and functionalities provide an assessment of one’s quality of
life that is not available through simple economic measurements such as the
gross national product (GNP) (p. 90). According to Nussbaum, another
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 49

possible way of measuring quality of life is by “polling people concerning

the satisfaction of their preferences,” but this approach misses “the obvious
fact that desires and subjective preferences are not always reliable indica-
tors of what a person really needs” (p. 91, emphasis added). Furthermore,
reliance on local preferences or utility often “support the status quo and
oppose radical change” (p. 91, emphasis in text). Thus the HDI provides a
matrix wherein different contexts can be measured according to how much
they deviate from an ideal environment that would provide a good life. An
assessment of needs according to set criteria and the disregard for local
preference sidesteps the structural realities and histories of diverse groups
of women, and such a procedure relegates their views to something akin to
a “false consciousness,” excluding them from and suppressing their ability
to decide how to define their own “good life.”7
I have focused on Nussbaum’s contribution to human development
discourse and her work on a universal understanding of the “good life” as
it relates to women. Thus my critique of Nussbaum is also limited to this
construction of universalism and common humanity in development, which
is informed by Benhabib (1995), a political theorist who joined Nussbaum
in the conversation regarding human development’s focus on women. For
Benhabib, claims to a “common humanity” have always been a regulative
method, a tool for prescription, not a descriptive one (p. 242).8 Identifying
a group as “like” or “unlike” us by providing a list of commonalities is
simplistic (p. 244) when it gives one group the right to identify who is a hu-
man.9 For Nussbaum, being human depends on the active practice of capa-
bilities, and so she concludes that “being a woman is indeed not yet a way
of being a human being”(1995, p. 104), given that women lack the support
to achieve that potentiality in many parts of the world.10 This creates a vic-
timized figure that is in need of development’s intervention.
Drawing from Habermas’s (1985) communicative action model, Benhabib
(1995) advocates for a communicative process of identifying the common
goal of development and change. What enables communities to work to-
gether is the ability to communicate and make sense of each other’s reality
(p. 245). This relationship comes only through communication with and
strong self-evaluation (p. 250) relating to the “Other(s).”

We recognize this common humanity not because we share some belief in

some philosophical concept of essence; but because we can understand her
language, her actions, her emotions, her needs, and because we can com-
municate with her and see the world, more or less, maybe never wholly but
adequately enough, as she sees it. (p. 251)

Of course, questions such as who decides what is “adequately enough” and

the role of interpretation come into play. But what I’m interested in is the
process of dialogue and communication in Benhabib’s critique. Nussbaum’s
assurance that the “capabilities model” is not another form of imposed mo-
50 Gender, Development, and Religion

dernity or colonialism is dependent on the assumption that dialogue is tak-

ing place between the providers of development and their beneficiaries.
Though her empirical examples are often drawn from research that privi-
leges beneficiary participation and input (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 94), she re-
quires that assessments be based on the measurements of the HDI and not
on local preference or utility (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 91). This is far from the
form of communication that Benhabib advocates: to form common under-
standing of needs through dialogue and respect for differences and multi-
culturalism. As Feldman and Gellert (in press) point out, a more represen-
tative list of capabilities, interests, and commonalities are formed through
deliberation, collaboration, and contestation.
Liberal feminist development theories privilege mobility and visibility
as a necessary precursor to access public education and employment, mak-
ing the veil and the burqa a symbol of power and submission in the public
realm. The homogenized view of the veil as submissive is a disempowering
process because it ignores the variations of meaning behind the burqa
(Feldman, 2001). The ubiquitous images of Afghan women invisible in
their burqas post-September 11 attested to their powerless positions as ac-
tivists, and politicians justified the use of violence to free these women. The
images were supported by descriptions of the denial of education, health-
care and mobility—all factors that provide the capabilities that lead to a
“good life.” The veil and access to public resources in this case opens a
space of dialogue about gender and development; the veil represents an
icon of traditional hegemony and exclusionary power. The importance of
the burqa and mobility was also reflected in my conversations with partici-
pants in Afghanistan. As I discuss below, the burqa played a significant
though ambiguous role; it allowed women to be mobile in the public realm
while protecting their privacy from the public gaze. At the same time, it re-
flects the reality that they are not full participants in the public realm and
must negotiate a secondary role in the public. Given lack of space, I will
only focus on the experiences of education for Afghan women as part of
the public sphere in order to complicate universal assertions of develop-
mental education’s benefits.

EDUCATION IN DEVELOPMENT

The links between education, the state, and economy have been theorized
in a number of ways both as a site of reproduction and of emancipation.
First, schools are the institutions that facilitate the link between nation-
state and individuals through public policy (Anderson, 1983; Ramirez &
Ventresca 1992, p. 50; Torres, 1998). This link reinforces a specific process
of identity formation in a collective culture or system. Willis (1981) and
Bowles and Gintis (1977), provide examples of how public education “re-
produce(s)” class hierarchies within capitalist state structures. Second, and
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 51

in contrast to “reproduction,” education also contributes to the creation of

a public sphere, which is potentially a critical site of political discussion and
action that keeps (hegemonic) powers in check (Torres, 1998, p. 23).11
Third, education in the developmental state is viewed to be a form of
human capital investment that benefits the nation-state in the process of
economic growth (Fägerlind & Saha, 1989; Easterly, 2001). According to
current development theories, mass education and literacy provide a num-
ber of benefits to women: greater economic activity (Bandarage, 1999, p.
27; UNDP, 2002; Nussbaum, 1995; Chen, 1995); better knowledge of
health, hygiene, and lower fertility rates (Hynes, 1999, p. 55); and empow-
erment within their communities, social structure, and state institutions
(Tax, 1999, p. 121; for a critique, also see Kabeer, 1994, pp. 32, 219). This
has become central to the HDR, which attempts to incorporate social indi-
cators such as education in development, measured through enrollment and
literacy, and also is used as an index of gender disparity.
Finally, and I would argue most importantly for the case of Afghani-
stan, women’s education can also play an ambiguous role as a tool of na-
tionalism. Postcolonial studies of women’s education in South Asia suggest
a melding of modern and traditional that would train women how to be
both better mothers and good citizens (Gupta, 2002, pp. 166–167; see also
Fägerlind & Saha, 1989). Thus, a specific form of education can be con-
structed for women, which is distinct from Western, male education
(Gupta, 2002, pp. 168–169). Despite their prescriptions and limitations,
educational institutions can provide alternative spaces for women’s activi-
ties and identities. For example, reading can be a way of bringing the public
into the private, and thus it can challenge the control of the private male
(Gupta, 2002, pp. 172–174). Chatterjee (1989) emphasizes that in colonial
Bengal education allocated an autonomous interest to women, even with
debates over a “feminine curriculum,” to preserve their role within the
home. “Indeed, the nationalist constructs of the new woman derived its
ideological strength from making the goal of cultural refinement through
education a personal challenge for every woman, thus opening up a domain
where woman was an autonomous subject” (Chatterjee, 1989, p. 246). In
Afghanistan, as my field research indicates, new institutions for women’s
education reinforce culturally and religiously sanctioned roles for women,
though the institutionalization process itself has impacts on cultural and re-
ligious interpretations.

AFGHANISTAN AND ITS WOMEN

The U.S. attack on Afghanistan was a pivotal moment in the complex his-
torical relationship of the two states, especially in the last 30 years (for fur-
ther readings on Afghanistan’s political history, see Goodson, 2001; Rashid,
2001; Shahrani, 1990; Dupree, 1990; and Marsden, 1998). Issues sur-
52 Gender, Development, and Religion

rounding women’s education in Afghanistan are not new; contests over

mandatory education took place in the 1970s between local religious lead-
ers and the socialist government. And recently the denial of education for
Afghan women was a major focal point of the representations of Afghan
women in the United States. My fieldwork also demonstrates that there is a
great deal of attention and work put into women’s education in Afghani-
stan by both local and international actors. I will briefly review some major
political and historical aspects of women’s struggles and education policy in
Afghanistan before discussing my fieldwork and the actual experience of
Afghan women regarding education in the current context.
For Afghan women, issues of gender rights have not improved since
the 1970s, when major activities and contests for women’s liberation took
place.12 Women in Afghanistan live in a highly unequal society, perpetuated
by and propagating numerous other hardships in their daily experience.
The oft-changing political leadership and governmental structure has also
meant unstable, and at times contradictory, policies concerning women’s
rights. It is important to note that while women were legally allotted equal-
ity under the 1931 constitution and its subsequent amendments, the prac-
ticed rights and provision of services have been far from equal and repeat-
edly contested. In the mid-1950s, separate schools were established for girls
in urban centers such as Kabul, and women were admitted into the Univer-
sity of Kabul in 1959. By this time women were appearing in public with-
out full veils. They were entering the workforce, joining government minis-
tries, and voting. Civil laws and legislation were put forward in the 1960s
and 1970s protecting women with respect to child marriage, dowry, and in-
heritance. But these civil laws were voluntary, and many of the changes did
not affect the primarily rural population (Skaine, 2002).
It was not until the late 1970s when the communist government of the
People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) came to power that pen-
alties were enforced for the civil laws, and mandatory education was imple-
mented in rural areas despite limited popular support. Gender policies be-
came a major point of contention between the traditionalists and the
reformists, at times taking extreme and violent forms. Moghadam (1999)
states that “in the summer of 1978 refugees began pouring into Pakistan,
giving as their major reason the forceful implementation of the literacy pro-
gram among their women” (pp. 178–179). As the feminist wing of the
PDPA, the Democratic Organization of Afghan Women, demanded gender
rights, the rural population of Afghanistan turned away from these re-
forms, especially mandatory education for women, given the mistrust and
hostility toward the government (Moghadam, 1999).13 An examination of
the uprisings previous to the Soviet invasion of 1979 also points to educa-
tion being a major reason for the violent revolts against the government,
which in many cases targeted teachers and schools, with Herat being one of
the only areas indicating an organized and planned revolt (Roy, 1986,
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 53

pp. 107–108). With the departure of communism in 1992, these laws be-
came invalid or unenforceable. The legal situation of Afghan women under
the rule of the Taliban, who began to consolidate their power in 1994, was
one of the harshest experiences, especially for urban women. With fluctuat-
ing political institutions, other social structuring such as religious or cul-
tural codification became more prevalent in legitimizing the use of power
by the Taliban.14
One should not view women outside of this political spectrum and
practice; Afghan women’s guerilla activities with the mujahideen against
the Soviet Union signify the importance of cultural identification by these
Afghan women, despite the chauvinistic or extremist views of the mujah-
ideen. Interviews with such activists reveal that they viewed the communist
form of “gender rights” as foreign and oppressive in that it did not afford
them the freedom to practice what they viewed as their religious and cul-
tural rights (Skaine, 2002, pp. 18–19). Nancy Dupree’s (1990) work in the
Pakistan refugee camps points to a similar trend in women’s social activ-
ism. These activities can be viewed as a part of public, civic action, reflect-
ing the needs of citizens to challenge collectively what they view as an op-
pressive political system throughout Afghanistan’s modern history. For
example, women publicly demonstrated against parliamentary decisions re-
garding their education in 1968 during the monarchy (Skaine, 2002, p. 16)
and against the Taliban’s decision in 1996 not to accept small bank notes
(Skaine, 2002, p. 21). My research points to women being highly active in
education during the Taliban rule, and their activities were not limited to
their economic needs.
With these ideas in mind, the following section briefly examines the
public–private spatial designation of education, in which the use of the
burqa simultaneously becomes a tool of access and subordination. While
many Afghan women recognize and identify with the social values of insti-
tutional participation and unrestricted access, the burqa’s restriction re-
flects a spatial construction where the public is an unsafe arena to be nego-
tiated between various powers of influence and control. In the case of
restructuring the education system, the space of education is being con-
structed as a hybrid space of public and private representing the multiplic-
ity and precariousness of the Afghan woman’s position. All of these charac-
teristics add to an understanding of education as a process of development
and as an indicator of “quality of life,” and they are aspects that cannot be
measured through the HDI or other quantitative tools.

FIELDWORK

For Nussbaum (1995), “customs” that hinder “functionalities” in achiev-

ing a “good life” must be abolished for “human capabilities” to be effec-
54 Gender, Development, and Religion

tive, and this requires a certain political and legal environment. In the inter-
national view, any trace of the Taliban had to be removed from the politics
of Afghanistan before policies of human development of education and la-
bor could be implemented—thus justifying the use of violence for the sake
of the well-being of women. My research points to a more flexible and hy-
brid form of dialogue that takes place at the local level, leading Afghan
women to negotiate between their Muslim communities and international
liberal enforcement (not always in opposition). They are active in negotiat-
ing their spaces within their communities and through how they impact so-
cial transformation. In studying education, I want to examine a partial
component of this dialogue, influenced by Minault’s (1998) work that sug-
gests educational reform is more a symptom of larger social reforms, rather
than the cause thereof.

The Context
I conducted preliminary fieldwork on women’s education in Herat, Af-
ghanistan, and in surrounding areas in the summer of 2002. The qualitative
research consisted of informal conversations, participant observation, and
site visits to public and private schools. After I presented an explanation
about the project and its intended purposes, I asked the participants to dis-
cuss their background and understanding of education in Afghanistan at
the time; my questions were only a guide for the conversation. As a native
Farsi speaker, I was able to communicate in the local language, which gave
me access to forms of interpretations that are nuanced and unique, though I
did need explanation of some historical and cultural references. I did not
tape-record the interviews for reasons of security and in order to keep the
atmosphere casual and informal.15 Thus, the study is based on detailed
field notes. Given the lack of recording, I will not be quoting what the par-
ticipants said. At this point there are many layers of interpretations, from
the conversation to notes to the multiple stages of writing. This an explor-
atory project to raise relevant questions about the context as well as the
theoretical insights that are applied through development. For the sake of
brevity, I will not go into detail about the dire conditions of education in
Afghanistan. A brief examination of organizations active in Afghanistan,
especially UNICEF, will be illustrative; my own experiences did not contra-
dict these more popular descriptions.
Though the scope of the research is limited, I examined schools in both
rural and urban areas, the results and analysis of which are presented be-
low. The participants were teachers and one principal at a rural school. All
of the teachers were women who were married and who had children; the
principal was male and viewed as a leader in the community. All the teach-
ers explained that economic hardships required them to work. Teaching in-
come provided enough benefits to outweigh the added hours of work to
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 55

their usual busy schedules at home as well as the often serious reprimands
from community and family members for jeopardizing the honor of the
family by working outside of the home. In Herat hierarchies of power re-
flect status and prestige within the community and are a main point of con-
tention concerning access to natural and social resources. Within these
power structures, the role of political participation, through formal and in-
formal debates and dialogues, was seen as an important form of practicing
in the power structures. Political involvement was clearly linked to eco-
nomic activity so that wages, employment sectors, and the role of educa-
tion are clearly associated with social and political status, though more so
for men than for women—as is discussed below. Thus, education and
teaching is considered to be a political and potentially destabilizing force.
Afghanistan as a nation has gone through a number of transitions. Re-
search participants often expressed that it has been the experimental
ground for different methods of governance and development by outside
interests, as discussed above. Though their “history” does not mirror the
detail and critique of historians, it is part of their living social memory.16
Importantly, education is not spoken of as a primary concern, at least not
in the same way as access to food, water, healthcare, work, and consumer
goods.17 As women become more prevalent in development as symbols for
“liberation” (especially as “development” is contrasted with the “Islamic
world”), the question arises: How does this in turn influence development
discourse and practice? What is the impact of this shift on the lives of
women in Afghanistan, their needs and their coping mechanisms, despite
the changes? And how do they shape their changing environment as
agents? During my fieldwork, it was difficult to separate the discussion and
beliefs positing development as anything other than modernization; the link
between the two has been normalized, given the experience of many
Afghans. Accepting Naila Kabeer’s (1994) premise about modernization,
development as modernization is presumed to be gender-neutral and thus
produces gender equality in societies with large gender disparities. But, as
Kabeer points out, the gendered processes of modernization itself are not
considered, assuming that whatever the transformation, it is progressive
and preferred (Kabeer, 1994, p. 18).

Findings on Education
Qalai-e Kemal (pseudonym), about 40 kilometers southwest of the city of
Herat, is mainly a self-sustaining village of agriculturalists who have few
opportunities for a cash economy outside of migrant labor to Iran. Though
no vocational training existed for women at the time of my research, lim-
ited training does exist for health practices such as giving injections and
midwifery. Such training does allow possible participation in the cash econ-
omy for women. Beyond this, teaching is the only opportunity for a formal
56 Gender, Development, and Religion

salary. But there is much attention paid to the education of girls and how
the process of their education should take place in their village.
During a site visit to a rural girl’s school, I was able to speak with the
principal, Kasem (pseudonym), and subsequently held group discussions
with the teachers. About 35 girls of various ages walk from Qalai-e Kemal
with two teachers to join the neighboring village’s school for grades one
through six; there are no opportunities for schooling beyond sixth grade
for girls. Alternative forms of literacy also exist in the mosques, where girls
can learn to read the Qur’an in Arabic, and to pursue religious studies—
though the value of the education provided by the mullahs was continu-
ously questioned. Nonetheless, many of the teachers in the school depend
on their students having attained some degree of literacy in the mosque.
The general feeling is that by the age of 6 or 7 everyone should at least be
able to read and preferably write. How that skill is used and how much it is
retained is more individualized.
Older girls (i.e., postpuberty) are not encouraged to go to school, given
the distance, lack of safety, and early marriage. Education is not viewed as
a worthwhile investment of their time and energy. But there are exceptions:
a 14-year-old girl who was recently engaged will not continue with school,
unlike her 16-year-old cousin, who is also engaged. At the time of the inter-
view she was the oldest student at the school. According to the teachers,
given the possibility, maybe 20% of the students would go on to finish high
school. The reason behind the current low numbers is the restrictions posed
by families, husbands, and fathers. Often girls are engaged once they are lit-
erate, when the family realizes that some benefit is met and assumes that
the husband’s family will oppose their daughter’s education.18 These obsta-
cles are important when examining the teacher’s views on the value and
benefits of education: to achieve the ability to read and write letters, signs,
instructions, and so on, but not necessarily to gain employment. Thus, at
least publicly or in familial settings, there is ample enthusiasm about educa-
tion, or at least the skills of reading and writing (literacy), and a frustration
with the lack of education quality in the village as compared to the city.
Repeatedly the teachers and the principal expressed frustration with
the shortage of teachers and the lack of training for current teachers. None
of the six teachers in this case attended college, and only one had graduated
from high school. Legally, those with a minimum of a sixth-grade educa-
tion can teach in rural areas, whereas in the cities they are required to have
a high-school diploma. This shortage makes literacy a sufficient qualifica-
tion for some to teach, given the lack of official documentation and the
widespread prevalence of migration, limited state involvement, and flexible
regulation. Currently, there are no educators to take up the responsibility of
training more teachers. The only qualified person is Principal Kasem, but
given gender differences, it is socially prohibited for him to do so.
Principal Kasem, viewed as a leader of education in the community,
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 57

expressed the importance of keeping with Islamic ways when teaching. Ac-
cording to him, there is a need to gain the trust of the people in order to be
able to provide services—and the only way to do so is through Islam.
Mosques provide an important service and high benefits in terms of teach-
ing theology, so that doesn’t have to be done so much in secular schools.
But the secular schools must run parallel to the functions of the mosques.
His discussion of religion was not unique; the benefits of women’s educa-
tion are supported by religious dictates and are required for the advance-
ment of society as a whole, and, in this case, for the advancement of Mus-
lim society. Principal Kasem expressed the idea that the literate are different
people—they are more knowledgeable, especially in terms of religion.
Women must participate in education, of course, as long as there is gender
segregation. Every woman must be in Islamic dress, and since the dress is
part of the environment here, it is needed. Afghanistan’s underdevelop-
ment, ethnic conflict, and political contestations are a direct result of the
lack of education. Beyond economic security for both students and teach-
ers, there needs to be freedom from fear through security and peace, which
will provide an environment more conducive to learning. This points to a
flexible understanding of custom, religion, and transformative education,
in that education’s specific characteristics must reflect social conditions to
be viable.
In my discussions with teachers, I asked about the “value of educa-
tion.” If there was a tangible economic or legal benefit, then a quantitative
measurement would be possible; but it was clear that such opportunities do
not exist in the foreseeable future for these students. My interpretation of
the value of education is that it will benefit students in terms of social
standing, an expansion of the mind, and another skill to have. When asked
what the goal of education is for the girls in the village, a number of the
women noted that they wanted students to continue and finish high school.
I further pushed the question of “why” and what the value of such an edu-
cation will be. The response was that they can see their uneducated mothers—
in comparison, they believe that the lives of the educated are bound to be
better. Further questioning of what is a “better life” spurred no discussion.
Thus the values of education are measured in a comparative manner and
based on an assumption that changes within society and culture are taking
place.
Principal Kasem said that just going to school is enough to change a
person, in terms of discipline and behavior. In school there is greater expo-
sure to children of other families, with differing ethical codes, and also a
freedom in not having to be supervised by members of the family. That
adds to any changes that might come from literacy. As Principal Kasem and
a number of other teachers pointed out, an institution allows for a different
kind of socialization: one highly structured and influenced by teachers, an
institutionalized behaviorism, especially for women, who will directly
58 Gender, Development, and Religion

shape their children’s lives as mothers. Maybe this is the “benefit” of edu-
cation: a more uniform, institutionalized socialization of young children
outside of the environment of an almost closed family system and beyond
ethnic and tribal divisions. For girls, it is justified through the potential of
motherhood, the disciplining of their family along religious lines. Thus, in
this context, the position of the public woman as mother is codified and it
legitimizes the process of the public education system. This may be the only
way that education can be implemented in Afghanistan at this moment,
given the state’s inability to influence the process.
The situation within Herat brings up a number of different concerns,
though similar hardships and shortage of teachers apply to both contexts.19
I was able to conduct site visits to public and private schools and to have
discussions with teachers about education and its gendered aspects. When
walking into a public school, one is struck by the numbers of white tents in
the courtyard that house the large number of first-grade students. There are
more than 20 first-grade classes, with an average of 60 students in each
classroom. In comparison, there are only two 12th-grade classes, with
about 20 students in each class. Three main reasons contribute to the high
number of first-grade students. First, there is an absolute increase in the
population of children in general; second, there has been a lack of educa-
tion for the last 6 years under the Taliban, so that any girl between the age
of 6 and 14 is eligible to attend first through fourth grade. And third, there
is a more accepting social code for young girls to attend school, expressed
as “the need for development,” though this is not universally felt. Participa-
tion by older students is limited for the reasons discussed above, though
with lesser impact than in the village.
The effectiveness of education can be furthered by a number of means
in Afghanistan—at least in the urban setting. First, if women had access to
other forms of publicity, such as television and newspapers, to bring the
“outside public” into their homes, education could be made more meaning-
ful. Also, opportunity for other forms of employment could be a great en-
couragement. One of the reasons why there is a lack of employment for
women is that there is a lack of women in the public government sector be-
yond some figureheads. If jobs were legally opened, many women would
participate given their economic needs, especially those who have fewer re-
strictions at home and who are willing to accept social admonition. Often
in these cases, the lack of any opportunity to use education for economic
needs is a determining factor in school enrollment. Education’s benefits are
not simply influenced by an outside developer or through a change in the
political regime; more importantly, they are an integral part of local cul-
ture, politics, and economics.
As socially and religiously sanctioned institutions, schools in Afghani-
stan are strictly gender-segregated. Disciplinary aspects are important for
both men and women, but the power consequences are different. Girls’
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 59

schools will teach them to adhere to socially sanctioned gendered identities

of women; thus it should be continually questioned whether a woman’s ed-
ucation will produce the results desired by liberal developmental feminism.
In this context, schools are an amalgam space where the rules of society are
taught to future members, and the continual (re)constructions of private
spaces emerge in which the private honor and role of women are ensured
while accepting some (controlled) influences of the public. The role of
teachers and administrators is crucial in making certain that this character-
istic is kept. In the discussion of spaces, designations such as public, pri-
vate, far, controllable, or insecure become important, but are shallow and
symptomatic of other designated meanings.20 In the same way, sites of edu-
cation for women must be constructed to reflect the integrities of private
spaces in order to be socially acceptable.
This does not negate the possibility that schools can provide a space
that fosters change—as many of the women teachers pointed out. This
reading has two implications when examined with the work of Nussbaum.
First, a public institution, such as state education, does not mean a libera-
tion of women from custom; rather it comes closer to Willis’s (1981) under-
standing of education as creating a socially sanctioned individual. And sec-
ond, the change that does take place within the education system is not
through the possibility of employment (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 90) or the abil-
ity to defy and resist custom, but rather it is a navigation within the existing
systems. In this case, identity and interests are a coproduction by the state
and religion-sanctioned customary trends and the individual subjects be-
cause they are not mere subjects of the system, but are able to negotiate be-
tween powers and their own utility. The relevance of “personal utility” is
important, and is something that the HDI is not able to measure.21
In addition to gender segregation, the role of the burqa is telling in the
contest over the public and private body of Afghan women. The majority
of women still wear the burqa with ever-increasing sales supported by pur-
chases as young girls reach maturation.22 There was a general view that the
burqa is constricting but necessary for security as a symbol of privacy and
in providing the ability to travel in public while keeping purdah. But pur-
dah can also be applied to other women who are not part of the kinship
system. One of the oppositions for women’s education or employment is
that they will not be able to keep purdah from other women so that those
that do not want their daughters to participate may also bring up the issue
that they don’t want to associate with strangers, or begoneh, who are out-
side of the kinship system. Despite disagreements that this form of seclu-
sion is anti-Islamic, the practice is generally justified by drawing on Islam.
In different discussions, participants mentioned that removing the
burqa would have to be a collective act. Shortly before my visit to the
school, in another public school in Herat, some of the students had gone
through the burqa hangers and had cut large slits in the burqas, making
60 Gender, Development, and Religion

them impossible to be worn again. Of course, this was not appreciated by

other students, who decided to walk home in torn burqas and bought new
ones soon after. Here again, participation within the education sector can
collectively, though not uniformly, self-define the connotation of the burqa,
but this can only happen if outside conditions are also conducive to change.
I would question the assumption that schools act as catalysts of change fol-
lowing the induction of liberating desires; on the contrary, education sys-
tems must reflect social changes. The collective actions of Afghan women
may depend on feelings of social and physical security before they take off
the burqa. A sense of ethical or moral security is created through gender
segregation, including strict control over appearance and continued use of
the burqa. The enforcement of these rules allows for education to be so-
cially supported and accepted. But one must ask what the long-term effects
of such enforcement will be. The support for education is expressed
through comments such as “we know the price of illiteracy” and through
the idea that education has value beyond economics not met by other
means.
This is above and beyond the framework of values set up by Nussbaum,
where education plays a transformative role within a developing commu-
nity. My research supports Feldman and Gelleret’s (in press) discussion that
education lacks viability without institutional shifts, especially in terms of
the possibilities for employment. As Feldman and Gelleret point out,
Nussbaum’s support for education is also a support for indirect shaping of
desires in a predetermined manner fitting UNDP’s standardized measure-
ments which are assumed to be neutral. But as this case shows, education
for Afghan women is shaping myriads of desires including local customs
and preferences. Nussbaum’s understanding of not taking into account lo-
cal preferences is not only an imposition of her own norms about the values
of life, but it also has major drawbacks with respect to how education poli-
cies can be implemented. Even if localized preferences and utility do not fit
the projected requirements of the UNDP’s human development, it is and
must be a central consideration of development planning and implementa-
tion process.

CONCLUSION

I began my discussion with observations of how theories of development

and feminisms can be used to legitimize a form of dominance and even vio-
lence. My argument is not that these models of development have led to vi-
olence; indeed, such an assertion would give too much power to these dis-
courses. These theories demonstrate and emphasize the “ends” of society,
the result of what progress would look like. The desired goal becomes the
construction of a society that is welcoming of “individual capabilities” pro-
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 61

vided by development and constructing a society by eradicating existing

systems through multiple forms of violence. There is little in these universal
models that can argue against violence. In formulating the universal goal,
they lose sight of the “means” by which they are to achieve development.
Thus communities experiencing violence are left to decide the means of
constructing a society that is sanctioned internationally, since not meeting
the requirements could mean, at best, a lack of funds to continue the provi-
sion of services, and, at worse, military action. Critical, nuanced studies
must go beyond pointing out the contradictions in universalistic develop-
ment, and must examine how this form of violence fits within development,
and, in turn, how development legitimizes the use of violence.
In my case study, I have shown that understandings of women’s devel-
opment and education at the local level are formed within an understand-
ing of history and power relations locally and at a larger scale. These his-
torical and scaler concepts cannot be ignored in development projects. The
popular use of human development and supporting theories of universal-
isms such as those of Martha Nussbaum do not allow for the multivariant
and multilevel inclusion of context. A fuller understanding of context, then,
depends on deliberative communication with the beneficiaries of develop-
ment, which demands a reconsideration of power relations both within de-
velopment and feminism to include views that represent more than just
“victims” and are incorporated more fully into the system of knowledge
production about development policy.
My critique of education, development, and feminism is not one of dis-
missal, but rather a call for increased engagement. The lack of funding and
infrastructure capacity for the rebuilding of the education system in Af-
ghanistan hinders many of the enthusiastic participants, reestablishing ex-
isting inequalities. At the same time, limited local resources are utilized to
achieve the goals of education as defined by the community, often those al-
ready in influential positions, which has both positive and negative impacts
on women. This points further to the inapplicability of the universalist cri-
teria and casts doubt on the usefulness of uniform development criteria
such as the HDI and its gender indexes. In the end, human development
and a higher quality of life cannot be achieved without a more inclusive de-
velopment agenda that also takes into account local utility and preferences.
As mentioned above, this was a preparatory project for further re-
search. The goal was to find important questions and relevant theoretical
bodies that are applicable in this situation. The next few years will be im-
portant as education becomes more accepted (or possibly contested, as the
recent Taliban targeting of schools is demonstrating) and in considering
how education may shift social structures and individuals in the long term.
Questions of literacy, curriculum, pedagogy, and administrative quality in
education must be coupled with investigations of the social, political, and
economic role of education in designating an individual’s place in society.
62 Gender, Development, and Religion

From this preliminary research, I find that schools are a “constructed social
space”; the process of that construction and its social signifier points to in-
teresting understandings of power relations. As development and the use of
military power are joined in international relations, theorists and activists
must stay actively engaged in the use and implementations of ideals of de-
velopment and human rights. After all, we must be ready to consider
whether Afghan women’s lives and security should be exchanged for educa-
tion, and we must be ready to inquire of them what their choices and ideals
are.

NOTES

1. This statement was made in March 2002 after the United States sent textbooks
to Afghanistan to promote education. Much of the argument by the Bush ad-
ministration was centered upon the importance of education for Afghanistan.
2. For example, see numerous articles in Signs (Autumn 2002, Vol. 28, No. 1).
3. For examples, refer to Feminist Majority’s Campaign against Gender Apart-
heid, the leadership of Mevis Leno (Feminist Majority Campaign Against
Gender Apartheid www.feminist.com/activism/take_genderap_dec00.html;
www.feminist. org/afghan/facts.html), and popular documentaries such as CNN’s
Beneath the Veil by Saira Shah (www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/index.
veil.html).
4. While I am aware of the important and nuanced critique of terms such as “un-
derdeveloped,” “less developed,” and “developing,” I will not go into a discus-
sion of these terms in detail. I will use the term “developing” to reflect the dom-
inant language within development institutions and their discourses.
5. Tradition and culture become important parts of examining societies and the
capabilities of their members when examining subjugation and unequal power
relations. In introducing the “capabilities model,” Nussbaum (1995) points out
that poverty alone does not determine the disadvantage in women’s lives:
Custom decrees who gets access to the education that would open job opportu-
nities and make political rights meaningful. Custom decrees who can go where
in what clothing and with whom. Custom decrees who gets to make what sorts
of protests against ill-treatment both inside and outside the family, and whose
voice of protest is likely to be heard. (p. 3)

Sweeping statements such as “a preference-based approach that gives priority

to the preference of traditional culture is likely to be especially subversive of the
quality of life of women who have been on the whole badly treated by prevailing
traditional norms” (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 92) beg the question of what is tradi-
tional culture as well as whether Nussbaum’s dependence on classical Western
theories are not themselves a preference within a tradition.
6. Thus, since employment is linked to preservation of life in terms of healthcare
and life expectancy, then formal employment is part of basic capabilities, with-
out which a good human life will not be possible (Chen, 1995, pp. 53, 55, 90).
7. During my field study, the participants were quite knowledgeable about their
(Re)defining Public Spaces through Developmental Education 63

needs and obstacles. The changes they expected were not always in opposition
to those put forward by Nussbaum; but their proposals were often sophisti-
cated enough to take into account their reality and context. As postcolonial cri-
tiques of liberal universalisms and “false consciousness” point out, these theo-
ries are primarily formed to support liberalism’s power in an international
framework rather than describing the local context (Spivak, 1999; Mohanty,
1991; Mehta, 1999; Bhabha, 1999).
8. This is partly due to the impossibility of fully identifying and describing “tradi-
tion” as founded on a commonality. Traditions and customs are always chang-
ing and negotiated (Benhabib, 1995, p. 239), so that the vantage point of scale
and time becomes an important determinant of how we understand these con-
cepts.
9. As Nussbaum asserts, those who have lost or were born without the capacity of
sensory, imagination, creativity, love, or autonomy cannot be identified as hu-
mans, although that does not negate our (human) moral responsibility toward
them (Nussbaum, 1995, pp. 81–82).
10. Here Nussbaum deems it necessary to mention that women are different from
“rocks and plants and even dogs and horses”, and thus are human (Nussbaum,
1995, p. 104).
11. This is especially true in feminist struggles, as personal, private issues have been
brought into the public and political for legal and institutional accountability
and transformation (see Mies, 1986; Landes, 1998; Fraser, 1997).
12. Valentine M. Moghadam credits the socialist/communist governments of 1977
with starting the liberation of women in Afghanistan (Moghadam, 1999, p.
863). In contrast, William Maley (1996) argues that the monarchy of Zahir
Shah began the advancement of women’s rights by allowing the women to ap-
pear unveiled in public in 1959. Both views agree that the government was cen-
tral in implementing women’s rights, but government policies of neither regime
affected the cultural and social role of the average Afghan woman as planned.
13. Communist development projects and legal policies were viewed to be an inter-
ference with the domestic sphere of the Afghan cultural life (Skaine, 2002, p.
18); my own research points to similar resentments toward the Taliban admin-
istration, often expressing that these political interests do not represent the in-
terests of the population and reflect outside norms.
14. Denying the role of Islam, the Muslim Women’s League states: “Taliban’s stand
on the seclusion of women is not derived from Islam, but, rather, from a cul-
tural bias found in suppressive movements throughout the region” (in Skaine,
2002, p. 5). Former Afghan diplomats and officials have argued that the
Taliban’s activities were not based on cultural bias and point to the above-
mentioned political trends to demonstrate the (legal) progressiveness of Af-
ghanistan (i.e., Haron Amin, in Skaine, 2002, p. 13).
15. There is often an apprehension about matters that seem public and official es-
pecially when they seem to contest the sanctity of the private, which includes
any topic that incorporates women.
16. Socialism and communism were processes that begun during and ended with
the interests of the Cold War. The purism of an (attempted) Islamic state reflects
a shift in those interests; and democracy, with the attempt to establish an equal
society, is yet another development project, or U.S. experiment. What is aston-
64 Gender, Development, and Religion

ishing is that all three processes of social change are part of the living memory
of the majority of the population as this all has taken place in the last 30 years.
17. The explicit need for education is clearest in the case of men who can use it to
get better jobs and thus economic security; for women, these benefits or oppor-
tunities do not present themselves as readily, or at all, except in the education
sector.
18. It was expressed that mothers have little say in the marriage of their daughters,
though this is a stereotypical norm that has repeatedly been contested by vari-
ous women.
19. Despite the shortage of teachers, women have dominated the education sector
in Afghanistan, and now the area of education seems to be the only sector for
job opportunities often celebrated by local politicians and media along feminine
gender-specific characteristics.
20. A more nuanced reading of the characterization of space in this case would be
to examine the contest over the space of the self in terms of body politics. A
woman under burqa or under purdah, invisible to nonfamilial or stranger’s
eyes, is equivalent to being in a private space while participating in a public act.
Her protection is the duty of family members, male and female, even if their
roles are defined differently.
21. Nussbaum brings up the discussion of utility when addressing the internaliza-
tion of subordination and lack of knowledge for better opportunities. “The
poor and deprived frequently adjust their expectation and aspiration to the low
level of life they have known. Thus they may not demand more education,
better health care” (Nussbaum, 1995, p. 91). In this case, the subordinate’s
view of utility is false, and a reliance on that shows “results that support the
status quo and oppose radical change,” not actual quality of life (Nussbaum,
1995, p. 91). She presents this after pointing to the quantified measurements of
the HDR as a representation of measuring quality of life while objecting to the
quantified “commensurability of values in utilitarianism” (Nussbaum, 1995,
p. 91, fn. 71).
22. Though prevalent in the rural setting in Herat, the burqa was uncommon in
Herat until the Taliban takeover. Today, the majority of women above the age
of 12 wear a burqa when leaving home; many expressed that this is their own
choice rather than the choice of male family members.

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Gender,
A Space Development,
of Her Own and Religion

3 A Space of Her Own

Women, Work, and Desire in an Afghan
Nomad Community

DIANA K. DAVIS

A
lthough Afghanistan is often portrayed in the Western media
as a predominately “male” country, so many men have died during the de-
cades of war there that an estimated 60–70% of the population is now
composed of women (Khanna, 2002). These women survived nearly a de-
cade under Mujahideen and Taliban rule that placed great restrictions on
their lives and livelihoods in multiple ways. These same women now face a
male-dominated, Western development industry that brings many notions
and stereotypes about women in general and about Muslim women in par-
ticular with its plans and projects for “development.” The opportunities for
women’s participation in the development and rebuilding of their country
are constrained due to the preconceived notions accompanying these over-
whelmingly male spaces of development. This chapter presents research
from an Afghan nomad community that reveals that, despite common be-
liefs to the contrary, these women have a sophisticated knowledge of live-
stock health and management, significant responsibilities for care of live-
stock, and a serious desire not only to continue working with livestock but
also to expand their knowledge and their work with livestock in their com-
munity. These women have the knowledge, roles in society, and desire to
define their own spaces of development if their voices can be heard.
Beginning with an overview of the myriad debates about women, Is-
lam and development, and the status of women in Afghanistan, this chapter
next introduces the Afghan nomads known as the Koochi1 and provides a

68
A Space of Her Own 69

summary of their history and way of life. Women’s work and knowledge
within this pastoral society are subsequently detailed, accompanied by a de-
scription of men’s work and knowledge. This is followed by a presentation
of the results of a survey conducted to assess women’s ability and desire to
be trained and work as “basic veterinary workers” (BVWs) and an analysis
of the survey results. As this research was conducted just prior to the rise of
the Taliban, the results offer suggestions for development alternatives, most
of which have not been possible in the intervening decade.2 The implica-
tions of the research and the potential alternatives it suggests for present
and future development programs in Afghanistan are discussed in the final
section.

GENDER, ISLAM, AND DEVELOPMENT

IN AFGHANISTAN

Any discussion of women and development in Muslim societies is necessar-

ily situated within multiple debates concerning gender and Islam, as well as
broader global debates over gender and development. The case of Afghani-
stan, however, stands out as an anomaly for several reasons. First, the liter-
ature on Afghanistan over the last quarter century has been dominated by
discussions of geopolitics and suffers from a relative dearth of research on
general development and/or gender issues. Second, Afghanistan was al-
ready one of the least developed of the Islamic countries before the most re-
cent 25-year period of war and disruption began, and it is now one of the
poorest and least developed countries in the world. Third, Afghanistan is
widely regarded as an “extreme case” of classical patriarchy, the institu-
tions of which dominate, to varying degrees, social, economic, and political
life throughout the Muslim world today (Moghadam, 1999; Suad &
Slyomovics, 2001). As a result, very little discussion of Afghanistan and its
women has been included in the recent swell of academic writing on gender
and Islam or gender and development in the Middle East.3
Although stereotypes of Muslim women still abound, a substantial lit-
erature has appeared that provides carefully researched and thoughtfully
contextualized discussions of the multiplicity of experiences of these
women (Ask & Tjomsland, 1998; Haddad & Esposito, 1998; Meriwether
& Tucker, 1999; Shukri, 1999; Suad & Slyomovics, 2001). The majority of
these discussions have moved far beyond earlier essentialized writings
about the “typical Muslim woman” and instead argue for a reality richly
differentiated by historical and geographical specificity that considers the
social, economic, and political contexts of women’s lives in addition to any
religious dimensions.4 Moreover, most of these authors understand gender
as a system of social relations between women and men, and not simply as
“gender equals women.” Many of these researchers agree that although pa-
70 Gender, Development, and Religion

triarchy is the dominant institution in most Islamic societies, women’s ex-

periences of it vary both by country and within individual countries. Fur-
thermore, women in many contexts have negotiated these traditionally
male spaces in successful ways, in some instances appropriating them and
creating “new” female Islamic spaces that at times defy classical patriarchy
(Ask & Tjomsland, 1998). The case of Iran since the Islamic revolution two
decades ago is particularly interesting. Approximately 70% of Iranian
women are now literate, their educational levels are high, and they have a
growing presence in government and the workforce, despite the overt gen-
der bias and inequality instituted during the early years of the revolution
(Ansari & Martin, 2002; Moghadam, 1999).
In Afghanistan, however, the condition and status of women is nearly
uniformly judged a disaster. Life expectancy for women is only 43 years;
maternal mortality is the second worst in the world, with an estimated
16,000 women dying each year from pregnancy-related causes (that is more
than double the rate of maternal mortality in 1985 [Moghadam, 1994]);
and female literacy is estimated to be between 5 and 20% (United Nations
Development Programme [UNDP], 2003; United Nations Development
Fund for Women [UNIFEM], 2002; United Nations Office for the Coordi-
nation of Humanitarian Affairs [UNOCHA], 2003a). Seventy percent of
the population is estimated to be malnourished, and women and children
are likely to bear the brunt of this hunger (UNDP, 2003). War and severe
social disruption have had significant influence on these indicators of
women’s well-being, but half a decade of Taliban rule played an equal or
greater role.5 Under Taliban rule access to education, opportunity to work
outside the home, access to medical care, and basic mobility were all highly
circumscribed for women and girls (Moghadam, 1999).6 Because so many
Afghan families were headed by females, all of these restrictions greatly im-
peded women’s abilities to provide the basic necessities for survival to
themselves or their children. Few, if any, women were able to negotiate a
productive space for themselves under the severe Taliban patriarchy.
The Taliban, and many factions of the Mujahideen before them, held
notions of Islam and gender relations/gender roles that were particularly
conservative, even within the norms of other conservative Islamic states in
the Middle East. Views of women and their proper roles in society do vary
with the different interpretations of Islam dominant in each society. Women
not infrequently become markers of cultural/religious identity, especially
during periods of social disruption. Moghadam (1999) has shown that in
Afghanistan under the Taliban, “women’s reproductive roles [were] fetish-
ized in the context of a kinship-ordered patriarchal structure . . . it [was]
difficult to see women in other roles, such as students, citizens, or income-
earning employees” (p. 173). That is to say, women’s spaces were restricted
to an unusual degree. When international aid workers and nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs) gained greater access to development work
A Space of Her Own 71

in Afghanistan in 1992, they worked, to varying degrees, in cooperation

with first the Mujahideen and then with the Taliban. Most of these aid
workers were men and a majority of them accepted the Mujahideen’s, and
later the Taliban’s, views on women with little question (Moghadam,
1994). As a result, most development programs were and are targeted to-
ward men, with little if any analysis of gender roles/gender relations or of
how such projects would impact women and their well-being.7
This is not surprising given that development theory and practice
around the world have been dominated throughout the 20th century by
Western men and are permeated with Western male bias (Elson, 1995;
Hartwick, 1999). This is the case despite a profusion of theoretical work
grounded in detailed field studies that has demonstrated the imperative of
incorporating gender (the complex social relations between women and
men) into development. Many of these feminist critiques of mainstream
development are motivated by the facts revealed in an important United
Nations (UN) report that “women are half the word’s people . . . perform
two-thirds of the world’s working hours . . . receive one-tenth of the
world’s income . . . [and] own only one-hundredth of the world’s property”
(Hartwick, 1999, p. 164). This large body of critical research covers many
different perspectives on gender and on development. Some of the primary
theoretical approaches to gender issues in development are “women in de-
velopment” (WID), “women and development” (WAD), “gender and de-
velopment” (GAD), “women, environment, and development” (WED), and
“postmodernism and development” (PAD).8 All of these approaches are in-
formed by different theories—for example, WID is grounded in moderniza-
tion theory and neoliberalism, whereas WAD is often characterized as a so-
cialist approach. Although each of these bodies of research is supported
with convincing case studies of development projects and their often ad-
verse affects on women around the globe, the WID, and, to a growing de-
gree, the GAD approaches remain dominant in practice.
WID was one of the earliest approaches to consider women’s issues
and development, appearing in the 1970s. Although critical of mainstream
development in a limited way, it accepted the modernization theory domi-
nant at the time and has since accepted neoliberalism.9 WID has become
the primary way that powerful international institutions such as the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and several UN agencies, among oth-
ers, operationalize issues concerning women and development. WID has,
however, received a large amount of criticism for “its exclusive focus on
women and its avoidance of gender relations [and] for a shallow analysis”
(Hartwick, 1999, p. 182). Furthermore, it has been documented that many
WID projects have acted to mobilize women’s labor for environment and
development projects without remuneration, to increase women’s overall
workloads, and not infrequently to worsen women’s economic and social
72 Gender, Development, and Religion

situations (Elson, 1995).10 Even microcredit projects specifically targeted to

help women have been shown, on thorough analysis, to have left women
with the debt and the responsibility for repayment, while the actual benefits
(credit) have been appropriated by men (Goetz & Gupta, 1996). Although
some progress has been made in incorporating other approaches, particu-
larly GAD, at the international institutional level, the neoliberal paradigm
and its attendant views and assumptions about women (WID) remain dom-
inant in development practice today.
In the livestock development sector, the WID approach and the fre-
quent exclusion of women have been particularly damaging. The dominant
neoliberal development paradigm has strongly encouraged commercializa-
tion of pastoral production all over the world. It has further assumed that
most women do not work with livestock in significant ways. These ideas
have led to the disempowerment of women on several fronts. Subsistence
dairy production is often the domain of women in numerous societies
around the globe, especially in Africa and Asia. Women milk the animals,
especially the small stock; not only do they feed the family with the milk
and milk products, but they also barter or sell any surplus.11 The income
thus gained is frequently the woman’s to dispose of as she likes.
Western-led development projects, however, usually promote commer-
cialization of dairy production and/or the conversion of dairy to commer-
cial meat production. The effects of such projects are complex and vary
from one location to another. All too often, though, they transfer responsi-
bility for and income from dairy production from women to men, thus
eroding women’s economic situation and social status (Ensminger, 1984;
Waters-Bayer, 1994). In other cases, pastoral development projects have
failed outright because they ignored women and women’s work in the soci-
ety. For example, one project that aimed to increase fodder production
failed because “women had been excluded from the instruction process on
feeding, . . . men . . . were the ones instructed on the new recommenda-
tions. But, in fact, it is women who gather forage and feed the animals”
(Norem, Yoder, & Martin, 1989, p. 94). In these instances, not even a WID
approach was implemented because of the planners’ assumptions about
women and their roles in the society. These examples, among many others,
highlight some of the problematic patriarchal assumptions inherent in
much of Western-led development.
The spaces of development in Afghanistan today, then, are overwhelm-
ingly male, being dominated by conservative religious leaders and Western-
led development and reconstruction efforts. Although the geopolitics have
changed over the last decade, the spaces for women’s participation are in
many ways as limited as they were in the early 1990s, despite rhetoric to
the contrary. This may be especially true in remote rural areas. Because
women constitute the majority of the population in Afghanistan today, gen-
der issues and the future of development in this impoverished country are
A Space of Her Own 73

particularly acute. The case study presented here, that of the pastoral no-
mads known as the Koochi, explores some of the misperceptions of women
and their roles, work, and desires that are inscribed in these male spaces of
development. In doing so, a primary goal of this chapter is to try to answer
two questions: What spaces of development do Afghan nomad women
define/desire for themselves? And how might they begin to attain their
desires?

THE KOOCHI: BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

OF NOMADS IN AFGHANISTAN

In the late 1970s, before the war, nomads in Afghanistan were estimated to
number 2,500,000, which constituted approximately 15% of the country’s
total population (Nyrop, 1986). Their numbers are estimated to be only
10% of the total population of approximately 25 million today, thus prob
ably still numbering about 2,500,000 people (UNOCHA, 2001; UNOCHA,
2003b). Although likely more numerous in the previous decades and centu-
ries, nomads played a significant role in the country’s prewar economy be-
cause they owned roughly 80% of the sheep and goat flocks in Afghanistan
(Nyrop, 1986). The raising, selling, and trading of livestock (mainly fat-
tailed sheep and goats) and livestock products (milk products and wool)
formed the basis of their economy.
The Koochi are Pashtun nomadic pastoralists.12 The Pashtun comprise
the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, their religion is Islam (the majority
are Sunni), and their language is Pashto. In Pashto, Koochi means “no-
mad.” The Koochi are the largest group of nomads in Afghanistan, al-
though there are nomads from other ethnic groups such as the Baloch and
the Kirghiz (Dupree, 1980). As is the case with most nomads, the Koochi
live in areas of low rainfall that also have very unpredictable rainfall pat-
terns and frequent droughts. The regions in which they live and migrate re-
ceive approximately 150–200 millimeters average annual rainfall or less
(Nyrop, 1986). Since about 30–40 million hectares of Afghanistan’s total
area of 63 million hectares is arid and semiarid rangeland (47–63%), the
nomadic raising of livestock in these difficult regions is important economi-
cally because this land can be used for little else (Nyrop, 1986; Thomson,
Barker, & Miller, 2003). Only about 8–13% of land in Afghanistan is
arable.
Historically, the Koochi migrated twice a year with their livestock via
camel caravans from the foothills of the Hindu Kush and other mountains
in central Afghanistan to the plains of the Indus River Valley or the deserts
of southern Afghanistan or Balochistan (see Figure 3.1). They grazed their
flocks during the summer in mountain pastures and during winter in
warmer lowland pastures. During the spring and autumn, the Koochi mi-
74 Gender, Development, and Religion

FIGURE 3.1. Map of Koochi migratory routes.

grated between these sites in large family groups. Significant numbers of

Koochi have maintained their way of life over the last quarter century.
They still migrate in large numbers and the people living near Quetta,
Balochistan, still say, “The hills turn black with Koochi tents in the spring
and the fall.”
The year 1978 marked the beginning of 25 years of war and social dis-
ruption in Afghanistan. The war began with the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan, but war conditions continued even after the Soviets withdrew, during
the Afghan civil war. Although the Taliban brought some stabilization to
some areas, the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 further
worsened conditions for average Afghans and the situation has not im-
proved much, if at all, since then. During the worst of the disruption, in the
early 1990s, an estimated seven million Afghans were forced to become ref-
ugees, making them the world’s largest refugee population at that time. At
least two million Afghans have been killed during these conflicts and at
least two million more have been displaced inside the country (UNOCHA,
2003b). An estimated four and a half million refugees remain today, con-
centrated in Pakistan and Iran. Currently, life expectancy in Afghanistan is
43 years, one of the lowest in the world; 25% of children die before reach-
ing their fifth birthday; and an estimated 35% of children are severely mal-
nourished (UNOCHA, 2003a). In the fall of 2002, the international com-
munity declared a “health emergency” for the country due to the terrible
conditions.
A Space of Her Own 75

One of the worst droughts in living memory gripped the country from
1999 to 2003.13 Causing many problems throughout the country, it hit the
livestock sector particularly hard. Livestock deaths among the nomadic
groups have been astonishingly high, with losses estimated at 75–90% of
nomadic livestock in many regions (Nekzad, 2003; Thomson et al., 2003).
This has only increased the hardships faced by the Koochi, already suffer-
ing from the high number of land mines left by years of war often found in
their migratory paths. At least 100,000 Koochi have been forced into refugee-
like aid camps near Kandahar due to the unusually harsh conditions
(Caritas, 2002).14
Part of the international community’s response to these appalling
conditions over the years has been the implementation, when and where
possible, of development and rehabilitation projects in different sectors of
the country. Many of these projects have focused on the agricultural sec-
tor, and some particularly on the livestock sector. One of these projects in
the early 1990s was the Basic Veterinary Worker (BVW) Program funded
by USAID. The NGO Mercy Corps International (MCI) managed the
program as part of a larger development program for health and agricul-
ture in Afghanistan. Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine con-
sulted on veterinary issues for the project. The project was designed to
train male Afghan farmers and herders in basic animal healthcare, vac-
cine administration, and simple veterinary treatments with the aim of
making them not only able to treat their own animals, but also able to
treat the livestock of others and to charge for their services (Jespersen &
Sherman, 1992).15 Although the project explored involving Koochi women
as BVWs, these plans were never realized. The research presented here
was gathered while the author was a short-term consultant on veterinary
and gender issues for this project.16

WORK AND KNOWLEDGE IN KOOCHI SOCIETY

Life in Koochi society is focused on animals: sheep, goats, camels, donkeys,

dogs, and even cats. Most aspects of daily life are linked in some way to the
lives of the animals. Nomads in Afghanistan have been studied by scholars
during the 20th century and their work and roles in the society have been
well documented. Most of what these authors have written about nomads
in Afghanistan, as with writing in general about nomads in the Middle
East, stresses that the roles of women are confined to domestic duties such
as packing and unpacking the tent, sewing, washing, cooking, and taking
care of children. With respect to animals, the literature generally agrees that
women’s work is limited to milking livestock, processing milk products,
spinning (see Figure 3.2), weaving, and rug/tent production (Balikci, 1990;
Barth, 1961; Glatzer & Casimir, 1983; Nyrop, 1986; Tapper, 1977).17 All
76 Gender, Development, and Religion

FIGURE 3.2. Photo of a Koochi nomad woman, with two of her children, spinning
wool and telling stories. Photo by author.

of these authors indicate that herding and the care of livestock are nearly
exclusively the domain of men. The implication is that women have little or
no knowledge of animal health and disease, nor a role in providing animal
healthcare. As a result, most livestock development projects in Afghanistan
have excluded women, especially those focusing on veterinary care in no-
madic areas.
My research, however, reveals that women work with animals in sig-
nificant ways and that they have a sophisticated knowledge of animal
health and disease. One of the few things that Koochi women don’t (often)
do is herd animals far from the family tent. This is nearly exclusively the
job of men. In addition to all the tasks described as women’s work above,
these women care for newborn and young animals at the tent until they are
old enough to go out to pasture with the main herd. Ill animals are often
isolated from the herd, to prevent spread of infection, by keeping them near
the tent where women care for them and provide healthcare. Women are
preferred to help with difficult births in livestock and often do so. When
livestock are kept in pens near the tent, it is women who clean out the pens.
Women are also responsible for feeding and watering animals kept at the
tent. Despite the fact that only men slaughter livestock for food in this Is-
lamic society, women clean the internal organs and prepare the carcass for
cooking.18 Additional duties performed by women include the removal of
ectoparasites such as ticks from livestock, collecting manure (often used as
A Space of Her Own 77

fuel), and holding/restraining animals when necessary (e.g., at shearing

time).
Perhaps not surprisingly, given their work with animals, these women
have a good understanding of a wide range of livestock diseases, and more-
over a good knowledge of how to treat these diseases with locally available
treatments. They know, as do many of the men, how to employ and admin-
ister these local treatments by making use of indigenous plants, minerals,
and animal tissues. Local plants and minerals are often used to treat para-
sites, both externally and internally, as well as other livestock diseases. Ani-
mal products such as lung tissue from a diseased animal are used in the in-
digenous “ear slit” vaccine.19 In some areas, however, Koochi women have
more detailed and sophisticated knowledge of livestock diseases and their
treatment than Koochi men. These areas of women’s superior knowledge
correlate with the work that is most often women’s work.
Women know significantly more than do men about mastitis (infec-
tions of the udder), about dystocias (difficult births), and about the care of
newborn livestock. During this research, for example, 90% of the women
were able to name at least one disease that causes mastitis, whereas 70% of
the men explained that God or the Devil was the cause. Only women re-
ported mastitis to be infectious, which it usually is, and mentioned the im-
portance of hand washing (when possible) after milking each animal. Alter-
natively, infected animals are milked last by women to try to minimize
infection. Nearly 20% more women than men understood the importance
of newborns drinking colostrum (the first milk, high in antibodies) to pro-
tect them from disease. Furthermore, women knew more about internal
parasites than did men. When asked to name which diseases or parasites
might be found inside a dead animal, women listed four parasites as well as
two other diseases (including anthrax). Men only listed two of the most
common parasites. Importantly, 10% more women than men reported that
intestinal worms can cause diarrhea in livestock. All of the women were
able to list at least one other cause of diarrhea in livestock, while only 83%
of men were able to do so, a difference of nearly 20%. Thirty-three percent
of women knew that diarrhea can be contagious, but only 20% of men un-
derstood this. Many Koochi women editorialized about the men’s limited
knowledge in these areas. One woman explained that “men are usually ig-
norant of these things, they don’t care if an animal is ill. Besides, men are
usually not at home.”
Even in areas outside the normal purview of women’s work, women’s
knowledge of animal health and disease was at least as good as and some-
times better than that of men. Included in this research was a standardized
survey of animal health and disease knowledge based on the most common
diseases encountered in Afghan livestock in this region. This survey re-
vealed that women have a marginally superior knowledge of livestock
health and disease, although not “statistically significant.”20 Notably, the
78 Gender, Development, and Religion

four highest “scores” in the survey all were obtained by women, with the
highest woman’s score being 10% higher than any of the men’s scores. This
survey was constructed based on the existing BVW project’s training pro-
gram and covered a majority of the most important diseases and animal
healthcare issues targeted by this development project. The results of this
research, then, are significant also in an applied context since, based on
these results, women might well make better BVWs than men due to their
extensive knowledge base. If only men had been asked about women’s
knowledge of animal disease and their care of livestock, a very different
picture would have been obtained. When asked what work women do with
animals, 94% of Koochi men listed milking and processing milk products.
Ninety-four percent of these men also explained that women do not know
anything about animals that men do not know.
Built into this Western-led development project, however, as in similar
projects in Afghanistan and the Middle East in general, was the presump-
tion that women do not work in significant ways with animals. Koochi
men’s responses suggest that men may foster this presumption (wittingly or
not). In addition, it was assumed by project leaders that Afghan women’s
mobility and ability to work are severely restricted for religious/cultural
reasons, so that they were not considered good “targets” for this project.
These assumptions about women are an integral part of a wider set of
essentialized assumptions about Muslim societies held by many Western or-
ganizations and individuals. It was only later, halfway through the project,
that involving women in some way was explored. As mentioned earlier,
though, involving women in this project was never realized despite evidence
that refuted many of the assumptions outlined above.

WORK AND DESIRE AMONG KOOCHI WOMEN

Koochi women believe that they would make good BVWs. Koochi men
agree. By asking detailed questions perhaps not often included by other re-
searchers, my results suggest strongly that Koochi women have the knowl-
edge, the skills, and the desire to be effective animal healthcare workers.
Furthermore, it highlights the fact that most Koochi men agree that women
can and should perform this kind of work. What conditions Koochi women
and men place on how women might carry out this work are significantly
less restrictive than international development organizations and other
“outsiders” generally believe.
Koochi women know how to catch, handle, and restrain livestock. In
fact, 40% of Koochi men who were asked reported that women can handle
and restrain animals better than men. Koochi women also know how to ad-
minister healthcare to livestock, such as using the shkur (a hollowed-out
cattle horn used to administer pills and other treatments), and to do so
A Space of Her Own 79

when necessary. Women say that they often know when animals are sick
before men notice. This is likely because women work closely with the live-
stock, clean out animal pens, and feed and water the animals, which gives
them frequent opportunities to notice disease symptoms like diarrhea.
Women also displayed a better understanding of the correlations between
internal parasites, diseases, and symptoms than did men, probably because
they also clean the carcasses after slaughter and see any parasites or dis-
eases present.
Despite the common Western misperception that nearly all Muslim
women are kept as secluded as possible from men outside the immediate
family, a practice called purdah in Afghanistan, Koochi women do not
commonly practice purdah. In fact, few nomad or village women in the
Muslim world do routinely keep purdah or wear a veil (Dupree, 1980). The
practice does vary across the Muslim world, though, with many variations
in custom. Nearly two-thirds of Koochi women said that they only observe
purdah for the first 2 or 3 years after marriage. Seventy-two percent of
these women explained that they did not observe purdah, even outside the
customary boundaries of their own tribe. In stark contrast to this, however,
100% of the men who were asked stated that Koochi women observe pur-
dah from those outside the tribe.
A unanimous desire for training in animal healthcare was expressed by
Koochi women. All the women and 83% of the men said that women
would like to be trained in animal healthcare. Although the men made it
clear that they prefer men to receive such training first, both men and
women agreed that training for women was desirable because it would be
easy for them to learn, good for the livestock, good for other women, and a
good way to earn income. Three-quarters of both women and men said
that women would be successful in providing animal healthcare if they
were properly trained. Approximately 85% of both men and women
agreed that women could provide healthcare to animals belonging to any
man in their tribe. For animals belonging to a man outside the tribe, 69%
of women said they could provide healthcare for them; however, only 27%
of men agreed. One woman elaborated, stating that she could give
healthcare to animals belonging to anyone (male or female) as long as they
were Muslim. Eighty-one percent of the women stated that they could re-
ceive money from those whose livestock they might treat, even from men.
On the other hand, 80% of the men said that women could not accept pay-
ment in cash from men.
Just as the majority of Koochi women and men agreed that women
want training in animal healthcare, the vast majority (100% of women and
90% of men) also agreed that training would have to be from other
women, even from foreign women. Ninety-four percent of women and men
further agreed that training would have to be in the family tent or in the
tent of a friend in the tribe, not in a city. Three-quarters of the men stated
80 Gender, Development, and Religion

that 2 weeks would be the maximum time period that women could be
away from their normal work to receive training, and 40% of women
agreed. A larger number of women, though, 46%, explained that up to 3
months might be needed for such training and that they could leave their
work for that length of time. Nearly 80% of women chose winter as the
best time for training, perhaps reflecting the boredom experienced during
this season, when there is little for them to do.
Within the boundaries of their tribe, then, it is clear that both women
and men agree that women want training in animal healthcare, that they
would be successful treating livestock, and that they could treat nearly any
animal owned by anyone in the tribe. The issue of payment for these basic
veterinary services, however, provoked very different responses that would
need to be addressed if such a project were ever implemented. This issue
might be as easily addressed, though, as the issue of procuring veterinary
supplies. Approximately three-quarters of both women and men stated that
women could not go into the bazaar to buy veterinary supplies when
needed. Twelve percent of both men and women said that old women could
go to the bazaar. As a logistical solution, however, 100% of the women and
90% of the men explained that men or boys could be sent to buy veterinary
supplies in the bazaar when needed. Neither the men nor the women saw
the purchase of veterinary supplies as an impediment to women being
trained in animal healthcare. With respect to the question of women receiv-
ing payment for services rendered to animals, the possibility exists for a
woman to be found to give payment to a female animal healthcare worker.

DISCUSSION

As detailed above, Koochi women’s real productive spaces (and their poten-
tial productive spaces) are larger and more complex than previously recog-
nized. These women play an important role in caring for livestock in this
pastoral society. They have the primary responsibility in caring for sick live-
stock, a task they perform with extensive knowledge and skill, being more
knowledgable and performing more work than men in several key areas of
livestock disease. Women’s work, knowledge, and role in the production,
processing, and distribution of milk is particularly complex and compre-
hensive, entailing a vital knowledge of the udder and its diseases and treat-
ments, the value of the “first milk” in protecting newborns from disease,
milking and processing milk products, and care of milking animals. Some
of these women also sell surplus milk when they can, and several said that
they kept money thus earned and could spend it how they liked—for exam-
ple, to buy embroidery thread.21
These women are proud of what they know and the skills that they
have. Most would, moreover, like to extend their knowledge of and skills
A Space of Her Own 81

for treating livestock. That is, they would like to define their own spaces of
development and would choose to learn more about livestock health and
disease if given the chance. Many of these Koochi women also explained
that they would like to learn to read and write, and that they would like
more and better religious education. Importantly, the majority of Koochi
men support these desires, particularly in the area of training women to
treat livestock diseases. These men listed few restrictions to women treating
livestock within their tribal group. Within their own society, then, there are
few limitations seen to women defining and attaining their own spaces of
development. Even in areas that were potentially problematic, such as
women transgressing the male spaces of the bazaar to buy needed livestock
medicines, a solution was proffered by women and men: that of a boy or
man being sent to buy medicines ordered by the woman.
Are Koochi women’s productive spaces, their sophisticated knowledge,
their extensive work, and their future spaces of development being eroded
by patriarchal, Western-led development projects operating within a se-
verely conservative religious ideological climate? This is a crucial question
facing the country and the international community as the effort is made
for “the reconstruction of Afghanistan.” This case study of the BVW Pro-
ject suggests that women’s work and knowledge may be eroded by Western
development projects in several ways. The current geopolitically defined
development situation in Afghanistan unfortunately suggests that contem-
porary reconstruction activities may further disenfranchise women in the
future.
The BVW Project trained men in the treatment and prevention of
many livestock diseases. Treatment of several of these diseases is under the
purview of women in Koochi society. Men were trained, for example, to
recognize and treat udder infections with antibiotic udder infusions. Antibi-
otic udder infusions were included in the BVW treatment kit provided to
each BVW trained. But milking as well as the care and treatment of the
udder is a female productive space in Koochi society. By training men to
treat udder infections, the possibility is created for men to appropriate not
only the treatment of udder infections, but also for men to appropriate
milk, the distribution (sale) of milk, and milking. This may be especially
likely if the use of udder infusions becomes widespread, and many men are
encouraged to treat their own livestock in this way. By making an economic
investment in the udder infusion, men may begin to see the milk as their
property. Combined with livestock development that encourages the com-
mercialization of milk production and/or the conversion to commercial
meat production, the disenfranchisement of Koochi women from one of
their most significant productive spaces becomes even more likely. If this
happens, the results will probably be very similar to the disenfranchisement
of pastoral women in other societies when subsistence dairy production is
commercialized (Ensminger, 1984; Waters-Bayer, 1994). Not only will
82 Gender, Development, and Religion

FIGURE 3.3. A page from the flip chart used for training BVWs showing men perform-
ing women’s tasks.

these women lose work that they value, they may lose the power to control
milk distribution in the family, and thus the women’s and their children’s
health status may also suffer from loss of milk and loss of income.22
Women’s overall status in the community is also lowered in these cases, fur-
ther disadvantaging them in their daily lives.
The BVW training process itself had many erroneous assumptions
about women and gender roles built into it.23 The teaching materials uti-
lized for training the BVWs contained the depiction of men in many of
Koochi women’s roles in caring for livestock, suggesting that men should
be performing such work (see Figure 3.3). All the visual material used for
training only showed men performing the various tasks under discussion.
In several of these scenes men were shown milking and working with milk.
Such visual education will reinforce the possibility of men beginning to
view milk as their responsibility or property. Other parts of the training
materials showed men performing “female” tasks such as feeding corralled
animals and cleaning out livestock pens. Furthermore, the treatment of
diarrhea and parasites were ascribed to men during the training process al-
though these are often the domain of women in Koochi society and women
are generally more knowledgeable about these conditions. The BVW Pro-
ject, then, trained men to work with livestock in several areas that are the
domain of women in Koochi society, setting in place the possibility for men
to disenfranchise women and their work.24 Future development projects in
A Space of Her Own 83

any sector (agriculture, healthcare, etc.) that do not incorporate thorough

gender analyses are likely to do the same.
The contemporary geopolitical reality of Afghanistan, in which devel-
opment and reconstruction are led by Western powers, and influenced very
strongly by neoliberal goals of privatization and commercialization, is
likely either to ignore gender or to encourage WID-type development pro-
jects that too often erode the subsistence base of rural women.25 The initia-
tion of development projects without appropriate analysis of gender rela-
tions and the roles of women and men in society are nearly certainly going
to repeat the mistakes of the past. Although some major urban areas of Af-
ghanistan are controlled by the “moderate” government of President
Karzai, a growing number of remote and rural areas are coming under the
control of so-called warlords, many of whom hold deeply conservative no-
tions of Islam and the roles of women in society. These men are as likely to
misunderstand women’s roles in rural life, and to curtail their productive
spaces, as did the Taliban. In this doubly patriarchal reality, it is essential
that women are allowed to speak for themselves and that they are heard.26
Average women and men from the many different groups, ethnicities, and
classes of Afghanistan must be given a voice and a stake in the development
and reconstruction of Afghanistan. If the Western powers continue to oper-
ate within a quasi-orientalist interpretation of the limited role of women in
an essentialized Islam, this is very unlikely to happen.
Fortunately, there are alternatives available. Both the GAD (gender
and development) and WED (women, environment, and development) ap-
proaches, for example, stress that development projects must consider gen-
der relations and analyze how all proposed development projects might im-
pact these relations, and thus both men’s and women’s daily lives. This is a
fundamentally different approach to adding women’s programs to the pri-
mary development plans, as is so often the case with WID. If either of the
GAD or the WED approaches to development were considered in the re-
construction of Afghanistan, they would entail detailed gender analyses
throughout the country within the many different ethnic groups present, as
well as in urban and rural areas. Detailed analyses and studies of this type
take time, money, and levels of language and interviewing expertise that
may be underestimated if not taken seriously. Only with such detailed con-
text, however, can socially just and sustainable development projects be
planned and operationalized.
The results of this research with Koochi women and men suggest some
development alternatives that may not have been previously considered and
were almost certainly not able to be operationalized under Taliban rule.
Clearly, women play a large role in the care of livestock, women would like
to be trained in livestock healthcare, and both women and men agree that
women can be trained in this area. Any new BVW-type projects for nomads
in Afghanistan should incorporate gender analysis from the very beginning
84 Gender, Development, and Religion

and include women as an integral part of the project and not as an “add-
on.” A mobile training program, with female trainers, which could operate
to address the constraints to training revealed here (namely, that women
need to be trained within the nomad community and not in towns or vil-
lages) would be particularly effective. Moreover, this research suggests that
both men and women could work as BVWs and that perhaps they could
focus on different but complementary aspects of livestock health. For ex-
ample, women could build on their strength of knowledge and practice
with newborn animals, with udder infections, with feeding regimens, and
with internal parasites. Not only would this build on preexisting strengths
within Koochi society, it might preclude any deleterious effects of men ap-
propriating women’s labor and/or productive spaces (especially in the area
of udder health and control of milk).
An encouraging development occurred in the late 1990s under the
aegis of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. While working on a
project for livestock health and food security among sedentary farmers in
Afghanistan, it was noted that women performed significant work with
livestock. This came as part of an effort to incorporate farmer participation
in the project by conducting local needs assessments and trying to incorpo-
rate locally defined needs into the project. As a result of these experiences,
a program was started to train women in livestock healthcare.27 Unfortu-
nately, under Taliban rule, work was largely restricted to women treating
other women’s livestock and comprehensive incorporation of gender con-
siderations into the project was not achieved. Although approximately 50
BVWs were trained, and approximately 2,500 farmwomen received some
training in animal healthcare, the program collapsed for lack of funding in
2000–2001.28 The lessons learned from this project, however, support the
results from my research with the Koochi and highlight some of the alterna-
tives for development projects in the future that could be more sustainable,
inclusive, and socially just.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has argued that many Afghan women have been denied their
own spaces of development by a male-dominated, Western development in-
dustry operating within an unusually conservative Islamic ideological cli-
mate. Using the specific case study of a group of Afghan nomads, the
Koochi, we have seen that the complex and significant veterinary work that
women perform with livestock has been invisible to or ignored by both
Western-led development projects and by conservative Islamic leaders. By
detailing the gender roles, gender attitudes, and gender-based division of la-
bor in Koochi society, this chapter has shown that women and men in this
society view women and their work very differently than either the conser-
A Space of Her Own 85

vative Islamic leaders or the Western development industry. These Koochi

women and men would like to see women trained as basic veterinary work-
ers (BVWs), and they believe women would be successful as BVWs. Indeed,
Koochi women have superior knowledge of and perform more work in sev-
eral key areas of livestock healthcare and management than do Koochi
men. Women might, then, even make better BVWs than would men in this
society. Assumptions about Muslim women ingrained in much of Western
development thinking, and espoused by groups such as the Taliban, com-
bine to curtail women’s spaces of development in ways that are alien to
Koochi society. In a country now populated by significantly more women
than men, it is imperative that women’s work and women’s desires be given
a voice in development efforts.
What, then, do Koochi women say that they desire? Nearly all of the
women interviewed for this study expressed strongly that they want to re-
turn to Afghanistan. “May God bring the day when there is peace and we
can return to our country,” proclaimed one woman. All of them explained
that they had left their country due to war. They are tired of living the refu-
gee life.29 They are tired of going hungry and having little or no clean wa-
ter. They are tired of not being able to clean themselves, their children, or
their few belongings. Many of these women expressed a poignant sadness
for the loss of their animals; for the loss of “the open air, open spaces, and
the wind”; and for not “being able to go where they want.” One woman la-
mented, “I have no animals now. I miss my animals.” “How can we be
Koochi without our animals?” asks another woman. They are tired of hav-
ing to break rocks for road construction all day only to be paid the equiva-
lent of a few pennies. They are tired of being sick and not being able to ob-
tain healthcare for their children. They want to learn to read and write, and
they want better religious training. They would all like the chance to learn
new skills and work, for example, as BVWs.
It is perhaps telling, though, that if given the choice of land or of an-
imals, a majority of these women said that they would prefer to have
some farmland rather than return to a completely nomadic way of life.
Most would like to have both. Many of them are afraid of the estimated
10–50 million land mines strewn across the country. Some complained
that they are tired of the nomadic life. One woman explained, “I am
tired of moving and tired of camels. Just like you, we want an easy life.”
Others said that it would be impossible to be Koochi again without any
animals and they did not know where or how to obtain new livestock.
Programs designed to help the Koochi and other nomads to restock their
sheep, goats, and camels would be very beneficial, as would accelerating
the demining efforts already slowly underway.30 These are starkly real
concerns that must be addressed for the development and reconstruction
of Afghanistan to be successful, sustainable, and equitable for both
women and men.
86 Gender, Development, and Religion

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Partial funding for this research was generously provided by the Tufts Uni-
versity School of Veterinary Medicine. I would like to thank David
Hooson, James Housefield, Karim Quraishi, Myron Jespersen, Sheila
Moffett, James Ross, David Sherman, Al Sollod, and Chip Stem for their
help and encouragement with various aspects of this project. I am grateful
for the constructive comments on this chapter by an anonymous reviewer
and the editors.

NOTES

1. Koochi is also spelled “Kuchi” in the various literatures.

2. The data presented here are the results of research with 35 nomad families
(tents) over a 3-month period during the summer of 1992. All research was
conducted in southern Balochistan (Pakistan), near Quetta, with refugees from
Afghanistan while the author was a consultant on the BVW Project. Interviews
were conducted with the help of a Pashto-speaking interpreter and generally
lasted 2–3 hours. Interviews included a formal questionnaire as well as open-
ended questions and discussion. The research reflects the knowledge and senti-
ments of these nomads before the Taliban rose to power in 1994, and thus is
particularly relevant in the current post-Taliban context.
3. The primary exception to this is the work of Valentine Moghadam, who has
written numerous excellent articles on Afghanistan’s women over many years
(Moghadam, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2002). Of course, the difficulty of access for
researchers due to 25 years of war and severe social disruption has also had a
negative effect on the quantity, if not the quality, of scholarship on Afghanistan.
4. Much of this has taken place at roughly the same time that debates over global
feminism(s) were undergoing profound criticism and change, with the western
model(s) coming under intense scrutiny and criticism from non-western schol-
ars. See Mohanty (1991) for a particularly good discussion.
5. The Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan for approximately 5 years, although in
some parts of the country, especially the south, their influence was felt as early
as 1994. Coming out of the refugee camps, poor and largely illiterate, their in-
terpretation of Islam was particularly conservative, influenced in part by Wah-
habism (Moghadam, 1999). This group of former religious students won power
from the Mujahideen in 1996. The Mujahideen had been ruling Afghanistan,
with much infighting, since the Soviets withdrew in 1992. See Cramer and
Goodhand (2002) for a good summary discussion of the history of governance
in Afghanistan during the 19th and 20th centuries.
6. For example, the Taliban decreed that only the few female physicians were al-
lowed to treat female patients and that women had to be accompanied by a
male to leave the house (Moghadam, 1999, pp. 177–178).
7. Maternal and child health programs were a major exception to the exclusion of
women from development projects.
A Space of Her Own 87

8. See Hartwick (1999) for a particularly good overview of these different forms
of feminist development theory.
9. See Peet (1999) for an excellent discussion of these and other development the-
ories.
10. See, for example, Schroeder (1999) for an excellent case study of the ways in
which women’s labor has been appropriated, with the benefits often accruing to
men.
11. In certain cultures, milking cattle and camels is strictly the domain of men.
12. Sometimes the Balochi nomads are also called Koochi.
13. Meteorological data for Quetta show that the period 1998–2001 was the worst
period of drought since 1891 (Thomson, Barker, & Miller, 2003, p. 6).
14. A U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) project has recently provided
aid in the form of livestock feed for 5,000 Koochi families in southwestern Af-
ghanistan which has helped to preserve some of the Koochi’s livestock (FAO,
2003).
15. The original plan was to train 400 BVWs, but only 219 were actually trained.
Of those, 75% were still working as BVWs a year after the program finished
(Mercy Corps International and Tufts University School of Veterinary Medi-
cine, 1994).
16. The portion of my work as a consultant on gender issues was conducted as a
“WID consultant” for the existing BVW project, which was considering adding
a WID component. The primary task for this part of my work was “to deter-
mine the feasibility and modality of training women as BVWs.” Importantly,
my task was not to conduct a gender analysis of Koochi work with livestock or
of the existing male BVW project; nor was it to make suggestions to improve
the gender equity of the existing project. The entire project was funded by
USAID.
17. An exception to this trend is Dawn Chatty’s work, which describes nomad
women in Oman and details their ownership and control of livestock to a de-
gree rarely found in the literature (Chatty, 1996). Care of poultry, usually the
domain of women in Afghanistan, is not included in this discussion. Nor are
poultry considered livestock in this chapter.
18. The practice of animal slaughter falling within the domain of male labor is
quite common in Islamic societies and is largely based on religious grounds.
19. See Davis, Quraishi, Sherman, Sollod, and Stern (1995) for a discussion of the
wide range of these indigenous veterinary treatments in Afghanistan.
20. See Davis (1995) for a detailed discussion of this survey.
21. Koochi women also sell surplus eggs, sometimes chickens, and surplus wool
and goat hair when they can. All of those asked stated that they kept this
money and could spend it on whatever they chose.
22. It has been shown in several case studies that women spend more money more
frequently for necessities for their children and family first, whereas men tend
to spend less on the family and more on personal items for themselves, to buy
cigarettes, for example (Elson, 1995). Thus when women lose control over fam-
ily spending, the health and well-being of the children and women tend to de-
cline in many instances.
23. The project was designed at the outset without any studies to determine actual
gender roles and gender-based division of labor among the Koochi or among
88 Gender, Development, and Religion

villagers. The flip chart shown in Figure 3.3. is still being used in Afghanistan
(personal communication from Dr. David Sherman, country program director
for the Dutch Committee for Afghanistan, December 2004).
24. I would like to make clear that the BVW Project was a well-intentioned project,
and all of the people working on it with whom I had contact were working
hard to do what they thought was helpful. Neither the project nor the staff
wanted to make the lives of women worse in any way. The problems arose out
of unrecognized but deeply rooted assumptions about women in this society
and the complete lack of gender analysis.
25. Recent developments have made the WID approach in Afghanistan even more
likely. The U.S. Congress recently approved $60 million (20% of the entire bud-
get for the reconstruction of Afghanistan) for women’s programs. All of these
funds “will be administered by [USAID] and fed into existing women’s pro-
grams” (Brun-Rovet, 2003). USAID is still dominated by the WID approach to
development (Hartwick, 1999).
26. Patriarchy, of course, oppresses not only women but also men and children in
innumerable ways and in a wide variety of societies around the globe. It is often
ingrained not only in Western development thinking but in non-Western devel-
opment thinking as well.
27. For details on these projects, see FAO (1997, 2002).
28. Personal communication from Dr. Terence Barker, former director of the pro-
gram (November 2003).
29. Although the number of Afghan refugees was down in 1999 from a high of
seven million to only about two and a half million, since the U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan in 2001 refugee numbers have climbed back to nearly five million.
See the United Nations annual survey of refugees for the last several years for
detailed refugee numbers, online at www.unhcr.ch. The number of Koochi to
have returned to Afghanistan is not currently known. Importantly, even among
returnees, many former refugees are currently living in refugee-like conditions
and/or as internally displaced persons within Afghanistan.
30. Restocking livestock for Afghanistan is being considered and tentatively planned
(Thomson et al., 2003). Experts are concerned, though, about the long-term vi-
ability of restocking in general and reconstituting nomadic pastoralists and
their traditional livelihoods in particular.

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Gender,Pastoralists
Settled Development,in Eastern
and Religion
Morocco

4 Changing Identities
and Changing Spaces in
Village Landscapes of Settled
Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco
SUSANNE H. STEINMANN

A
gricultural landscapes in the Middle East and North Africa
have evolved continuously through natural and human activity. Over the
last 50 years, one dramatic change in these rural spaces has been the shift
from extensive nomadic pastoralism to more intensive agropastoral pro-
duction and sedentarization. Geographers have long explored the connec-
tions between cultural change, social relations, and their imprints on the
landscape. But few geographic studies in the Middle East and North Africa
have demonstrated how changing gender relations affect household pro-
duction strategies, which lead to transformations of agricultural spaces in
livestock-raising regions (Davis, 1996; Steinmann, 1998a, 1998b, 2001).
This chapter illustrates how changing gender roles and shifting identi-
ties affect landscape patterns in two settlements of the Beni Guil pastoral-
ists of eastern Morocco. The data analyzes primarily tangible, material evi-
dence of diverse gender-based resource management practices. But the
findings also point to the importance of broader humanistic interpretations
of how identities and discourses of “pastoralists” and “farmers” as well as
“males” and “females” converge with daily activities to create distinct
spaces in these rural villages.
Perhaps the most celebrated work concerned with the meaning of male

91
92 Gender, Development, and Religion

and female spaces in the Middle East is Bourdieu’s (1973, 1977) analysis of
the Kabyle Berber society in Algeria. In his study of the Kabyle house,
Bourdieu (1973) shows how social and economic relations within the do-
mestic unit create sets of contrasts that organize the production and mean-
ing of spatial domains in the Berber world. He argues that space comes to
have meaning through practice, which is dynamic rather than static. Several
social theorists in geography have drawn from Bourdieu (1977) and em-
phasized that space is constructed through social systems, social practices,
and everyday activities (Giddens, 1984; Pred, 1990; Soja, 1989). Giddens
(1991) later elaborated on these themes, adding the formation of identity as
central to daily activities and the creation of space.
Despite these acknowledgments of the dynamic nature of space, cul-
tural norms and standard Islamic discourses about distinct and static male–
female spaces persist in the Middle Eastern cultural context (Ask &
Tjomsland, 1998). In the region’s conservative pastoral societies, men are
the purported managers of all productive resources for their households.
Their activities, such as herding and selling livestock, generally occur in the
external and public space. Women’s responsibilities and spaces of produc-
tion are supposed to be confined to the private, domestic space of repro-
ductive and productive activity. This religious and cultural discourse about
appropriate male and female spaces from within Arab Bedouin culture is
reified in Western descriptions of these cultures (Said, 1978, 1993).
The implications of these discourses about women’s roles and spaces in
Middle Eastern society is particularly powerful in the social context of pas-
toral societies in eastern Morocco, where cultural norms of female seclu-
sion and gender segregation discourage “outsider” researchers from gather-
ing information among women in the domestic space. Yet it is in this
“private” space that men and women negotiate gender-based livelihood
strategies and identities, which articulate with broader cultural and eco-
nomic processes to transform place.
Feminist geography offers a powerful analytical lens for explaining the
production of distinct landscapes because it directs attention toward chang-
ing gender roles and identities at the household scale. This approach em-
phasizes how gender roles and ethnic identities, as well as discourses about
them, create distinct spaces and places (Blunt & Rose, 1994; McDowell,
1999; Mills, 1994; Smith, 1993). Feminist geography builds on traditional
geographic explanations of the human dimensions of landscape change by
incorporating gender-based analysis from feminism and a discourse-sensitive
perspective from the humanistic social sciences.
This chapter acknowledges the importance of discourse in shaping
power relations, gender roles, identities, and spaces, but not to the exclu-
sion of social, economic, and ecological realities experienced by local actors
(Abu-Lughod, 2001). The Beni Guil case study, therefore, analyzes how
gender roles and identities converge with larger political, economic, and
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 93

cultural variables to produce material evidence of distinct land-use and

land-cover patterns in two ecologically similar Beni Guil settlements in
eastern Morocco.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER,

PASTORALISM, AND SPACES OF PRODUCTION

Understanding the transformation of place requires an analysis of power

relations within the household and community and how these are linked to
cultural identities and economic processes at broader regional scales. Femi-
nist geographers have begun to explore these material and humanistic con-
nections in different cultural contexts (Massey, 1991; McDowell & Sharp,
1997; Rocheleau, 2002). Yet few geographers have analyzed the process of
landscape change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through an
analysis of gender relations and identity formation.
All cultures create distinct gender-based rights and roles within the
household that evolve from a culturally specific division of labor for pro-
ductive and reproductive activities. In the MENA, however, religious ideol-
ogies strengthen the cultural norm of segregating these activities into dis-
tinct and fixed public/productive and private/reproductive spaces.
According to cultural tradition and Islamic laws, men but not women
are granted formal rights to public institutions of political power and re-
sources management, which represent important gateways to a host of live-
lihood strategies. This accepted norm that segregates productive and repro-
ductive space obscures informal gender-based negotiations about daily
activities within the household and hides the fact that women actively par-
ticipate in the productive realm of local livelihood systems.
The relative paucity of geographic work on women’s involvement in
the creation of productive spaces in rural environments of the MENA is ex-
plained by the difficulty of (1) transcending the spatial barrier into the do-
mestic, female realm in these societies; and (2) measuring landscape change
in livestock-raising environments that are prone to cyclical drought cycles.
There have also been conceptual gaps in the distinct approaches of geogra-
phy and feminist studies as they pertain to pastoral settlement, changing
gender roles, and their expression in land-cover patterns.
Most of the geographic analyses of pastoral sedentarization and the
conversion of public rangeland spaces to private agricultural use in the re-
gion generally, and in Morocco specifically, have focused on proximate
causes such as population pressure (Bencherifa & Johnson, 1991), colonial
legacies (Davis, 2000; Herpin, 1956; Paskoff, 1957), and changes in formal
regulatory systems (Artz, Norton, & O’Rourke, 1986; Bedrani, 1991;
Tozy, 1994). The analyses at regional and communal scales, particularly
with respect to land and water management institutions in pastoral societies,
94 Gender, Development, and Religion

privilege the public, formal, and male spaces of power. Research that em-
phasizes the de jure rights of citizenship in these formal institutions ignores
women’s spaces of power and obscures the negotiation between men and
women that occur in private spaces but affect public spaces (Horowitz &
Jowkar, 1992; Moore, 1996).
These private/public divisions of space are both imagined and real.
Since the early works by Nancy Chodorow (1974) and Michelle Rosaldo
(Rosaldo & Lamphere, 1974), a broad range of feminist work in social sci-
ences had described the division of private and public space as central to
masculinist power and feminist resistance (see Ardener, 1981). Unequal
power relations at various spatial scales produce, maintain, and alter places
in a very real material as well as a metaphorical level (Harvey, 1989;
Moore, 1996; Okley, 1996).
In the Middle Eastern context, Cynthia Nelson’s seminal work (1973)
broke down the dualism of the public/private spatial divide. She pointed
out the complimentary nature of gender roles and the flexibility of space
within pastoral households. Her observations drew attention to the domes-
tic realm, where men and women continually negotiate private and public
boundaries and where women can influence the male-dominated “public”
realm of livelihood production.
Many feminist scholars working in the Middle East have elaborated on
Nelson’s work by incorporating themes from postmodern deconstruction
into their analyses of public and private spaces. El Guindi (1999), for ex-
ample, notes that women in the Middle East often control public (male)
spaces through temporary occupancy and modification of their behavior
and dress. Others have demonstrated the cultural relativity of feminine
power and the possibility of a feminine power within the domestic space
(e.g., Abu-Lughod, 1986; Ahmed, 1992; Mernissi, 1989; Nelson, 1974) or
under the veil in public (El Guindi, 1999; MacLeod, 1991; Mir-Hosseini,
1996). A common theme in this literature is that women’s efficacy to ex-
tend power from the private into the public male-dominated realm depends
on ascribed variables such as age and marital status.
Many of these gender-based analyses have pointed out that the ratio of
men to women in the household is a key indicator of women’s control over
productive spaces. This is particularly true in rural communities where men
frequently leave the household for extended periods of time to work as la-
bor migrants in regional cities or abroad. Most pastoral households depend
on diverse livelihood strategies that usually involve male labor migration
for shorter or longer periods of time.
The destabilization of gendered demographics at the local scale has un-
leashed both new opportunities and new constraints for gender-based rene-
gotiation of productive space. Since Nelson’s (1973) pivotal work, many
studies in the MENA have analyzed how social and cultural change (com-
mercialization, male out-migration, and settlement) among pastoralists af-
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 95

fects women’s status, their use of space, and their power to influence the di-
rection of new livelihood strategies (see Horowitz & Jowkar, 1992).
Meir’s (1997) research among the Bedouin of the Negev suggests that
settlement and migration decrease women’s status because, with men as
sole wage earners, women lose direct involvement in the productive re-
sources of the household. On the other hand, Michael’s (1991) study of
Baggara pastoralists in Sudan found that male labor migration to oil-
wealthy Gulf States confined women to the home, but led to social status
gains because of the increased household wealth and cultural and religious
value of female seclusion. Her findings challenge Western assumptions that
seclusion to the domestic space necessarily reduces women’s power vis-à-vis
public male spaces of production.
In a recent study in Oman, Dawn Chatty (2000) found that settled
pastoral women initially became more confined to the domestic space and
dependent on male income earners. Over time, however, women reclaimed
their interests within the public realm of male decisions and production.
For example, they utilized truck transportation to access financial resources
in larger commercial centers and developed small business enterprises of
their own (Chatty, 2000). Lois Beck (1998) describes how pastoral women
in Iran have supported the adoption of irrigation technologies, which has
led to the construction of permanent settlements and converted overgrazed
public rangeland spaces managed jointly by men into smaller, productive
green spaces managed by men and women.
Despite these advances in the feminist literature concerned with expos-
ing the subtle forms of female power in Middle Eastern societies, only a few
recent geographic studies in the MENA have specifically linked changing
gender-based resources management to environmental outcomes at the lo-
cal (Alaoui El Mdaghri, 1995; Steinmann, 2001; Terranciano, 1994) and
regional scales (Turner, 1999).
A subset of feminist geography, feminist political ecology (Rocheleau,
Thomas-Slayter, & Wangari, 1996), provides a useful synthesis of the
afore-mentioned geographic analyses of landscape change and feminist
analyses of gender and space within the household. The rationale for a gen-
der analysis at the household level is that women and men have different
vested sets of interests in the natural resources they manage, depending on
their responsibilities for maintaining the household (Rocheleau, 1991).
This analytical framework investigates how decisions within the household
are expressed by collective action at the community scale and thereby
transform place (Rocheleau, 2002). Feminist political ecology also draws
on poststructural theories to emphasize discursive dimensions of power
(Foucault, 1980). This synthesis opens the conceptual lens to entertain how
humanistic geographic sensibilities of sense of self and sense of place be-
come visible through agricultural practices and landscape patterns.
Donna Haraway (1991) has addressed this idea of behavioral change
96 Gender, Development, and Religion

by illustrating how a sense of self rests on diverse axes of identity that are
never stable but are continually transformed through dynamic gender rela-
tions in a given time and location. This analytical perspective exposes of-
ten-hidden gendered environmental knowledges, resource management re-
sponsibilities, and power relations that affect the creation or destruction of
cultural and ecological spaces.
This perspective is particularly relevant to the Beni Guil case where
different labor migration patterns from the two villages reconfigure local
identities, household spaces of production, and village landscapes. The pro-
cess of settlement and male labor migration among pastoral nomads in
Morocco ruptures deeply embedded cultural norms about gender-based ac-
tivities and identities. And the consequent reformulation of sense of self
and place occurs quietly, subtly, within the domestic realm rather than at
the broader cultural scale of the tribe and the community.
The conceptual and methodological tools of feminist political ecology
guided my research among the Beni Guil pastoralists and helped me iden-
tify how contemporary local identities and places are shaped by the
broader cultural, economic, and historical context. The adaptation strate-
gies available to individual households, however, depend on economic and
labor resources within that small production unit. At this scale, culturally
defined gender roles create opportunities and set limits on the transforma-
tion of resource management practices. The successes of livelihood adapta-
tions at this scale depend on the ability of men and women to renegotiate
appropriate gender roles within the private spaces of the household unit
that do not overtly offend the parameters of culturally accepted “public”
norms that evolve at a slower pace.
The following discussion of the traditional pastoral livelihood system,
and the historical events that have encouraged sedentarization, provides the
background for this case study, which analyzes the transformation of gen-
der roles, identities, and spaces in two settled villages in eastern Morocco.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF PASTORAL

SEDENTARIZATION IN EASTERN MOROCCO
Traditional Nomadic Pastoralism
The Beni Guil are a large tribal community of approximately 54,000 peo-
ple whose livelihoods have shifted from extensive large-scale herding of
sheep and goats to more sedentary agropastoral or agricultural activities
(Bencherifa, 1996). The diversity and limitations of the semiarid environ-
ment in which they live has always provided the physical and cultural
framework for the Beni Guil’s pastoral production, which until 50 years
ago depended exclusively on herding flocks of sheep and goats to season-
ally available grazing and water resources. These were found in various
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 97

FIGURE 4.1. Map of the Beni Guil landscape in eastern Morocco. Reproduced with
permission from The Arab World Geographer, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1998), and the Bulletin Se-
ries of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, No. 103 (1998).

ecological niches of their vast territory, which covers 25,000 square kilome-
ters of the semiarid steppe of Morocco’s eastern high plateau region.
Traditional seasonal migrations extended up to 250 kilometers and
spanned two dominant environments that define their landscape: the north-
ern high plateau (the Dahara) and the more arid southern pre-Saharan en-
vironment (the Sahara) (see Figure 4.1). Rainfall diminishes from north to
south with a maximum of 450 millimeters in the Dahara and 150 millime-
ters in the Sahara. Cold temperatures and snow in the Dahara prompted
the Beni Guil tribes to move their families and household camps in the early
winter to warmer climates in the Sahara. In the spring, increasing tempera-
tures and diminishing grazing resources drove the Beni Guil back north to-
ward spring pastures in the Dahara. Using camel traction, the Beni Guil
also ploughed and cultivated small barley fields in the moister depressions
locally called dayas or madders. Barley harvested in June supplied pastoral
households with bread and flour, and postharvest stubble helped sustain
livestock through the dry summer months.
During the last century, the Beni Guil have decreased their mobility
and use of rangeland pastures through increased cultivation of cereals, irri-
98 Gender, Development, and Religion

gating fodder resources, and supplementing livestock with commercial feed

inputs. Land-use intensification and sedentarization occurred, in part, be-
cause of demographic change. The Beni Guil population rose from 10,000
in 1940 to 30,000 in 1982, and up to 54,000 in 1994 (Morocco, 1994;
Raynal, 1949). These endogenous variables combined with French colonial
policies and accelerated the shift away from the traditional nomadic pasto-
ral system toward a more intensive and sedentary agricultural production
system.

Winds of Change and the Trend toward Settlement

In 1908 the French arrived in eastern Morocco from Algeria with the goal
of securing the region for French farmers and administrators. The French
Protectorate (1912–1956) imposed a development vision that redirected ru-
ral economies toward national rather than local needs. In eastern Morocco
the French developed metal or mining industries, halfa grass export for
paper production, and increasing livestock and agricultural production
(Dresch, 1959; Lauriac, 1940). An infrastructure of roads and railroads
spread throughout the region to connect this hinterland and its resources to
larger commercial markets in Europe. The French provided veterinary ser-
vices, dug wells to access groundwater, and irrigated pastures to increase
livestock production for the market (Müller-Hohenstein, 1979). These de-
velopment initiatives reduced access to critical dry-season pastures (now
under irrigation) and converted collective-use rights to private-use rights.
Many individual Beni Guil households benefited from more intensive
and privatized land-use practices, which allowed them to produce surplus
livestock for national or European markets. But growing competition for
water and desirable locations for cereal cultivation forced many households
out of the pastoral production system and into settlement.
The discourse of the postcolonial Moroccan government mirrored the
French development model and justified national policies that encouraged
greater agricultural output, which led to the collapse of highly mobile pas-
toral systems throughout the country (Davis, 2000). These policies arose
from the dire need to feed a rapidly growing and increasingly urban popu-
lation (Bencherifa, 1996). In order to ensure these national goals, the gov-
ernment passed the law (Dahir) of 1969, which nationalized all rangeland
resources, thereby ensuring greater state control of livestock and agricul-
tural production in these areas.
In eastern Morocco the 1969 Dahir effectively subjugated Beni Guil
tribal political power, and their control of resources, to state authority.
Without local Beni Guil leadership managing communal resources, re-
spected codes of access to land and water became unclear (Tozy, 1994).
Pastoralists’ lack of confidence in new state-level land tenure “codes” en-
couraged more of them to cultivate or irrigate land (where possible), which
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 99

secures quasi-exclusive rights to formerly communal tribal lands. This rush

to secure land rights encouraged permanent settlement near the fields.
The trend toward settlement accelerated in eastern Morocco during
the severe droughts in the 1970s and mid-1980s. These droughts caused
widespread human suffering, led to substantial livestock losses, and in-
creased permanent settlement in towns and villages. Settled pastoral house-
holds had to diversify their livelihood strategies.
Since the mid-1990s, 80% of the Beni Guil households have based
their livelihoods on a mix of herding, farming, labor migration, and other
commercial activities. Twenty percent of the Beni Guil have settled and
found wage employment in larger commercial towns like Bouarfa and
Tendrara (with populations of approximately 20,000 and 7,000, respec-
tively). Thirty-five percent of the households have settled permanently in
villages where they combine farming, herding, and labor migration. These
trends suggest the demise of nomadic pastoralism as a cultural identity and
economic way of life.
Nevertheless, the Beni Guil remain among Morocco’s largest livestock
producers: they raise as many as 600,000 sheep, 200,000 goats, and 11,000
cattle in an average-yield year (Direction Provinciale de l’Agriculture de
Figuig [DPA], 2001). The continuation of a pastoral economy and a sus-
tainable yield for urban markets therefore represents a top concern of the
Moroccan government.
In 1990 the Moroccan government established an extensive economic
development and rangeland conservation project (PDPEO) in eastern Mo-
rocco in order to address the concern of pastoral settlement and increasing
agricultural production on fragile rangelands.1 The PDPEO project focused
primarily on improving pasture management and minimizing soil and wind
erosion in heavily denuded areas around pastoral settlements. With the
hope of minimizing overgrazing around pastoral villages such as Maatarka
and Mengoub Gare, the project established several official policies intended
to reverse the trend toward permanent settlement (DPA, 1997).
These project goals have sustained the pastoral economy. But their ef-
forts have minimized the attention given to livelihoods and resource man-
agement within settled villages. Despite the hope that settled pastoralists
will “remobilize” and reengage in pastoral production, the Beni Guil con-
tinue to trade in their woolen tents for mud-brick homes and settle more or
less permanently in villages, notably Maatarka and Mengoub Gare.
In response to the project regulations that ban the construction of
fixed homes, individual households—rather than collective tribes—engage
in the process of establishing permanent homes in the villages. As dis-
cussed above, the relationship between insecure land-tenure policies and
pastoral settlement is well documented at the regional scale in eastern
Morocco (Bencherifa, 1996; Hammoudi, Hammoudi, Rachik, & Tozy,
1992; Tozy, 1994). This case suggests that similar strategies are replicated
100 Gender, Development, and Religion

within the village context and driven by gender-based interests at the

household scale.
Unfortunately, the PDPEO project staff has worked primarily with
men and with formal, political organizations at the community scale. This
approach, common throughout the MENA, ignores women and their inter-
ests, which are strongest at the household level (see Horowitz & Jowkar,
1992). And gender-based resource interests and consequent land-use prac-
tices are clearly visible in the settled villages.

Gendered Division of Labor and Spaces of Production

The Beni Guil production system at the household scale has always oper-
ated autonomously in terms of specific labor allocation, herd management
practices, and decisions about specific labor allocations. These responsibili-
ties are based on a culturally defined division of labor and on age and gen-
der characteristics (Bourqia, 1989). Men and boys are almost exclusively
responsible for herding and selling sheep, goats, and, more recently, cattle.
Women and girls engage in activities that are also central to the pastoral
household economy, but are generally carried out in spaces close to the
home camp (Müller-Hohenstein, 1978). In these private spaces, women
and girls care for sick and young animals and process a variety of animal
by-products including milk, butter, wool, and hides. The private domestic
space is also a site of negotiation between men and women. And contrary
to public discourses, women are central to the decision-making process
about which animals to sell, how much grain fodder to buy, and when to
move animals to greener pastures (Steinmann, 2001).
Nevertheless, the cultural value placed in female seclusion (purdah)
among the Arab Bedouin, including the Beni Guil, discourages social inter-
action among women from different family units. Consequently, women
have developed informal arrangements through which they share informa-
tion, labor, and surplus milk products. These informal social relationships
allow them to establish economic networks outside the individual house-
hold. But the economic links between individual households are publicly
recognized only through the formal male-dominated cooperative political
system at the tribal level.
This culture of economic independence at the household scale is dis-
rupted in settled villages, where most households cannot afford this degree
of economic independence. Men and women therefore develop new alli-
ances within the household unit and outside their tribal or ethnic communi-
ties. Some of these associations are cooperative, and some are not, depend-
ing on the gender dynamics at the household scale. The meaning of these
alliances and the spaces within which they occur reflect social categories
and systems of social organization (Moore, 1996). Since these meanings are
related to a larger cultural order, they are theoretically described as stable.
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 101

But alliances and spaces of production at the household scale are contex-
tual and necessarily reflect the dynamic patterns of the larger regional econ-
omy. The rapid changes ubiquitous in the global commercial economy
demand more flexible production systems at local and household scales.
In Mengoub Gare, men encourage women to engage in farming and
gardening activities, which is highly unusual in this cultural context and
suggests a shift in the cultural identities associated with traditional pastoral
production systems. At the same time, men and women uphold a public
discourse that claims only men as household gardeners. In Maatarka, on
the other hand, the high rate of male migration has discouraged household-
level negotiations and women have not established gardens. Instead,
women choose to invest time and cash remittances into livestock, but they
are considering the creation of a multiple-household dairy cooperative,
which challenges cultural norms at the community scale. These shifting cul-
tural ideologies and gender dynamics in the two villages are expressed in
distinct daily land-use practices and result in distinct household and village
spaces.

RESEARCH METHODS

Gender analysis, as an entry point of research, sheds light on male–female

power dynamics that create productive spaces. This analytical perspective
uncovers complexities of land-use decisions at the household scale and
helps explain emerging land-cover patterns in recently settled pastoral vil-
lages. I used both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine
three interrelated questions: First, how do gendered roles and responsibili-
ties for managing household resources change in response to settlement and
male out-migration? Second, how do gendered land-use strategies articulate
with regional cultural and political themes? And, third, how do emerging
and shifting identities affect landscape patterns in the villages?

Preliminary Research
I collected primary data while living and working with the Beni Guil from
1996 through 1997. This research built on previous fieldwork for my mas-
ter’s thesis and provided the empirical foundation for the larger project of
writing my doctoral dissertation. I spent the first few months of this field-
work period engaged in participant observation in order to establish a
rapport with the various Beni Guil communities, specifically those in
Maatarka and Mengoub Gare. I gained access to these communities
through the formal Moroccan political structure and its local representa-
tives (sheiks and mukkadems).2 These community leaders introduced me to
their respective tribes in the villages. They also helped with wealth-ranking
102 Gender, Development, and Religion

activities, a methodological approach that provided me with locally rele-

vant economic class parameters (Grandin, 1988). I subsequently lived with
host families in the villages for 3-week rotations every 4 months through-
out the year.

Quantitative Methods
I carried out 220 formal survey questionnaires in 159 Beni Guil house-
holds. One-third of these pastoral households were settled permanently in
the villages of Maatarka and Mengoub Gare. I interviewed both men and
women in order to identify gender- and age-specific perceptions of livestock
management and farming activities in the villages. The questionnaire elic-
ited information about household demographics, income sources, labor re-
lations, ownership and management of livestock, and farming activities.
Data generated from the survey questionnaire was analyzed using the
SPSS statistical program. Chi-square tests were used to analyze categorical
variables, and t-tests and multivariate regression tests were employed for
interval data. The rigor of the analysis, however, was only as accurate as
the honesty of the answers given on the survey.
As mentioned previously in this chapter, the formal (usually male) re-
sponses about appropriate male–female spaces often reified gender stereo-
types, particularly when talking to outsiders. These formal responses often
revealed gender-specific perceptions and culturally prescribed gender myths,
rather than realities, about resource uses (see Slocum, 1995). Women and
men often answered questions in ways that matched culturally accepted
norms (Women and Geography Specialty Group, 1997) rather than the
daily practices that I confirmed through participant observation and infor-
mal, qualitative research methods. As Lila Abu-Lughod says, “to be a femi-
nist entails being sensitive to domination; for the enthographer that means
being sensitive to that domination in the society being described” (1993, p.
5). A variety of research techniques, particularly qualitative and participa-
tory methods, are necessary to uncover the various forms of domination,
which are expressed both formally and informally in diverse cultural con-
texts.

Qualitative and Participatory Methods

Qualitative and participatory methods verified that gender roles and identi-
ties were more flexible than revealed by the formal survey. Spending unin-
terrupted days and nights with families allowed me to observe and record
daily activities such as gardening and tending to livestock. As a foreign
woman, I had access to discussions with men and women in the villages,
which helped me to distinguish between myth and reality. I used space–time
allocation tables (see Kwan, 1999, 2000) and percentage of labor input
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 103

(daily and seasonally) to determine the relative importance of diverse pro-

ductive activities and spaces for men and women in the villages.
I led focus-group discussions (Thomas-Slayter, Esser, & Shields, 1993;
Barbour & Kitzinger, 1999) with several sets of 10–15 men and women.
The participants discussed their perceptions of new land-use practices in
the villages, including the establishment of small, irrigated household gar-
dens. Men, women, boys, and girls also participated in resource-mapping
activities in order to elicit input about diverse natural resources and their
respective uses by villagers (Rocheleau, 1995).
Villagers helped identify the diversity and uses of medicinal herbs in
the gardens and documented the water use, fertilizer inputs, and square-
meter sizes of their irrigated garden spaces. These participatory (Chambers
1983, 1997) and feminist (Moss, 2002; Wolf, 1996; Women and Geogra-
phy Specialty Group, 1997) research methods ensured that information I
collected would also expand local and gendered awareness of landscape
change and thus empower people, especially women, at the research site.

GENDER RATIOS AND THE PRODUCTION

OF SPACE IN TWO BENI GUIL VILLAGES

Maatarka and Mengoub Gare (with populations of 620 and 310, respec-
tively) are small villages settled by formerly fully mobile pastoral nomads.
The villages appear on the landscape as isolated clusters of square mud-
brick houses grouped closely along a grid-like maze of narrow footpaths.
Neither village has electricity or running water. The groundwater table is at
least 20 meters below the surface in both villages. Despite ecological simi-
larities, settled pastoralists (now villagers) have adapted to their more sed-
entary livelihood system in distinct ways. In Mengoub Gare, villagers irri-
gate and cultivate small plots of land, while those in Maatarka have chosen
to invest in the traditional livestock sector. The consequent spatial patterns
evolving in the two villages are explained by variations in household demo-
graphics, shifting identities, local politics, and proximity to other settle-
ments.
Men and women in each rural site have created new daily land-use
practices and identities that share male–female spaces. These new spaces
are produced through strategic intentions of the actors (Moore, 1996) and
are grounded in daily livelihood needs within a specific historical and eco-
nomic context (Rocheleau, 2002) and within the accepted community con-
text of each village.
Mengoub Gare, as the name suggests, was originally a stop for refuel-
ing trains on the rail line that connected small mining towns located along
the Algerian–Moroccan border. The French built the station in the 1920s
and also used it as a military outpost in the Beni Guil’s southern Sahara ter-
104

FIGURE 4.2. Village diagram of Mengoub Gare.

Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 105

ritories. During the severe droughts of the 1940s, 1970s, and 1980s pasto-
ralists of the Oulad Hammema tribe settled in Mengoub Gare because of its
proximity to their wolufs (summer pastures) located in the madders (shal-
low, moisture-retaining depressions) just north of the village. Most villagers
today still practice transhumance in the spring, herding their sheep and
goats to pastures and water sources in the highlands located just south of
the village. Their livestock also rely heavily on postharvest stubble from
cultivated fields in their tribal wolufs.
As shown in Figure 4.2, the village today is still not much more than
an abandoned railroad stop with a one-room elementary school, a mosque,
and a small grocery store. The grocery is dormant most of the time since
villagers prefer to shop for food and household items in the larger town of
Bouarfa, which is located 35 kilometers northeast of the village.
Mengoub Gare is home to 25 households. Several pastoral households
moved away from the village because of flooding in the early 1990s and be-
cause nearby towns like Bouarfa offer many more economic, social, and ed-
ucational opportunities. The government, operating through the PDPEO
project, also banned all home construction in Mengoub Gare in 1992. This
policy was created in order to discourage permanent settlement, which was
perceived as the cause of overgrazing and rangeland degradation around
the village.
The government’s efforts to promote pastoralism and mobility have
not, however, prevented those already living in the village from irrigating
land, a process that denotes private ownership of land and permanent set-
tlement. Sixty-eight percent of the households have established lush, irri-
gated vegetable gardens hidden behind the mud-brick walls of their houses
(see Figure 4.3). The creation of these gardens is unique, especially com-
pared to other pastoral settlements in eastern Morocco.
What sets Mengoub Gare apart is its proximity to Mengoub Lakbab,
which is located just 5 kilometers farther west. The water table in Mengoub
Lakbab is only 5 meters from the surface and was settled originally by Ber-
ber farmers from the Figuig oasis, located 150 kilometers farther east. The
Figuig Berbers, an ethnically distinct community, have drawn on their
knowledge of oasis farming to establish rich irrigated fields of potatoes, on-
ions, carrots, alfalfa, olive trees, and date palms.
By contrast, Mengoub Gare hardly resembles an oasis. And pastoral-
ists settled in the village still rely on livestock as a central component of
their livelihoods. Their identities also remain intimately connected to the
daily practice of raising livestock. Yet neither cultural nor ecological deter-
rents (such as groundwater at 22 meters below the surface) have prevented
the pastoralists in the village from establishing small irrigated gardens.
The men in Mengoub Gare have pooled their resources to maintain
one communal motor pump. The pump operates periodically to raise water
from the oldest and deepest well in the village. Rubber tubes are used to
106 Gender, Development, and Religion

transport the water to small gardens in the nearby households. Those who
cannot afford the tubing collect water manually from the two other wells in
the village in order to water their gardens.
This system of pooling labor and capital expenses for the collective
water pump, which is then used to generate water for independent house-
hold gardens, reflects the traditional pastoral political and economic ideol-
ogy of communal organization at lineage or tribal scale and independent
production at the household scale. Men in the village work cooperatively to
secure communal water resources for individual use, while men and women
manage the work in independent, secluded household gardens.
The cultural and pastoral system of individual household production
within a formal tribal cooperative has been adapted to support settled
agropastoral production in the village. This shift in land use and land cover
and the daily chores associated with vegetable gardening have produced a
new identity for men and women. This identity does not reject a pastoral
heritage, but is open to a new sense of place and identity that is rooted to
the daily practice of cultivation. As Giddens (1991) pointed out, identities
are necessarily geographic since they are formed through the daily practice
of livelihood production.
The gradual transformation of the pastoral identity and the village land-
scape in Mengoub Gare was spearheaded by the tribal sheik, Sidi Ben
Amrane, who encouraged a cooperative water management system in the vil-
lage. He established the first garden in the village 20 years ago, with wages
earned in France during the 1960s and 1970s. Sheik Ben Amrane has since en-
couraged other village men to work as seasonal agricultural laborers in the
Berber farming village of Mengoub Lakbab. Many of these Beni Guil laborers
now participate in the water irrigation cooperative in Mengoub Gare and
have established small subsistence gardens for their households.
Sheik Ben Amrane told me that the village men who started gardens in
the early 1990s hoped to generate some income from them by selling the pro-
duce at the markets in Bouarfa. It became clear after a few years, however,
that small vegetable growers from Mengoub Gare could not compete com-
mercially with larger, more experienced producers in Mengoub Lakbab. Con-
sequently, men have given up gardening in most households in Mengoub
Gare. But garden spaces continue to flourish because women have developed
the skills and interests in maintaining these household resources.

GARDENS, GENDER RELATIONS,

AND STATE POLICIES

In Mengoub Gare, women in 68% of the households actively maintain

small subsistence gardens. The fact that women are gardeners in Mengoub
Gare is highly unusual because these practices directly challenge many of
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 107

the Beni Guil’s cultural norms and political institutions, which discourage
the privatization of communal resources. Private ownership of land is not
clearly articulated in any tribal laws among pastoral nomads. As a result of
ambiguous laws, irrigation and permanent cultivation has proven to be the
best method for establishing private-use rights on communal lands. Never-
theless, conflict and disagreements about land tenure are ongoing in the re-
gion. Under these circumstances, the Beni Guil and other Bedouin societies
in Morocco support customary practices and cultural taboos that discour-
age anyone who is politically weak (especially women) from plowing, irri-
gating, and cultivating land (Maher, 1974).
In Mengoub Gare, however, women hoe, irrigate, and cultivate land
because men are often away during the day herding livestock or working as
day laborers in Mengoub Lakbab or in Bouarfa. The men who work with
Berber farmers in Mengoub Lakbab have taught women in their house-
holds how to grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Figure 4.3 is a photograph
of women in their gardens in Mengoub Gare.
Survey results from households with gardens in Mengoub Gare show
that women work and have control of the produce in 40% of the house-
holds. In 8% of the households only men work the gardens, while in 52%
of the households both men and women share garden work. The garden
represents a shared endeavor and is not clearly designated as a male or a fe-
male space, at least vis-à-vis the public realm in the community.

FIGURE 4.3. Women in their garden in Mengoub Gare.

108 Gender, Development, and Religion

The ambiguity about whether gardens are exclusively male or female

spaces has created a new opportunity for the renegotiation of productive
roles within the private household space, which men and women use to
their advantage. In households where men are present (except for daily
work outside the village), women garden and distribute its produce within
the household unit. This system is an adaptation of their pastoral cultural
and economic system. Men and women negotiate the internal labor dynam-
ics and production decisions at the household scale, but men are the key
links to the broader communal structure that provides water resources to
the individual production units.
Men in the village also claim proprietary rights to the gardens if social
or political pressure requires it. Beni Guil men have always dealt with the
“external” authorities from the Department of Agriculture or the PDPEO
project staff. These government officials usually come to the village to en-
sure that no more houses or fence walls are constructed in the village. In
these interactions men always identified themselves as the gardeners, thus
protecting women from the “public” assumption that they cultivate land.
Men and women in the village of Mengoub Gare convey to outsiders the
impression that men, not women, are gardeners. This united front vis-à-vis
outsiders is possible because 80% of the village men are absent only during
the day, returning to the village in the evening or whenever necessary.
In households where men are absent for longer durations (weeks or
months at a time), women do not have gardens. Of the five formally
female-headed households, only two maintained gardens after their hus-
bands left. Women gave the following reasons for abandoning their gar-
dens, listed in order of importance: (1) “I could not afford fencing to pro-
tect the garden from grazing animals”; (2) “I could not afford to buy
irrigation tubes to transport water from the well”; and (3) “Men in the vil-
lage forced me to give up the garden.”
Poverty is acute in all but one of these female-headed households. Yet
village men pressured these women (all either widowed or divorced) to give
up their subsistence gardens because of the perceived social and political
threat generated by independent women cultivating land.
Land-use practices in Mengoub Gare are clearly explained through a
close analysis of how gender roles in the private space of the household ar-
ticulate with broader cultural, political, and economic systems. On a per-
sonal level, men and women in the village joke about their new “farming”
activities, and they accept and project strong identities as farmers, despite
their continuation of pastoral activities. These new land-use practices and
identities are formed through social practices, which are not simple me-
chanical reactions to livelihood systems, but also operate out of “generative
principles” infused with social and cultural meaning that inform action
(Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72).
At the scale of community discourse and conscience, villagers in
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 109

Mengoub Gare support the cultural and political norms of pastoral societ-
ies, which discourage women from cultivating and owning land. Men ac-
tively prevent women from establishing gardens in those households where
a man cannot claim public responsibility and participate in the communal
aspects of water management. On the other hand, men encourage women
to garden—a benefit to the whole family—in households where women can
operate behind a high mud-brick wall and are concealed by the camouflage
of a man’s presence in the household. In this way beneficial but unorthodox
land-use practices do not directly challenge broader cultural and political
rules governing gendered ownership of land.
The focus of feminist geography combines analyses of the symbolic
meaning of new identities as well as their material expression through new
land-use practices. These new identities and their expression in the village
spaces of production vary significantly depending on gender relations in the
village context, as is clear from the second case study in eastern Morocco.

OBSTACLES TO IRRIGATED
LAND-USE PRACTICES IN MAATARKA

In the second village research site, Maatarka, relatively few (13% com-
pared to 68% in Mengoub Gare) of the households have established indi-
vidual household gardens. What explains these differences in place? There
are several reasons, including high tensions about land tenure around the
village of Maatarka, a high rate of male migration for long periods of time,
and the fact that the PDPEO project established one communal garden in
the village.
Maatarka is located in the Dahara, 70 kilometers west of the town of
Tendrara (its closest neighbor). A very rough, unpaved road connects the
two settlements. The road is often impassible during the rainy season in the
winter and early spring. When the road is dry, a one-way trip takes 3–4
hours by truck or Land Rover. As illustrated in Figure 4.4, Maatarka is
very isolated, hence villagers have very little contact with other ethnic and
farming communities. Nor do they have daily access to larger commercial
towns such as Tendrara or Bouarfa.
The village is located at the crossroads of migration routes between
grazing pastures on the Dahara and important livestock markets in Ain
Beni Mathar and Tendrara to the east and Taourirt to the north. Maatarka
was founded as a French military outpost in 1911 because of its strategic
location. And, like Mengoub Gare, the village population grew when de-
mographic pressures and political constraints on their mobility forced pas-
toralists to become more sedentary. Many villagers also lost their livestock
and settled in Maatarka, either permanently or temporarily, during severe
droughts in the 1940s, 1970s, and 1980s.
110 Gender, Development, and Religion

FIGURE 4.4. Photo of Maatarka.

Today the village is home to 60 permanent households and 20 seasonal

ones. The temporary households move tents and livestock to seasonal graz-
ing sites in the hinterlands of the village. Approximately one-third of the
permanent villagers are wealthy enough to maintain two full-time house-
holds: one in the village and one that moves with the tent and livestock.
The majority of the permanent village residents, however, have not been
able to rebuild their herds after drought losses. These households are poor,
with 70% of them headed by women.
Divorced or widowed women formally head 25% of households in
Maatarka. But an additional 45% of the households are informally headed
by women, whose husbands, brothers, or fathers work as herders for
wealthy pastoralists or as wage laborers in faraway cities like Oujda, Taza,
and Fez (all located more than 200 kilometers to the northeast or north-
west of Maatarka). These men are usually away from the village for several
weeks or months at a time, leaving the women as de facto decision makers
for the household.
The high degree of male absenteeism in the village explains why few
households cultivate gardens. If women established gardens in households
without men present most of the time, they would directly challenge cus-
tomary and normative rights, which suggest that land belongs to men. Fur-
thermore, cultural identities in Maatarka remain centered on pastoral ac-
tivities, and men from the village most often find employment as herders
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 111

for wealthy pastoralists in the area. They also migrate seasonally to afore-
mentioned cities to work in construction or service industries. The men
from this village rarely work in agricultural sectors elsewhere, so they do
not teach nor encourage women to establish small vegetable gardens. These
daily activities reify a pastoral sense of identity, which is expressed in the
physical landscape of the village that lacks the creation of individual house-
hold gardens.
I surveyed women who did not have gardens in both Maatarka and
Mengoub Gare in order to understand what factors prevent villagers in
Maatarka from cultivating small gardens. The surveys suggest that pastoral
identities, land tenure uncertainties, lack of access to water and informa-
tion about farming, and male absenteeism discouraged irrigated agriculture
in both villages. But, as noted in Table 4.1, twice as many women in
Maatarka cited male absenteeism as the reason for not keeping a garden.
Women in Maatarka frequently explained that “we are nomads, we don’t
farm.” These cultural explanations of household land-use practices are also
embedded in broader political contexts.
Conflict over rights to land is prevalent throughout the Beni Guil terri-
tories, but tensions are especially high around Maatarka. This situation dis-
courages villagers from cultivating land. As discussed earlier in this chapter,
plowing and planting land converts collective rights into private-use rights.
Many pastoralists cultivate fields in order to enclose good pastures for pri-
vate use. Conflicts often erupt over the private appropriation of communal
land. These conflicts are much more severe in cases where land is irrigated,
since this practice represents a more permanent claim to the land.
Several villagers in Maatarka told me that people had died fighting
over access to land around Oglat Sedra, an area just 50 kilometers north-
east of Maatarka. According to Mr. Zakaraya, the director of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture in Tendrara, pastoralists have been fighting over the
use of the area because of its irrigation potential. Several years ago those

TABLE 4.1. Women’s Explanations for Not Establishing an Irrigated Garden

Women in Women in
Reason why no garden Maatarka (%) Mengoub Gare (%)
We’re nomads and don’t know 24 21
how to farm
No rights to land 24 13
No water 31 33
It’s men’s work, none at this house 21 11
Buy produce in Bouarfa 0 22
Total 100 100
Note. Source: Data collected by the author.
112

FIGURE 4.5. Village diagram of Maatarka.

Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 113

families whose traditional summer pastures (wolufs) straddle the Oglat

Sedra began irrigating fields. They soon abandoned their efforts because
disputes with other Beni Guil tribes became so severe.
The land disputes around Maatarka have discouraged villagers, espe-
cially women, from irrigating land and growing individual household
gardens. And, as articulated by feminist political ecologists, gender-based
livelihood strategies at the household scale always operate in relation to
broader sociopolitical, economic, and ecological contexts. In Maatarka,
only eight households cultivate their own gardens. Of these, only three gar-
dens are large enough to be visible on the landscape outside the home.
These gardens belong to the wealthiest and most politically powerful fami-
lies in the village. Resident men in these households work and manage the
gardens. Two of the gardens are a half-hectare in size, the third about one-
quarter of a hectare. The two larger gardens are located in the northeastern
corner of the village, where groundwater is only 2.5 meters below the sur-
face. One shared motor pump irrigates both gardens, which produce a few
olive trees, vegetables, and alfalfa. These gardens were established and
worked by men whose families have lived in Maatarka for more than 50
years. Both families are members of the Oulad Jenfi lineage within the
Oulad Jaber tribe. Their traditional summer grazing pastures are all within
a few kilometers of the village. These families have had rights to the land by
tribal affiliation and their long history as permanent settlers in Maatarka.
The third private garden belongs to one of the wealthiest families of
the politically and economically powerful Labyed lineage. A mud-brick
wall surrounds this smaller garden (25 square meters) and attaches it to the
household compound located at the southwestern edge of the village. The
ground water is 15 meters below the surface in this location, but the family
transports water to the garden with a relative’s truck. Safia, the eldest
woman in the house, grows olive trees, herbs, and vegetables in the garden.
She has learned these skills from her son, who works with her and who
learned these skills as a migrant laborer in France.
As noted in Figure 4.5, there is also a community garden in the village,
which reduces the need for villagers to establish private home gardens. The
PDPEO project staff established this garden in order to improve and diver-
sify the diet for settled villagers, especially the poor (BenJelloun, 1996). The
village garden occupies about 1 hectare of land located near the Jenfi gar-
dens in the northeastern corner of the village. A mule-powered wheel raises
water for irrigation from an on-site well. The water is just 3 meters below
the surface. A mud-brick wall surrounds the garden and protects the pro-
duce from grazing livestock and thieves.
Although members of poor households, especially women and chil-
dren, are the intended beneficiaries of the project, few women participate in
managing the garden. The project staff and men in the village hoe the land
and plant this green space. Men make all decisions about planting, harvest-
114 Gender, Development, and Religion

ing, and distributing the produce. They water the garden and survey it at
night. Occasionally, women are called upon to weed the garden.
This project has not empowered women, nor has it created an oppor-
tunity to improve their livelihoods. Instead, they have become more de-
pendent on remittances from absentee male wage laborers. But most men in
the village, and the project staff, consider the community garden project a
“success” because it has given a few men part-time jobs and has kept the
number of private gardens in the village to a minimum, and therefore has
reduced disputes over land in the community.
In public, men and women both adhere to a discourse that is positive
about the community garden, primarily because the garden was initiated by
the PDPEO, which acts as the representative of the state. Ever since the
Dahir of 1969, which transferred all rights over communal lands from
tribes to the national government, local disagreements about land-use deci-
sions initiated by the government are kept out of the public discourse.
As mentioned earlier in the chapter, the Dahir of 1969 disenfranchised
Beni Guil tribes from their rights to communal land. Similarly, the men in
Maatarka and the PDPEO staff have disenfranchised women from the com-
munity garden and discourses about it. As a result of their marginalization
from the gardening project, women in Maatarka continue to identify them-
selves as pastoralists, not as farmers, and make investment choices accord-
ingly, namely, by buying livestock. Maatarka’s location along traditional
and still active pastoral migration routes also sustains a continued cultural
identity with pastoral rather than agricultural livelihoods.
The strong social and cultural construction and retention of a pastoral
identity is expressed in the village landscape of Maatarka. Feminist geogra-
phy points to the relevance of gender relations as a key component for ex-
plaining the form of the built environment in rural and urban settings
(McDowell, 1999). Village landscapes in eastern Morocco are a reflection
of specific types of productive investments.
As illustrated in Table 4.2, patterns of productive investments clearly
reflect pastoral culture in both village communities, but the preference for

TABLE 4.2. Village Site and Livestock Investment Preferences

Village site
Livestock investment
preferences (n = 69) Maatarka (%) Mengoub (%)
Sheep 48 45
Goats 2 14
Cows 40 24
Chickens 10 17
Total 100 100
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 115

TABLE 4.3. Gender and Livestock Investment Preferences

Sex of interviewee
Livestock Investment
preferences (n = 185) Male Female
Sheep 76 42
Goats 0 7
Cows 22 37
Chickens 2 14
Total 100 100

buying cows in Maatarka also suggests an alternative and gender-based ad-

aptation to village life. The data in Table 4.2 show that sheep remain the
backbone of the pastoral economy. Goats have always been less commer-
cially valuable, but are more resilient in drier climates. For this reason, sig-
nificantly more villagers in Mengoub Gare (14%) would invest in goats
compared to villagers in Maatarka (2%). Goats survive well in the arid
Saharan environment, where Mengoub Gare is located, and are therefore
still a desirable investment for villagers there. By contrast, the more humid
environment in the Dahara lends itself more to raising cattle. Twice as
many villagers in Maatarka (40%), compared to Mengoub (24%), would
invest in cows.
Based on a Pearson’s chi-square of .001, the data in Table 4.3 also
indicate that gender interests affect preferences for particular livestock spe-
cies. The data in Table 4.3 reveal that men, more than women, prefer to
invest in sheep, primarily because men are responsible for herding sheep.
Men also control most of the income generated from these livestock re-
sources. Goats have always been a compliment to the larger sheep herds
because they are more drought-tolerant, though less commercially valuable.
Women, however, value goats (see Table 4.3) for their by-products such as
hair, hides, and milk. These resources are important for domestic use in the
pastoral household. Table 4.3 also shows that cows, rather than goats, are
the second most desirable investment for men and women. This shift away
from the traditional herd mix of sheep and goats represents a shift away
from a nomadic pastoral culture toward more sedentary agropastoral liveli-
hoods.

LIVESTOCK RATHER THAN GARDEN

PREFERENCES IN MAATARKA

The persistence of pastoral identities, male out-migration, and intense land

tenure conflict in the area has encouraged women in Maatarka to invest in
116 Gender, Development, and Religion

livestock rather than to establish household gardens. Women said they

want to buy cows because, relative to sheep and goats, they provide better
commercial returns, larger manure by-products (used as fuel resources),
and greater dairying potential. Women also said they prefer to work with
cows because they can be kept close to home and needn’t be herded by a
male relative. Without both men and women present in the household on a
daily basis, the renegotiation of productive activities and gender-based roles
and responsibilities are stunted. Instead, women in Maatarka seek out new
livelihood options that persist within the cultural constraints of female se-
clusion and the production norms of pastoral societies. Women’s preference
for keeping dairy cows represents a suitable economic adaptation to village
life that does not demand the reformulation of pastoral identities and prac-
tices.
Feminist political ecology approaches direct attention to the synthesis
of gender-based adaptations as local livelihoods collide with broader social,
economic, and ecological processes (see Rocheleau et al., 1996). A more
complete and holistic explanation for the diverse local adaptation strategies
also requires additional consideration of how the material productive
chores are connected through daily practice to more abstract, culturally sig-
nificant meanings of identity. Successful adaptation strategies must accom-
modate material needs and culturally specific identities and gender roles,
which, as we have seen, can vary from one settlement to another depending
on household gender demographics and employment opportunities. The
presence of men in the household or the length of their absence significantly
influences the trajectories of work, identities, and local places, particularly
in cultural regions where seclusion defines the geographic spaces in which
reproduction and production occur.
In Maatarka, the daily work of collecting wood fuel and water com-
pels women to be visible in the public space of the village. This public visi-
bility challenges seclusion ideologies that define the geographic spaces of
production and reproduction in previously mobile pastoral households,
which are usually isolated from non-kinship-based associations. The settled
village context disrupts the traditional social system and produces new in-
securities around women’s visibility, status, and images. This is particularly
true in households where the men are absent most of the time. Women in
Maatarka have opted to invest capital and labor resources into raising milk
cows because this activity perpetuates cultural ideologies of pastoral pro-
duction and accommodates the seclusion of women’s activities and social
networks from public to private spaces.
Pastoral women have always cherished their control of milk, cheese,
butter, and buttermilk. Women use these resources to develop social and
distribution networks outside the confines of the home. These contacts in-
crease access to a larger range of social, political, and economic resources
(Kerven, 1987; Waters-Bayer, 1988; Herren, 1990). These informal live-
stock by-product associations serve the same function for women as the
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 117

formal men’s livestock cooperatives do for men. In both cases the institu-
tions create a forum for exchanging important information and resources
across a large area.
Beni Guil women say that they use their milk exchange systems to cre-
ate links between village households, between the village and tent house-
holds in surrounding areas, and between village households and house-
holds in towns like Tendrara. Women in Maatarka rely heavily on these
links to towns because they provide access to commercial resources like
grain fodder, which women need for their own goats and cows.
Interviews with groups of women from different socioeconomic classes
in Maatarka, however, revealed several potential problems with their desire
to raise more milk cows in the village. The women identified insufficient in-
vestment capital and the maintenance costs as the two biggest problems. In-
deed, in 1997, only four households in Maatarka owned cows, and all but
one of these was wealthy enough to sustain feed inputs for the livestock.
They also had reliable connections with male family members who carried
out commercial transactions. One poor woman, Fatna Jenfi, also had a
cow that she had inherited 6 years earlier from her father. She could barely
keep up with the cost of feeding her cow, but she valued the milk for house-
hold consumption. She lamented the fact that the cow didn’t produce
enough milk to generate a little income from selling surplus milk and milk
products.
Unlike Mengoub Gare, the household spaces in Maatarka are devoid
of any greenery. And future trajectories suggest that these domestic spaces
will remain unchanged, except for the possible addition of a cow or two
tethered in the barren courtyards of extended family compounds.

THE POSSIBILITY OF CREATING

A MILK COOPERATIVE IN MAATARKA

Group interviews with Fatna and several other poor women in Maatarka
indicate that they would buy cows if they could afford them. But they
worry about the necessary maintenance costs and the economic risks asso-
ciated with such high initial investments. The discussions revealed that
women wanted to create a cooperative to address these problems. The co-
op would develop a rotating capital fund, establish links to markets for
fodder supplements, interact with veterinarians, share a stud bull, market
milk and milk products, and sell or buy animals at the souk (market).
Cultural norms still discourage women from direct commercial trans-
actions in most areas of the livestock sector. But the high rate of male
absenteeism in Maatarka has opened a cultural space wherein women can
discuss gender-based realignment of household production and the possibil-
ity of creating a communal cooperative beyond the individual household.
Rocheleau et al. (1996) describe these shifting gendered spatial categories
118 Gender, Development, and Religion

as a continuum from the private homestead to the public spaces of

croplands, fields, neighborhoods, or cities. In this case, women’s activities
of managing cows in the household compound are extended to the public
sphere of the dairy cooperative. This type of feminist political ecology anal-
ysis highlights the importance of gendered spaces of production and their
relevance for household adaptation strategies in pastoral societies that have
settled permanently.

DAIRY COOPERATIVES, MORE COWS,

AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRAJECTORIES

The discourse about creating a women’s dairy cooperative in Maatarka

suggests that women there are trying to find new solutions to their seden-
tary livelihoods and represents an important cue into the construction of
new identities and spaces of production. However, whether these ideas and
discourses can turn into productive material realities demands the answers
to a series of key concerns.
The cultural framework among pastoral societies in the MENA en-
courages economic power to gravitate toward the men, not the women.
Consequently, collective resource management institutions among women
have been informal to avoid directly challenging male authority and power.
Among the Beni Guil women, a saadeka represents an informal economic
cooperative. It is simply a gathering of women who pool food or cash to as-
sist someone (usually another woman) in need. The saadeka is organic and
generated by a self-selected group of participants who unite at a given mo-
ment, for a given cause. These associations have always been ephemeral,
never formal, and never unifying large groups of women in a permanent af-
filiation. As such, they never overtly compete with the men’s interests ex-
pressed through formal organizations at the tribal scale.
Of central concern for the viability of a women’s milk cooperative in
Maatarka is whether or not women there can transform these traditionally
informal cooperative structures into a permanent and formal institution in
the village. Would men in the village support the organization? Can such an
institution promote equity and empowerment for all members, regardless
of class or tribal affiliation? What is the history of the relationship between
the village women and outsider institutions like the PDPEO? Can these or-
ganizations collaborate more effectively with women to ensure that benefits
flow back to the women?
Research from other African and Middle Eastern countries indicates that
women’s empowerment gained from dairy-marketing projects varies consid-
erably from case to case, depending on the economic status and sex of the
household head, location and distance to markets, and gender makeup of
marketing associations (Hogg, 1992; Horowitz & Jowkar, 1992).
The idea of a female production system that operates communally in-
Settled Pastoralists in Eastern Morocco 119

verts the traditional pastoral production model where men control cooper-
ative institutions at the tribal scale, while women remain isolated in indi-
vidual household units. Evidence from Maatarka suggests that men have
and will continue to encourage economic divisions between nonhousehold
women. Women’s exclusion from participation in the management of the
village garden is one example. The strong persistence of a pastoral identity
raises the question of whether or not women can break through cultural
norms of male dominance at the tribal scale and economic independence of
the household unit.
Cooperative systems among pastoral nomads have usually been acti-
vated only during times of stress. This chapter has demonstrated that per-
manent settlement represents “a time of stress” for pastoral nomads. This
process produces new livelihood strategies, which destabilize gender roles
and identities and lead to diverse transformations of domestic and public
spaces in the settlements.

CONCLUSION

In Mengoub Gare livelihood stresses have produced new collective identi-

ties and a transformation of village landscapes. The presence of men in the
village and their shared work activities with nearby farmers allows for a
transformation of daily activities and an evolution of a cultural identity
from pastoral nomad to settled agriculturalist. These transformations of
identity are accepted and expressed in the domestic space through women’s
work in household gardens. At the community scale and within the realm
of the public sphere, villagers have simply adapted the communal (male)
management of water resources for individual (female) household gardens.
These adaptations enable the creation of new agricultural land uses in the
domestic space without challenging cultural norms that discourage women
from cultivating land. And, at the level of public discourse, both men and
women claim that only men cultivate land. It is through this shared public
discourse that alternative identities and culturally controversial gender-
based activities can develop within the private space.
In Maatarka, on the other hand, male absenteeism diminishes the
power that women have to challenge cultural norms of production, either
within the household or at the scale of the community. Women in this vil-
lage therefore increase their economic independence by investing cash re-
mittances in livestock, preferably milk cows. This activity reflects the con-
tinuation of a strong pastoral identity and does not confront accepted
gender roles and responsibilities. Without the men present in the home, few
opportunities exist for men and women to negotiate and reassess produc-
tive household activities. Nor can women alone confront the realm of pub-
lic discourse. Yet without a “unified” domestic front, transformation of
gendered activities and productive spaces will occur only slowly, if at all.
120 Gender, Development, and Religion

Rural spaces and places throughout the MENA are produced and
maintained through daily practice and activities, which are intimately
linked with cultural identities and social relations. How quickly these
evolve in response to broader social, political, and economic changes asso-
ciated with commercialization and globalization depends largely on the dy-
namics of gender-based negotiations in the domestic space and the defense
of those actions in public discourse. The examples raised in this chapter
suggest that careful analyses of shifting gender-based activities and identi-
ties at the household scale provide important insights into the responsive-
ness of local production strategies, which produce and reproduce rural live-
lihoods and places in the MENA.

NOTES

1. The “Project de Développement des Parcours et de l’Élevage dans l’Oriental”

(PDPEO) is a state and internationally funded range conservation project, with a
budget of $10 million. The project began in 1990 and ended in 2000, and was
funded by the African Development Bank, International Fund for Agricultural
Development, and the Moroccan government. Its scope included 3.2 million
hectares of Morocco’s eastern high plateau region. The goals were to diversify
fodder resources, restore rangeland cover vegetation, curb sand dune accumula-
tion, create pastoral cooperatives for feed distribution, minimize permanent set-
tlement, and develop income-generating activities for women.
2. Sheiks and mukkadems are public officials who are elected by local people in the
community. Each community represents a tribal lineage (there are 16 among the
Beni Guil) and they may elect one sheik and up to two mukkadems depending
on the population of the tribe. These elected officials represent the grassroots
level of the Moroccan political administration. These officials create the link be-
tween the local people and their government officials, such as the Caid, who rep-
resents the interests of all the different lineages, and the province governors, who
are appointed by King Mohammed VI.

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Geographies ofIslam
Transnational Mobility

Part II
Geographies of Mobility
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Geographies ofIslam
Transnational Mobility

5 Transnational Islam
Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers
in Saudi Arabia

RACHEL SILVEY

I
n the early 1970s, oil-producing states in the Gulf region saw
rapidly rising incomes and an increasing demand for foreign labor. By the
early 1980s, growing numbers of Indonesian people had begun to respond
to this demand (Spaan, 1999). The distinct majority of these migrants were
low-income Muslim women from rural areas of Java, and more than half of
these found work as housemaids in Saudi Arabia (Robinson, 2000, p. 254).
Many migrants entered Saudi Arabia on a hajj (or umrah) visa that permit-
ted them to stay in the country for 45 days to make the religious pilgrimage
to Mecca and to visit other holy sites within the country. The migrants who
were seeking work then stayed beyond the hajj visa’s legally sanctioned
time period to pursue employment in the informal sector (Hugo, 1992).
Those who entered the country with a regular work contract visa also com-
monly made the pilgrimage as part of their sojourn abroad. In these ways,
religion is linked to the methods these migrants employ for entering the
country, and, as this chapter explores, it is also deeply embedded in a broad
range of other aspects of their mobility and overseas employment experi-
ences. Yet within migration studies, research on the meanings of Islam, as it
intersects with other aspects of migrants’ lives, remains limited (though see
Robinson, 2000; Ong, 1995; and Abu-Sahlieh & Aldeeb, 1996, for impor-
tant exceptions).

127
128 Geographies of Mobility

More than migration studies in general, the growing literature on

domestic servants pays attention to women migrants’ own interpretations
of their mobility experiences (e.g., Huang & Yeoh, 1996; Yeoh, Huang,
& Gonzalez, 1999; Radcliffe, 1990; Heyzer, Lycklama a Nijeholt, &
Weerakoon, 1994). In addition, researchers who study international and
transnational migration have begun to examine the gender dimensions of
mobility processes (see Pessar, 1999; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999; and Mahler,
1999, for recent reviews). In this chapter, I build on the literature on do-
mestic workers and gendered transnational migration with the goal of
placing it in conversation with the growing body of research within geog-
raphy on the social and spatial dynamics of religion (Kong, 2001). As
Kong (2001, p. 212) argues, “Religion deserves to be acknowledged fully
and in like manner alongside race, class, and gender in geographic analy-
sis . . . [in order to] underline the geographic significance of examining
religion, not least in the intersection of sacred and secular forces in the
making of place.” Religion, in the case of Indonesian domestic workers
in Saudi Arabia, is central to understanding the production of the gender
politics among these transnational migrants, and specifically the ways in
which the gender differentiation of their migrant networks ties them to
particular places and identities.
Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the
world, with approximately 87% of its over 220 million people claiming
Islam as their religion in 1999 (Hefner, 2000). Sunni, Shi’ia, and Sufi de-
nominations exist, and each of these is expressed differently in different re-
gions of the nation. Such a large and diverse community is likely to affect
the shape and meaning of global Islam in the years ahead. Indeed, Indone-
sia’s Islamic revival over the past several decades has involved a prolifera-
tion of types and spaces of Islamic practice and multiple relationships to the
concept of the umma (Hefner, 2000).1
In recent years Indonesian Muslim groups have strengthened their in-
volvement in transnational networks of migration and communication
(Jabali & Jamhari, 2002). Gender relations are at the center of under-
standing the ways that these social networks take shape (Curran &
Saguy, 2001), and I am interested in examining the ways that the gender
politics of migrants’ religious networks vary geographically. Among Indo-
nesian women migrants to Saudi Arabia, religious beliefs and practices
shape every aspect of the mobility experience, from the earliest planning
stages to the postmigration workers’ rights protest actions. Further, reli-
gion is enmeshed in women’s mobility processes through diverse social
networks, each of which has particular spatialities associated with it. The
intersection between gender and religion is thus crucial to our under-
standings of sociospatial networks and the ways these networks shape
women’s migrations.
Transnational Islam 129

Examining various deployments of Islamic morality, as this study aims

to do, is aimed at avoiding some of the pitfalls of previous research on
women and Islam. Western scholarship on women and Islam has tended to
depict Muslim women, especially those from the Middle East, as either vic-
tims of an oppressive culture (equated with Islam) or as “behind-the-
scenes-but-truly-powerful” agents (Newland, 2000). Lost in this dichoto-
mization, however, is the much richer reality of women’s shifting senses of
power and religious subjectivities.2 Also missing in much of the literature
on Islam and gender are in-depth analyses of the range of changing reli-
gious identities of Muslim women in Indonesia (but see Brenner, 1996;
Blackwood, 1995; and Weix, 1998). I am interested here in providing in-
sight into some of these changes and some of this intrareligious diversity
through specific attention to the gendered religious geographies of transna-
tional migrants.
The discussion is based on fieldwork in West Java and South Sulawesi
that began in 1995, with follow-up visits in 1998, 2000, and 2002. In re-
cent years, I have focused on the dynamics surrounding the large and grow-
ing numbers of Indonesian women migrating to Saudi Arabia to work as
domestic servants. Building on a longer term project focused on women
factory workers in the same communities (Silvey, 2003), I have spoken with
men who have recruited migrants to work in Saudi Arabia, women who
have returned from work in Saudi Arabia, families and neighbors of mi-
grant women, civil servants at the Ministry of Labor, and leaders of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on behalf of the rights of
migrant women (Silvey, 2004). Respondents drew on Islamic codes in dif-
ferent ways depending on their beliefs, goals, and social locations. Exam-
ining these differences in various Indonesian people’s interpretations and
expressions of Islam sheds light on the ways that people employ religion to
reaffirm, challenge, or survive the power relations structuring their position
in this transnational migration circuit.
This chapter is organized into five main sections. The first reviews the-
oretical approaches to gender and transnational migration, and focuses on
the literature on migration from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. This section ar-
gues that existing approaches are missing important dimensions of the mo-
bility process and its consequences by giving only scant attention to the role
of religion. The second section provides an overview of the recent history of
migration flows from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates the im-
portance of Islam to domestic workers’ migration processes. The following
two sections examine the ways in which Islam matters within two arenas
shaping Indonesian women’s migration to Saudi Arabia: the recruitment
process and the New Order (1965–1998) state’s role in promoting women’s
domestic roles through increasingly Islamist discourses of gendered moral-
ity. The concluding section calls for emphasizing the agency and complex
130 Geographies of Mobility

subject positions of “Muslim women” as an intervention into the parsi-

mony and dichotomies of much migration research and the debates on
women and Islam.

GENDER, ISLAM, AND MIGRATION IN INDONESIA:

COMBINING THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

There exists a vast, rich literature on migration, very little of which ex-
amines the mutual constitution of religion and mobility (but see, e.g.,
Abu-Sahlieh & Aldeeb, 1996). Recent scholarship (e.g., Portes & Sensen-
brenner, 1993; Leinbach & Watkins, 1998; Hugo, 1997; Chant, 1992;
Lawson, 1998; Gidwani & Sivaramakrisnan, 2003) has highlighted the
importance of bringing together various theoretical approaches to migra-
tion. Here, I follow this scholarship by attempting to integrate theories of
the household that account for gender hierarchies (Lawson, 1998) and
life-cycle transitions (Leinbach & Watkins, 1998) with understandings of
the individual migrant as embedded in dynamic social networks (Portes
& Sensenbrenner, 1993), as well as in specific regional modernities
(Gidwani & Sivaramakrisnan, 2003). My focus on these dimensions of
migration is aimed at providing deeper insight into the ways that gen-
dered migration operates differently across populations and places, and
the ways that these differences are linked to the structure–agency dialec-
tics of religion.
Theories of gender and migration focus considerable attention on
household-scale processes (Willis & Yeoh, 2000). Feminist migration re-
searchers argue that this focus is essential for understanding sex differen-
tials in migration patterns and rates (Chant, 1992; Radcliffe, 1990; Law-
son, 1998). For the case of West Java, interpretations of Islam intersect
with the meanings of each of these dimensions of household hierarchies, in-
fluencing migrants’ gender identities, conceptions of appropriate behavior
at particular ages, and the significance for migration of specific stages in the
household’s life cycle (e.g., Leinbach, Watkins, & Bowen, 1992; Hugo,
1992). Feminist research in Indonesia has emphasized the role of power re-
lations and hierarchies within households in determining who migrates and
with what effects on livelihood (see Wolf, 1992; and Hart, 1992, who fo-
cuses on Malaysia) and the interrelatedness of household structures and dy-
namics in producing particular mobility patterns and employment behav-
iors (see Leinbach & Watkins, 1998; Hugo, 1998; and Lawson, 1998, on
Latin America). Economic and workload pressures at both individual- and
household-level scales intersect with specific religious commitments, and
these are linked to migration (Cremer, 1998; Robinson, 1991, 2000; Chin,
1997; Spaan, 1999).
Transnational Islam 131

In order to understand the place-based interpretations of gender and

religion, I take as a key entry point the geographic literature on these
themes. Within geography, Claire Dwyer (1999, 2000) examines the mean-
ings for young British, Muslim, South Asian women of belonging to a
“Muslim community,” and illustrates the centrality of gender for under-
standing the ways that community boundaries are forged. In a similar vein,
Secor (2002) provides an analysis of veiling in the local production of Is-
lamic regimes of belonging and knowledge construction among Muslim
women who are rural–urban migrants in Istanbul. Lastly, Mohammad
(1999) analyzes the central role of women in marking internal, class-based
divisions among Pakistani Muslims in southern England. Synthesizing
much of this research on gender and Islam, Nagar (2000) and Nagel (2001)
have called on geographers to expand our explicitly spatial analyses of gen-
der issues in relation to Islamic communities and practices. Nagel’s point is
relevant to the rapidly growing body of scholarship on the gendered poli-
tics of Indonesian Islam (e.g., Weix, 1998; Brenner, 1996, 1998; Bowen,
1998; Sears, 1996; Marcoes, 2002; Newland, 2000; Errington, 1990; Rob-
inson, 2000) in that this literature has explored a range of critical dimen-
sions of gender and Indonesian Islam, but it has not focused on the spatial
or transnational aspects.
In research on Indonesian people’s migration to Saudi Arabia in partic-
ular, religious identity is often mentioned as an aside rather than analyzed
as an explicit central feature of migrants’ mobility experiences (see, e.g.,
Spaan, 1999; Hugo, 1992; Ananta, Kartowibowo, Wiyono, & Chotib,
1998; Cremer, 1988; Robinson, 1991—though see also Robinson, 2000,
for an important exception). Yet there are numerous ways in which religion
affects Indonesian domestics’ migration experiences in Saudi Arabia:
recruiters deploy religious codes to persuade aspiring migrants of the desir-
ability of specific destination sites; Indonesian civil authorities and Saudi
employers view religion as a factor when they encourage migration be-
tween Muslim countries; and workers rely on their spiritual strength to
help them manage and occasionally thrive in their overseas jobs. In order to
better understand migration, it is helpful to query the interaction of religion
with each of these aspects of the migration process.
Attention to religion need not be mutually exclusive of an analysis of
household hierarchies or community boundary formation. Rather, the
ways that religious identity intersects with household relations and state
policies to shape gendered migration experiences can be better under-
stood when attention is given to the interrelationships between these dy-
namic processes and interacting arenas of cultural production. Bringing
these foci together can illuminate the processes through which migrants’
identities influence the sacred and secular aspects of mobility for this spe-
cific group of women.
132 Geographies of Mobility

INDONESIAN DOMESTIC WORKERS

IN SAUDI ARABIA, 1983–2000

Beginning in 1983, the Indonesian government permitted Middle Eastern

countries to recruit Indonesian nationals for overseas work (Robinson,
1991). Indonesia’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time expressed en-
thusiasm for the national plan to promote labor export. He noted that
overseas employment could provide jobs for Indonesian nationals, who as a
population faced high rates of unemployment. Labor export, he argued,
could also create much-needed foreign exchange, as migrants would send
remittances home (Robinson, 1991).
Within the first year after Indonesia agreed to release workers to the
Middle East, 47,000 fully documented workers left Indonesia for Saudi
Arabia, a number that grew rapidly every year thereafter until the Indone-
sian economic crisis began in late 1997 (Ananta et al., 1998). Between
1989 and 1994, the majority (59%) of documented overseas workers from
Indonesia migrated to Saudi Arabia rather than to other countries (Hugo,
1995, p. 280), growing from a total of 55,967 over the 1979–1983 5-year
period to 223,579 during the subsequent 5-year period. Then again, be-
tween 1989 and 1994, the total increased to 384,822 (Amjad, 1996, p.
345), and during the single year of 1998, according to one source, 389,156
formally documented immigrants to Saudi Arabia came from Indonesia
(Depnaker, 1998, cited in Krisnawaty, 1999). These numbers dwarf the
numbers of Indonesian people legally emigrating to other countries (Amjad,
1996). Since 1998 there does appear to be an increasing tendency for labor
from Indonesia to be directed to other countries within Asia, rather than to
the Middle East (Ananta et al., 1998; Hugo, 2002). This tendency appears
to be a result of the economic crisis (1997–present) in Indonesia, which
made it more difficult for low-income people to afford the cost of travel
and recruitment to the Middle East. The remittances that migrant workers
sent home have also been substantial, with estimates of total official remit-
tances from all destinations to Indonesia in the first 6 months of 2001
reaching US$4 billion (Hugo, 2002, p. 174).
Of this large number of migrants, women make up the distinct majority:
two-thirds of the migrants between 1984 and 1994 were women (Amjad,
1996, p. 346), and in 1998 more than 12 times as many Indonesian women
as men immigrated to Saudi Arabia (Hugo, 2002, p. 159). Beyond these
formal numbers, many people travel from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia with-
out completing the required documentation. Hugo (2002, p. 159) argues
that “undocumented migrants certainly outnumber documented migrants”
abroad (see also Spaan, 1999; and Jones, 2000, on undocumented Indone-
sian migration to Malaysia). Migrants without work visas lack state protec-
tion, and their undocumented status raises particularly serious issues for
Transnational Islam 133

women who work as domestic servants. Domestic service jobs are unregu-
lated in Saudi Arabia, such that even those domestic workers who have
work visas or contracts do not have an institutionalized right to legal pro-
tection as workers (see also Huang & Yeoh, 1996, on Singapore). In addi-
tion, because domestic service takes place within the home, defined by the
state as the “private” sphere, exploitation and abuse has the potential to be
more easily hidden than abuses in the “public” sphere. Moreover, as I elab-
orate below, employers use religious differences to rationalize either low
pay or ill treatment of their domestic workers, even in situations in which
the employers and the employees belong nominally to the same religion.
The severe abuses that Indonesian domestic workers face in house-
holds in Saudi Arabia came to public attention soon after migrants began
overseas work. By 1984 reports were emerging in the Indonesian press
about the working conditions faced by many migrants in Saudi Arabia
(Robinson, 2000, p. 255). Reporters found that migrant candidates some-
times received false information about the departure date or the availability
of work (Kompas, April 7, 1984, as cited in Robinson, 2000, p. 255). They
also claimed that workers were being treated poorly and that some were
sexually abused in the homes of their Saudi employers. Workers were found
to be overworked and underpaid, and in a number of cases were forbidden
to leave the residence of their employers (Robinson, 2000, p. 255).
In addition, many domestic workers have died while overseas. Activ-
ists claim to have evidence that a number of the unexplained deaths were
either murders by employers or suicides resulting from unbearable employ-
ment situations (Tagaroa & Sofia, 2002). Public opposition to the “export”
of Indonesian workers grew within Indonesia as these cases gained wide-
spread attention in the 1980s (Robinson, 1991).
Into the 1990s, the media continued to give prominent coverage to
cases of mistreatment, excessively heavy workloads, and rape of overseas
domestic workers, and provided regular reports on the increasing numbers
of women who had mysteriously disappeared, been murdered, sentenced to
death, or committed suicide in Saudi Arabia (e.g., Tempo, September 12,
1999). Much of the media coverage was illustrated with photographs of
women wearing the j’illbab (headscarf). While wearing the headscarf has
become an increasingly common practice in Indonesia in recent years, it is
by no means a universal practice (Brenner, 1996). The depiction of the
headscarf in the media was noteworthy both because of the regularity with
which the image was used and because it resonated with widely circulated
religious discourses in both countries. The graphic depictions of the as-
saults on these women, and specifically on their bodies, were picked up and
further circulated by activists in NGOs (e.g., Solidaritas Perempuan,
Kalyanamitra), which made the plight of these women a central concern.
Despite widespread popular and government pressure to stop send-
134 Geographies of Mobility

ing women overseas, the export of female domestic laborers continued to

dominate the official outflow from Indonesia through late 1997 (Hugo,
1995, p. 282; Ananta et al., 1998). Interestingly, even as the migration
flows began to change directions in 1997, Islamist discourse remained at
the center of government rationales for exporting workers. Specifically,
women were called on as Muslims to be “good mothers” and to protect
and provide for their “national family” (Pudjosumedi & Rohiim, 1996),
which, according to the government, was facing a crisis that the women
could help address.
This brief outline of the history of women’s labor migration from
Indonesia to Saudi Arabia begins to reveal the ways in which religion has
figured in the gender politics of migration. The following sections explain
in greater detail how Islam has mattered to the labor recruitment process
and to the role of the New Order state in promoting women’s migration.

SELLING SAUDI ARABIA AS A DESTINATION SITE

When else could a person like me make the pilgrimage to

Mecca and build a house, if I don’t go to Saudi Arabia [to
work as a domestic]?
—KODRIAH, a young woman migrant from Salatiga,
West Java (Solidaritas Perempuan, 1994, p. 2)

Most potential migrants have heard stories from neighbors or returned mi-
grants about several possible destinations by the time they are recruited by
middlemen and labor brokers (Spaan, 1999). These labor recruitment
agents tend to have a destination site prearranged at the time they enter the
villages to seek workers to hire, and they advertise the idea that they are
selling passage to a place where labor contracts are already arranged. When
the brokers aim to persuade potential migrants of the appeal of overseas
work, they rely on positive descriptions of the place to which they plan to
transport the workers. The sales pitches differ depending on the country to
which the migrants are being recruited; in the case of Saudi Arabia, they in-
clude reference to the religious compatibility of the migrants with potential
employers.
When brokers are recruiting migrants in West Java’s villages for pas-
sage to Saudi Arabia, they tend to focus their efforts at pesantren, or
girls’ Islamic boarding schools. The pesantren are preferred sites for this
recruitment stream both because the girls who attend these schools are
usually relatively devout Muslims, a quality that is often preferred by em-
ployers in Saudi Arabia, and because the students have studied some
Arabic, and so can communicate with their Arabic-speaking employers.
Nevertheless, there are several issues that make it difficult to convince
potential migrants of Saudi Arabia’s appeal. First, the cost of transporta-
Transnational Islam 135

tion to Saudi Arabia is higher than the cost to the other possible destina-
tions, such as Malaysia (the least expensive), Singapore, or Hong Kong.
In addition, the popular mythology surrounding migration to Saudi Ara-
bia is that while it is possible for some people to earn relatively high in-
comes while working there, there is also a greater likelihood of extreme
abuse (e.g., rape or other forms of sexual physical assault), possibly end-
ing in tragedy (e.g., lifelong handicap, suicide, murder, or the death sen-
tence). In other words, the rewards are thought to be much higher among
migrants who dare to migrate to Saudi Arabia, but the risks are also
viewed as potentially much greater than those associated with migrating
elsewhere.
In villages in Rancaekek and Bekasi (both in West Java), I interviewed
people who had returned from Saudi Arabia, people considering overseas
migration, and nonmigrants about their experiences and perspectives on
migration. Most people in these two villages had been in contact with at
least one very successful overseas domestic who had worked in Saudi Ara-
bia. Yet all respondents had numerous tales about the hardships, abuses,
and tragedies that had befallen women domestics in Saudi Arabia. These
stories were widely circulated and received with rapt attention. Not surpris-
ingly, the possibility of earning what they considered to be extraordinary
wealth was still appealing to people in the villages, most of whom had in-
comes that fell below the national poverty line. Yet it was only with pro-
nounced apprehension that villagers engaged the fantasies of wealth earned
in Saudi Arabia.
Brokers sought to allay some of the fears about Saudi Arabia by
comparing the situation there favorably with the problems migrants
would face in Malaysia. Specifically, when brokers were recruiting for
Saudi Arabia, they pointed out to Muslim women that their religious
principles would be challenged if they were to work in Malaysia rather
than in Saudi Arabia. They told potential recruits that while Malaysia is
also a predominantly Muslim country, many employers of domestic ser-
vants there subscribe to other religions, including Christianity and Bud-
dhism. Brokers would cultivate fear and disgust for Malaysia on the part
of migrant candidates by regaling them with stories of the “sinful” be-
havior (from a widely accepted West Javanese Islamic perspective) ex-
pected of domestic servants there. For instance, they told potential mi-
grants that they would be forbidden to pray in their employers’ home in
Malaysia. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, according to some bro-
kers, because of the highly devout Muslim population, prayer and fasting
during the holy month of Ramadan would not only be tolerated, but in
fact would be supported. Domestics in Saudi Arabia, they suggested,
could win favor with God (Allah) through the intensified practice of reli-
gious duties that would be supported there.
According to the brokers, if migrants went to Malaysia, they would
136 Geographies of Mobility

also be expected to cook and eat pork, which is considered a sin and is for-
bidden among West Javanese Muslims as well as Muslims in Saudi Arabia.
The problem of being expected to touch, cook, or even eat pork was partic-
ularly important to many people in both villages. People were additionally
warned that if they migrated to Malaysia rather than to Saudi Arabia, they
could be expected to worship in a pagoda rather than in a mosque. Yet an-
other serious problem that recruiters argued could ostensibly be avoided by
working in Saudi Arabia was the possibility of being forced to care for
dogs. A report by an NGO reviewed the case of one woman in particular
who was deeply upset (sangat menyakitkan hati) by the expectation that
she provide dog care. Contact with dogs is forbidden (haram) in general
West Javanese interpretations of Islam, as it is in Saudi Arabian and Malay-
sian interpretations of Islam. Caring for dogs is thus reported to be a seri-
ous workers’ rights issue by the NGO Solidaritas Perempuan. One woman
who had returned from Saudi Arabia said, “I felt disgusted/nauseated, fear-
ful, and sinful whenever the time came to take care of those seven dogs.
That was every day. Try and think about it, how do you think I felt?”
(Solidaritas Perempuan, 1994, p. 9). People in the two villages expressed
anxiety about the possibility that they would be expected to bathe dogs,
also a sin in their view, and one that some found even more repugnant than
caring for dogs.
The brokers thus used potential migrants’ anxiety about the un-
known, and their fear of religious difference in particular, to encourage
people to migrate to Saudi Arabia. Of course, brokers used similar tactics
when seeking to sell passage to other countries as well. When aiming to
attract workers to countries other than Saudi Arabia, they would deni-
grate Saudi Arabian Islam by labeling it “fanatical” (fanatik). In other
words, recruiters cultivated religion-based preferences regardless of the
potential destination site, and employed it in the service of their prevail-
ing goals.
The final, perhaps most influential, method that brokers had of using
religion to persuade potential migrants to select Saudi Arabia as their desti-
nation site is the fact that Mecca, the Muslim religious center and holiest
city, is located there. Migrants can make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca as
part of their overseas travel for work. As Eickleman (1990, p. 5) puts it,
“Muslim doctrine explicitly enjoins or encourages certain forms of travel.
One is the express obligation to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj).”
The hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca during Dhul Hijjah (the month for
hajj). The umrah, when performed independently of the hajj, is the optional
lesser pilgrimage and may be accomplished any time during the year
(Denny, 1994). Making the hajj pilgrimage is one of the Five Pillars of Is-
lam, and is to be undertaken by all believers if they have the means to do
so. It was this desire on the part of many potential migrants to make the
Transnational Islam 137

hajj that underlay the appeal for them of Saudi Arabia as a destination site.
As the opening quotation to this section points out, low-income people
(“people like me”) are generally not able to afford to make the pilgrimage.
To return to Indonesia having made the pilgrimage, and thus to have be-
come a haji, is a great honor, substantially raising one’s social standing and
prestige within the home community.
Pilgrims’ sense of having fulfilled their religious duty in some cases
comes along with an improvement in their financial standing as well. Those
few migrants who returned with substantial savings were able to buy or re-
model homes in their villages. In each village it was clear which households
had been successful, either abroad or in Indonesia’s urban economy, be-
cause the household members displayed their success in the consumption of
new paint, expanded porches and fences, and occasionally the installation
of a satellite dish. While it has been reported that successful return migrants
purchase land in Central Java, in the villages in Bekasi and Rancaekek this
was not the case. In the village in Bekasi there was no arable land to be pur-
chased, while in Rancaekek the land was reportedly growing increasingly
degraded as a result of factory pollution. Nevertheless, the highly visible
home improvements that successful migrants exhibited in the villages
played an important symbolic role in feeding the fantasies of potential fu-
ture migrants. Villagers conveyed honor on those return migrants who in
their eyes had risen in class standing, and they were particularly respectful
of those who were both wealthy and had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Yet among the return migrants I interviewed, the motive for making
the pilgrimage was not simply, or even primarily, based on migrants’ desires
for improved social standing in the village. Women who made the pilgrim-
age also expressed the deep spiritual meaning that the hajj held for them.
As one woman put it, “You are completely pure afterward, like a newborn
all over again, without sin, thoroughly cleansed. I would go again and
again if I could.” In other words, while making the pilgrimage did enhance
status, many pilgrims were also interested in expressing the holy aspects of
their journey. A central goal for them was to be closer to God. While it is
impossible to know exactly what combination of goals and desires drive
these pilgrims, it is important to avoid reducing their experience to status
concerns. Indeed, in their life histories, migrants and nonmigrants alike re-
peatedly articulated the importance they attach to Muslim spirituality. That
is, rather than focusing only on religious practices, or what they saw as the
organized social expectations of Muslims, migrants spoke of their own sub-
jective powerful experiences of spirituality in relation to religion. Their
spiritual drives, then, were tied to both their deep sense of fulfillment if
they did make the pilgrimage and the ways in which the recruiters could
use religion to manipulate them into choosing Saudi Arabia as a destination
site.
138 Geographies of Mobility

THE INDONESIAN NEW ORDER

STATE’S DEPLOYMENT OF ISLAM

As private recruitment agents have mobilized Islamist discourses in support

of their aims, so too have Indonesian state actors employed Islamic ratio-
nales in their efforts to promote women’s overseas labor migration. I am
specifically concerned in this section with the particular interpretations of
women’s labor migration put forth by Indonesia’s New Order (1965–1998)
state.
In the 1980s state officials argued that women migrants would be safe in
Saudi Arabia because it was a devoutly Muslim environment (Robinson,
2000, p. 254). Indeed, as the Indonesian ambassador for Saudi Arabia put it,
“Islamic tradition and Islamic law is very strong in Saudi Arabia, not like in
developed Western nations. Over there, men and women who are not
muhrim [closely related, so that marriage is prohibited] rarely meet, let alone
‘interfere with’ [mengganggu] each other. If this law is violated the punish-
ment is harsh” (Kompas, April 7, 1984, as cited in Robinson, 2000, p. 256).
In other words, according to the ambassador, the strength of the religious be-
lief among the Muslims in Saudi Arabia would create a disciplined populace
within which Indonesian women could be assured of their safety.
Similar to the ambassador’s view of Saudi Arabian Islam was the idea
that by sending Indonesian nationals to work in the Middle East, Indonesia
could ostensibly uphold Islamic moral codes by keeping labor migration
within the ummat (community of Islam) (Robinson, 1991). Interestingly,
however, while this notion of the community of Islam was deployed in the
service of sending women abroad, the Indonesian state denied responsibil-
ity for nationals living “illegally” in Saudi Arabia. Abdul Latief, for exam-
ple, the minister of manpower (Menteri Tenaga Kerja, or Mennaker), ar-
gued that “all citizens have the right to go abroad, but the government
can’t protect all nationalities” (Kompas, October 28, 1997). This notion of
the limits to the state’s responsibility to a community was in sharp contrast
to the one on which the ambassador had called when he encouraged
women to migrate abroad.
At the same time that the New Order state was encouraging women’s
migration (however inconsistently), several state institutions and policies
were actively reproducing the view that the appropriate place for women
is within the home. Such bourgeois ideals were introduced well before In-
donesia’s postcolonial period (Stoler, 1995), but since 1965 the New Or-
der state had vigorously promoted them in the name of national eco-
nomic development and political stability. Familism, “mother-ism”, and
“housewifization” were all central elements of the gender politics of the
New Order (Sunindyo, 1996; Suryakusuma, 1996). Such ideals were em-
bodied in organizations such as Dharma Wanita (Women’s Duty), which
Transnational Islam 139

promoted the idea that women’s positions were subordinate to those of

their husbands.
Yet in order to earn foreign exchange, the state was willing to extend
the spaces within which low-income women could perform these idealized
practices, thereby providing ideological space within which women, as de-
vout, pious, morally upstanding mothers and wives, could migrate (see Sen,
1998; and also see Robinson, 2000, on religious tensions surrounding
women’s migration). For female migratory domestic servants, Dharma
Wanita’s idealized mother/wife ideology was simply transposed to the do-
mestic sphere of the employer. The state’s discourse shifted to make the do-
mestics “heroes of national development,” and extended their maternal
role to serve the needs of their families as well as the economic needs of the
entire nation. In meetings of Dharma Wanita that were held in Rancaekek
and Bekasi, leaders invoked explicitly religious rationales to further pro-
mote the state’s class-specific idealization of women’s roles as “transna-
tional” mothers and wives. Increasingly, over time, the state relied on reli-
gious language and scriptures to support its goals, and Dharma Wanita and
other state institutions3 marshaled Islamist language and beliefs in the ser-
vice of the state.
State ideologies of masculinity were more implicitly coded than those
of femininity, but were—and continue to be—similarly pervasive and at
least as influential. Male civil servants, for instance, are conceived by the
state as the heads of household, and their rank determines the social status
of all members of their family. As household heads, men in this discourse
are expected, first and foremost, to provide food and shelter for their fami-
lies. Census identification placards are placed outside of all households list-
ing the “household head,” assumed to be male, followed by the name of his
wife. While these placards are used for a number of purposes, as Black-
wood (1995, p. 137) points out, they reflect and reinforce a hierarchical di-
vision between the household head and his subordinate wife.4 This official
conceptualization of gender relations becomes significant in the Saudi Ara-
bian context in that male migrants remain substantially more mobile and
autonomous than do their female counterparts. Within Saudi Arabia, state
policies that influence gendered mobility are also explicitly religious, draw-
ing on the moral authority of religious edicts to reinforce particular
gendered labor patterns.
The development policies of the New Order state, in sum, established
contradictory messages for the construction of gender. Since the 1980s and
continuing through the present, the government has promoted women’s la-
bor migration to the Middle East (Hugo, 1996) in an effort to encourage
much-needed foreign exchange flows via migrant remittances. At the same
time, the state has idealized the domestically located mother and wife and her
counterpart, the sole, male breadwinner. To reconcile these conflicting aims,
140 Geographies of Mobility

the state has relied upon and reproduced an Islamist discourse of women’s
self-sacrifice to family and nation, in which the migratory income-earning
woman becomes a provider of economic development for the “national fam-
ily.” Because most of these women continue to be involved in domestic work
overseas, their mobility and labor market participation ultimately aligns with
the state’s view of domesticated femininity. Indeed, women migrants can con-
tinue to perform the dual roles set forth in the widely circulated handbook, Is-
lam and the Role of Women as Housewives and Pillars of the Nation
(Rohiim, 1996), which draws on the growing moral authority of Islam to pro-
duce, support, and reinforce the gender ideologies of the state.

CONCLUSIONS

Women’s religious beliefs do not simply allow them to be further exploited,

though in some situations religion is manipulated in the service of women’s
exploitation. Nor does religion primarily provide oppositional strength to
women involved in combating their oppression, though it can also be mobi-
lized in this way. Rather, the range of ways in which Islam is deployed in
domestic workers’ recruitment processes, state policy, and the organization
of overseas domestic work experiences reveals the multiple meanings of Is-
lam to different actors.
The use of religious ideology for the purposes of the state or migrant
recruiters is not of course unique to Islam. Attention to the ways in which
religion is embedded in migrants’ individual lives, households, and social
networks serves to destabilize and deessentialize gender norms and the
meanings of religion. As Eickleman (1997, pp. 4–5) puts it, “Religious
communities, like all imagined communities, change over time. Their
boundaries are shifted by, and shift, the political, economic, and social con-
texts in which these participants find themselves.” The spatial boundaries
of the “community” of Indonesian Muslims is expanded when women
from Java migrate to work in Saudi Arabia, and gender norms are pro-
duced in conjunction with specific and shifting invocations of religion.
President Suharto (1965–1998) managed through a variety of strate-
gies to keep Islamist political interests subordinate to the overall will of the
New Order regime (Hefner, 2000). However, since 1998, increasingly vocal
Islamist political constituents have entered Indonesian public political life
and have gained more overt political power than at any other time since in-
dependence (in 1945). Indeed, Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid
(Gus Dur, October 1999–July 2001) was himself a Sufi cleric and the leader
of the large, national Islamic group Nahdlatul Ulama.
The surge of sectarian violence and violence against women in Indo-
nesia since 1998 has been widely represented as reflective of Christian–
Muslim tensions (Robinson & Bessell, 2002). Women’s bodies, dress, sexu-
Transnational Islam 141

ality, and “autonomy” have been cast at the center of these “religious”
struggles, and at the center of contemporary international justifications for
war (Moghadam, 2002). Migrant women in particular are wrapped up in
the symbolic contestations over national pride, religious value, and cultural
status. Increasingly, for some, migrant women are not “in their place”;
their mobility may threaten the gendered order and their sociospatial trans-
gressions are regularly punished or controlled.
For many years now feminist geographers have stressed the “need to
think of home in terms of dominance and resistance; to consider how and
why a particular ideology of home maintains its hegemonic position and
how this might be contested through alternative interpretations” (Gregson
& Lowe, 1995, p. 226, as cited in Sparke, in press). Indonesian–Saudi
women migrants carry with them a religiously rationalized view of home
that serves to locate them as housemaids in the “private” spaces of their
Saudi employers. But women migrants also employ religion as part of the
justification for leaving their own homeland and families to make the pil-
grimage to Mecca. On the one hand, women who migrate transnationally
are claiming new spaces within which religious prestige and small fortunes
are potentially available to them. On the other hand, they can be manipu-
lated and victimized through gendered religious forms of domination that
can and sometimes do also travel transnationally. It is through attention to
such contradictions and complexity that migration research can contribute
to understanding specific gendered and religious meanings of particular de-
partures from home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An early version of this chapter was presented in March 2001 at the Association of
American Geographers’ Conference, held in New York City. I would like to thank
Richa Nagar for the comments she provided as discussant of the session. My thanks
also go to Amy Freeman, Caroline Nagel, and Ghazi-Walid Falah for helpful com-
mentary on a previous draft. The research, reported here was funded by Grant No.
9911510 from the National Science Foundation. That support is greatly appreci-
ated. For valuable research assistance, I’d also like to thank Klara Mezgolits,
Monica Ogra, and Nyne van der Berg.

NOTES

1. For a recent overview of the voluminous literature on Islam in Indonesia, see

Hefner (2000).
2. For a more nuanced take on gender and Islam, see Ong (1995) on Malyasia.
3. In rural areas, the Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK, Family Welfare
Guidance) was another New Order state institution geared explicitly toward the
142 Geographies of Mobility

production and maintenance of the state’s idealized version of domesticated fem-

ininity. The PKK, designed to build “community well-being” (Sunindyo, 1996,
p. 124), served to disseminate the state’s moral code for women, or the Panca
Dharma Wanita (Five responsibilities of women), to rural people. The PKK’s
stated responsibilities for a woman were listed in order of importance as: “1)
support her husband’s career and duties; 2) provide offspring; 3) care for and
rear the children; 4) be a good housekeeper; and 5) be a guardian of the commu-
nity” (Sunindyo, 1996, p. 125). The PKK also provides training for low-income
women to become proper, or as Suzanne Brenner (1998, p. 245) puts it, “middle-
class” mothers and housewives.
4. A specifically militarized version of masculine strength, aggression, and suprem-
acy is also manufactured at all levels of the armed services (Sunindyo, 1996).
Military masculinity involves clear parallels with the state’s “Bapakism” (father/
man-ism) in that both are justified by the argument that such a hierarchy and
male supremacy is necessary for the protection of the citizenry and the subordi-
nate members of the household.

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Geographies
Moral Geographies
of Mobility
and Women’s Freedom

6 Moral Geographies
and Women’s Freedom
Rethinking Freedom Discourse
in the Moroccan Context

AMY FREEMAN

T
raditional economic theories of migration treat migrants as
rational individuals whose decisions to move reflect the aim of maximizing
income or some other “utility.” In such accounts, migrants are viewed,
above all, as free: free from social constraints, free to move, and free to pur-
sue labor market activities. Recent contributions from feminist migration
scholars, however, question the assumption of individual freedom, and fo-
cus instead on the position of male and female migrants in webs of social
relations—including but not limited to patriarchy—that may serve both to
enable and to constrain mobility. This literature emphasizes the importance
of migrants’ narratives and contexts in understanding the complex social
factors that enter into migration decisions, outcomes, and experiences
(Boyle & Halfacree, 1999; Goss & Lindquist, 1995; Lawson, 2000a,
2000b; Silvey, 2004; Silvey & Lawson, 1999).
Informed by and building on critical migration theory, this chapter ad-
dresses mobility and freedom as they relate to Moroccan women living
both in Morocco and in France. Investigating women’s freedom and mobil-
ity points to the social construction of women’s morality and the spatializa-
tion of moral codes of behavior—that is, the creation of “moral geogra-
phies” (see Silvey, 2000a; also see Domosh, 2001). Moral geographies
significantly influence mobility and experiences of place at multiple scales—

147
148 Geographies of Mobility

for example, within villages, between country and city, and transnationally.
As Silvey (2004, p. 498) argues, “mobile subjects are policed by discourses
defining the boundaries of appropriate gendered, place-based behavior”
(see also Hubbard, 1998; Silvey, 2000a, 2000b; Yeoh & Huang, 1998), and
much research has demonstrated the ways that women’s bodies, in particu-
lar, are used in the boundary-making processes of migrant and ethnic com-
munities (Dwyer, 1999; Mohammad, 1999; Nagar, 1998; Ong, 1995; Ong
& Peletz, 1995; Yuval-Davis, 1997).
Moral geographies have a relevance to Muslim Moroccan women in
particular and to Muslim women more generally. There is a widespread
and often erroneous perception that Arab and Muslim women—as an un-
differentiated group—are more restricted in their activities and movements
than women in the “west” (see Abu-Lughod, 1985/1995; Ahmed, 1994).
This chapter does not attempt to answer the question of whether Moroccan
women are truly “free” or “unfree,” but rather it explores women’s ideas
about freedom, the moral geographies that shape their mobility, and the
potential shifts in subjectivity brought about by their movement in and
through spaces. Moroccan women’s diverse and often ambivalent narra-
tives of freedom indicate that Western liberal conceptions of freedom, as
expressed both in migration theory and in political discourse, merit greater
reflection. I do not wish to suggest that Muslims or Moroccans as a group
have a fundamentally different notion of freedom than do Christians, Jews,
“Westerners,” or Europeans. Such a claim, made frequently by both Mus-
lim and Western scholars, essentializes group identities and traits and ig-
nores the historical construction of these identities.1 Instead, in critiquing
universalistic notions of freedom and of the subject, I demonstrate that
multiple conceptions of freedom that make reference to different ideologies
and contexts are relevant to understanding the moral geographies that
shape women’s mobility and experience of place.

FREEDOM’S GENDERED SUBJECTS

AND MORAL GEOGRAPHIES

The figure of the universally free, disembodied, rational individual found in

neoclassical economic theories of migration is a reflection of modernist lib-
eral notions of the subject that emerged out of 18th-century Enlightenment
thought (Smith, 1993). While posited as a universal subject that embodies
autonomy, equality, and personal freedom, “the individual,” in fact, has
been defined and enabled by membership in exclusive social groups, such
as “free,” white, property-owning males (see Rose, 1993). Feminists and
critical scholars across disciplines have amply demonstrated and critiqued
the degree to which this universalized notion of the autonomous subject
and citizen was, and still is, highly exclusionary and hegemonic (Rose,
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 149

1993; YeÈenoÈlu, 1996), particularly in terms of the normative subject of

the public sphere (Bondi, 1998; Domosh, 1997). In its place many feminists
have argued for notions of multiple and relational identities and subjectivi-
ties (see Bloom, 1999; Domosh, 1997; Nagar, 1997; Young, 1997).
However, despite demonstrating the shortcomings of this hegemonic
and essentialist notion of the subject, feminists and critical scholars have
devoted much less attention to the ways in which people’s everyday ideas of
freedom remain tied up with this essentialist view of the individual. While,
on the one hand, particular notions of freedom, autonomy, and equality
underlie neoliberal practices at the heart of global capitalism and geopoli-
tics, these same values continue to serve as the basis for emancipatory
movements for many different groups of people—including women—in a
multitude of societies and contexts. Yet there are many different ways peo-
ple have thought about and relate to the idea of freedom (see Chakrabarty,
1992, 1997; Foner, 1998, 2003; Hirschman, 1998, 2002; Laroui, 2001;
Majid, 2000; Young, 2002), and, not surprisingly, there are important gen-
der differences as well. For women more than for men, the notion of per-
sonal freedom poses a moral dilemma, as freedom and mobility may chal-
lenge the moral order of patriarchal societies—a moral order that rests, in
part, on ideas about women’s sexuality and the policing of women’s bodies
(Cresswell, 1999; Dwyer, 1999, 2000; Kofman, Phizacklea, Raghuram, &
Sales, 2000; Nagar, 1998; Ong, 1997; Ong & Peletz, 1997; Radcliffe,
1990; Yuval-Davis, 1997). Spaces are coded as morally correct or incorrect
and regulated based on the practices known (or believed) to take place
there and the reputation of the people occupying those spaces. The exis-
tence of these moral geographies influences the range of possibilities for
women’s mobility and the consequences of transgressing dominant moral
codes (Massey, 1994).
The centrality of women’s bodies to the construction of moral orders
has been well documented in a multitude of geographical and historical
contexts. Bondi and Domosh (1998), McMillan (2000), and Wilson (1991)
have illustrated how this was explicitly the case in urban areas of Europe
and the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, where women’s
mobility in cities was to varying degrees shaped by the normative ideas of
the time concerning women’s appropriate behavior at particular times and
in particular places (for contemporary accounts, see Cresswell, 1999; Hub-
bard, 1998; Laws, 1997; and Valentine, 1989, 1992). Concerning “non-
Western” people and places, Silvey (2000a) has shown in contemporary
Indonesia how ideas about women’s sexual morality increasingly influence
their mobility and migration decisions as the economic crisis there has
deepened. In addition, research by Dwyer (1999, 2000) on Pakastani Mus-
lim women in Britain, by Nagar (1998) on women in Tanzania, and by
Radcliffe (1990) on Peruvian migrant women demonstrate the ways that
women’s bodies are policed and used to mark community boundaries.
150 Geographies of Mobility

In the “East” and the “West” alike, fears and anxieties concerning
women’s freedom and emancipation have been related to a community’s
desire to control women’s sexuality and to ensure their “purity.” This inter-
section between morality and mobility is one of many factors that shape
women’s access to and experiences of migration and movement at different
scales (see Mills, 1999). Hence, as the processes of modernization and
global capitalism encourage and impel women to earn wages and spend
more time in public (visible) spheres, moral codes of behavior are brought
into question.
Yet, in making this critique, some feminist scholars also caution
against reinforcing and reproducing essentialist notions of the public as
masculine and the private as feminine (Staeheli, 1996). Moral orders and
moral geographies, while in some ways rigid and uncompromising, are in
other ways fluid, flexible, and open to challenge, and it needs to be recog-
nized that the opening of certain spaces to women has increased opportuni-
ties for some, created greater hardships for others, and brought about
greater scrutiny of all women (see Abu-Lughod, 1998). Just as notions of
public and private spheres have been shown to be overlapping rather than
discrete spaces in Western contexts, these spatial divisions have also been
shown to overlap and to work differently for Muslim women in a variety of
contexts (Bekkar, 1997; Belarbi, 1997; Göle, 1997; Guénif Souilamas,
2000; Joseph, 1997; Secor, 2002).
In the following sections, before reviewing the context of the study and
its research design, I briefly discuss the importance of freedom in colonial and
postcolonial discourses. Then I draw from interview material to investigate
Moroccan women’s discourses of freedom, and how these discourses are in-
strumental in constructing and challenging the moral geographies that shape
their mobility and subjectivities. Following feminist and antiessentialist posi-
tions (e.g., Hirschmann, 1998, 2002), these accounts highlight, among other
things, the interconnectedness of individuals rather than their autonomy, and
problematize dominant (neo)liberal conceptions of freedom.

POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSES ON FREEDOM

Central to European colonial projects of modernity in North Africa and the

Middle East was the construction of the Muslim woman as oppressed and
in need of liberation, juxtaposed with the European woman defined as
“free” and “emancipated.” Yet the emancipatory potential and promise of
modernity, so celebrated in Europe under the banner of liberté, égalité et
fraternité, could only reveal its inherent contradictions and exclusions in
the context of colonialism. As Homi Bhabha has asked, “What is moder-
nity in those colonial conditions where its imposition is itself the denial of
historical freedom, civic autonomy, and the ethical choice of self-fashioning?”
(1991, p. 198, cited in Pratt, 2002, pp. 32–33).
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 151

The concept of freedom necessarily encompasses conflicting and am-

bivalent ideas in societies, like Morocco, that have lived through the vio-
lence of colonial occupation. Western discourses of the colonial period of-
ten expressed the view that colonial subjects, their cultures, and their
religions were uncivilized and, as such, not fit or ready for the civil liberties
of the metropole (Young, 2002). “Native” women in particular were seen
as lacking in freedom—as defined by the European bourgeoisie and colo-
nialists—and the status of Muslim women and their alleged lack of free-
dom vis-à-vis European women became central to claims about the superi-
ority of Western society (see Collier, 1995).
As Europeans called for the freedom of Muslim women from their op-
pressive cultures, some Muslim thinkers in Morocco and elsewhere coun-
tered that the freedom enjoyed by European women was excessive, im-
moral, and a sign of the impure and inferior nature of European civilization
(see the writings of al-Tahtawi in Louca, 1970, and Tavakoli-Targhi, 1994).
The link made between the seclusion and the oppression of women in Arab/
Muslim countries and the backward condition of its people, religion, and
culture only emboldened certain nationalists to take up the protection of
women’s status from within Islam and reinforced the need to strictly con-
trol women’s movement.
While the facile distinctions between “free” and “oppressed” women
are no longer widespread in academic work, they continue to hold sway in
popular and politicized descriptions of Muslim women, particularly in this
post-9/11 era.2 In the months following the September 11 attacks, for in-
stance, there was a flurry of press articles and television programs dedi-
cated to examining women’s lives in Afghanistan and the potentially liber-
ating effects for women of the war the United States was waging against the
Taliban regime.3 Voices from both the “West” and Muslim societies have
engaged in a debate about which group of women is “repressed” or “ma-
nipulated” and which is “free.” Muslim women have not been absent from
these debates. Kandiyoti (1994, p. 380) has argued that feminist discourse
in Islamic countries often takes one of two forms: either it contrasts the
commodified, sexually exploited Western woman with the dignified, pro-
tected Muslim woman, or it embraces the “golden age myth of an uncor-
rupted original Islam against which current discriminatory gender practices
may be denounced as actually not Islamic.” In all of these cases, women’s
bodies are used to represent essentialist definitions of culture—representations
that have become global in scope.
The question of women’s freedom thus remains highly problematic in
many postcolonial contexts because of the way that the issue of women’s
status and emancipation has been deeply politicized and racialized by colo-
nial powers, local nationalist elites, and more recently by neoimperial lead-
ers, religious fundamentalists, the global media, “public intellectuals,” and
feminists of every stripe. In Morocco, as elsewhere, freedom tends to be de-
fined (particularly by religious conservatives and Islamists) in relation to
152 Geographies of Mobility

their experience with Europe (and increasingly the United States), so that
while political freedom has usually taken on a positive and necessary con-
notation, individual freedom, and particularly women’s individual free-
dom, is seen as fundamentally negative and immoral. When freedom is em-
braced and defended on a personal level, especially in any public/political
context, it often must accompany a discourse of anti-Westernism so as not
to risk being interpreted (and used against women) as antinationalist or
anti-Islamic. In their narratives of mobility and freedom, however, the Mo-
roccan women with whom I spoke revealed much more ambivalent and
antiessentialist notions of modern subjectivity and freedom than that al-
lowed for by either (neo)liberal thought or religious conservatives.

CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

Moroccan Political Economy and Migration
Prior to France’s colonization of Morocco (officially a French Protectorate
from 1912 to 1956), the country was governed by rival tribal groups and
essentially overseen by a sultanate whose primary role was to collect taxes,
maintain an army, and suppress threats to his power (Waterbury, 1970).
France used the position of sultan as a way for the colonial administration
to govern with the allegiance of hand-picked local elites. In the aftermath of
Morocco’s nationalist movements and the fight for independence, the sul-
tan (Mohammed V)—who had gained the support of many nationalists—
retained ultimate power and established the monarchy as the ruling system.
Today, Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system
(the king is chief of state, and he appoints a prime minister who is head of
government). In recent years, there have been attempts by former King
Hassan II and now his son, King Mohammed VI, to move Morocco toward
a system of greater democratic governance (e.g., through the creation of a
bicameral legislature, the appointment of an oppositional leader as prime
minister, efforts to implement more open elections, and recognition of Ber-
ber languages). Like most poor countries, Morocco maintains a high exter-
nal debt, has undergone a series of structural adjustment programs, and has
embraced neoliberal austerity measures in an attempt to encourage eco-
nomic activity, foreign investment, and job creation. While the Moroccan
economy did show some signs of improvement in the early 1990s, the most
recent indicators available showed a reversal of this trend with worsening
poverty and unemployment.4
Since the 1960s, a constant factor of Moroccan political economy has
been the massive migration of both skilled and unskilled labor to Europe,
especially to France. In the aftermath of decolonization, France was in need
of workers in its factories and facilitated the migration of North Africans
for this purpose. Remittances sent back to Morocco from migrants abroad
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 153

quickly became a primary source of revenue for the national economy. By

1976, migrant remittances surpassed sales from the primary export of
phosphates (see Schaeffer, 1999), and in 2002 migrant remittances reached
31.7 billion DH, with remittances from France accounting for almost half
of all transfers.5 Without this source of income from abroad, many Moroc-
can families, particularly in the rural areas, would find themselves among
the ranks of the poor.6
As the income gap between Morocco and neighboring Europe contin-
ues to grow, so has the migration of Moroccans.7 According to official
data, there were 1.6 million Moroccans living in Europe in 1996, with the
greatest number, approximately 653,000, residing in France (Centre d’Etudes
et de Recherches Démographiques [CERED], 1996).8 The percentage of
Moroccan women residing in France increased significantly from 26.7% in
1975 to 44.4% in 1990, due primarily to changes in immigration and fam-
ily reunification policies (CERED, 1996). Many migrant women arrive in
France with little or no formal education and no knowledge of French
(Tribalat, 1997), and as such they often find themselves even more depend-
ent on and constrained by male family members than they were in Morocco.
In the 1970s, as France attempted to stop immigration from North Af-
rica through restrictive legislation and to encourage migrant repatriation,
many Moroccans opted to remain in France and to send for their families.
From this point on, the Moroccan population in France increased signifi-
cantly, and the regular circulation of and contact between people and fami-
lies in Morocco and France became commonplace. By the mid-1980s,
economic crises and global competition made Muslim North African immi-
grants in France easy targets for anti-immigrant and racist sentiment
(Ogden, 1991). In contrast to previous migrants from Spain, Portugal, and
Poland, migrants from North Africa are often considered “unassimilable”
because of their cultural and religious practices (House, 1995). The contro-
versy that began in the late 1980s over female Muslim students wearing the
hijab (headscarf) in public schools (resulting in the girls being expelled
from school) led the French government in late 2003 to propose banning all
students from wearing any conspicuous signs of their religious beliefs. Such
a measure, aimed clearly at Muslim girls in particular (since wearing Jewish
yarmulkes and Christian crosses had not been debated previously), demon-
strates the continued association of “Muslim difference” with women’s
bodies and the degree to which the presence of a significant Muslim popu-
lation and identity in France threatens the rigid and exclusive conception of
what it means to be French.9

Changes in Moroccan Women’s Lives and Spaces

Although much of the anthropological and social science research on Mo-
rocco does not address issues of women’s freedom or mobility directly, this
154 Geographies of Mobility

literature discusses various aspects of Moroccan women’s use of and access

to place and space (Belarbi, 1999; Bourqia, 1996; Davis, 1983, 1987;
Davis-Taïeb, 1998; El Harras, 1996; Kapchan, 1996; Maher, 1974; Mer-
nissi, 1987; Naamane-Guessous, 1997; Ossman, 1994, 1998). In addition,
the extensive literature on Moroccan women’s employment and education
implicitly addresses issues of mobility and use of space because such activi-
ties usually entail women spending more time outside of the home (see
Benzakour Chami, 1999; CERED, 1998; Griffiths, 1996; Ministry of For-
eign Affairs and Cooperation, 1996; Moghadam, 1998; Naciri & Barkallil,
1989; and Temsamani Haji, 1997).
On the whole, this literature attests to the enormous changes Moroc-
can society has undergone in the past 20 years, particularly in relation to
women’s greater presence in the public sphere in urban areas through paid
employment, education, and activism. At the same time, the available indi-
cators make evident the growing disparities in young girls’ and women’s
lives in urban and rural areas. For example, between 1982 and 1998, urban
women’s illiteracy decreased from 57.6% to 42%; illiteracy for rural
women decreased over the same period, but at 82% remained substantially
higher than for urban women (Boukous & Agnaou, 2001; Ministry of For-
eign Affairs and Cooperation, 1996). And while the gender gap in illiteracy
continues to close in urban areas, it has only widened in rural areas
(CERED, 1998). Large disparities also exist in primary-school enrollment
between rural and urban areas. Although the percentage of boys and girls
being schooled in both areas is increasing, improvements have been meager
in rural areas, with only 26.6% of girls enrolled in 1994, compared with
80.4% of urban girls (Direction de la Statistique, 1996). In turn, more
women are attending high school and university in urban areas, making
them more qualified for professional jobs. In terms of employment, women
represented 25.5% of the labor force10 in 1991, up from 11.6% in 1982
(Temsamani Haji, 1997). Although women are concentrated in low-paid
jobs in the service and manufacturing industries in urban areas and agricul-
tural work in rural areas, nearly a third of state employees are women
(Griffiths, 1996) and an increasing number of women are present in teach-
ing, scientific, and liberal professions (Direction de la Statistique, 1996;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, 1996). Another indication of
women’s increased participation (and continued struggles) in the labor
force is their elevated unemployment rate which, in urban areas in 1995,
was 32.2%, compared with 18.7% for men (Direction de la Statistique,
1996).
Furthermore, in the September 2002 legislative elections, following a
bill passed by Parliament requiring political parties to include a quota of
women nominees, 35 women were elected to the 325-seat House of Repre-
sentatives, making Morocco the Arab country with the greatest percentage
of elected women officials (11%).11 In October 2003, after over 50 years of
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 155

struggles by women’s rights activists, Mohammed VI announced sweeping

changes to Moroccan family law, attesting, hopefully, to the current favor-
able climate concerning Moroccan women’s status.12
Improvements in Moroccan women’s representation in the political
arena and their legal status are important and encouraging steps toward
normalizing their greater mobility and visibility. But legal and political vic-
tories do not easily or quickly translate into changes in women’s everyday
lives. Some scholars and activists have noted the continued difficulties and
violence women face in Morocco and have questioned the degree to which
changes in women’s status have affected their access to public, male-domi-
nated spaces (or vice versa) (Association Démocratique des Femmes du
Maroc [ADFM], 2001; Bekkar, 1997; Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité, 1998;
Naciri & Barkallil, 1989). At the same time, generalizations are difficult to
make since women’s use of space, and the moral codes regulating that use,
varies in Morocco depending on region, age, social status, and ethnicity
(among others), and there is not necessarily unanimity about such norms
within any given group (Bennani-Chraïbi, 1995; Davis, 1987; Ossman,
1994). What is considered acceptable behavior, and where such behaviors
are sanctioned to take place, is not fixed, but changes in concert with other
societal shifts, producing varying outcomes and consequences for women
and men.

The Study
The research for this project was carried out over a period of 14 months in
2000 and 2001 in Montpellier, France, and in various locations in Morocco
(primarily Rabat, Salé, and Casablanca). The types of Moroccan women I
met and spoke to cannot be neatly categorized. In France, the women I in-
terviewed (n = 23) were living in France for different reasons: women who
were born in France of Moroccan parents, women who migrated with their
families as part of reunification policies (as either wives or daughters, mi-
grating at different ages), women who came to France to pursue university
studies and stayed, and women who came illegally to find work and/or a
husband. In Morocco, I spoke primarily with unschooled women of differ-
ent ages in literacy classes in Rabat and Salé (n = 39), women residing in
France and visiting Morocco during their holidays (n = 13), and educated
women’s rights activists in Rabat and Casablanca (n = 20).13 I met Moroc-
can women by volunteering in literacy centers in both France and Morocco
(teaching French), taking the ferry between Morocco and France during the
summer, using snowball sampling techniques, and relying on personal con-
tacts. With French-speaking women I conducted the interviews one-on-one;
with Moroccan Arabic and Berber-speaking women, an interpreter accom-
panied me.
The overall research project of which this chapter is a part investigates
156 Geographies of Mobility

questions of postcolonial identity and modernity of Moroccan women liv-

ing in France and in Morocco through their experiences of political activ-
ism, migration/mobility, and literacy classes (see Freeman, 2004a, 2004b).
In an effort to explore women’s expressions of their identity and experience
of place, I asked questions related to their upbringing, daily activities and
outings, changes perceived over time and between places, and about their
views of women’s rights and freedoms in Morocco. Speaking with Moroc-
can women in both France and Morocco allowed me to consider the role
that (national) place and transnational migration play in the construction
of women’s modern gender identity, including their views and experiences
of freedom. Of the eight interviews I draw from in this chapter, seven of the
women had not received any formal education, and two resided in France
(one was a graduate student, the other was unschooled).

MOROCCAN WOMEN’S NARRATIVES OF FREEDOM

The Moroccan women’s narratives I present here offer perspectives on

women’s freedom that at times counter and conflict with the dominant no-
tions of freedom implicit in liberal and neoliberal ideology and politics, and
at other times reproduce certain aspects of this freedom. Their experiences
of place and mobility and their views on women’s freedom stem from a
complex interconnection of their family situation, the moral geographies
regulating Moroccan social life, and the postcolonial context, which is sat-
urated with references to “life in the West,” and which is often defined by
relations of domination with that West. In such a context, it is not surpris-
ing that Moroccan women express notions of freedom that are heteroge-
neous, and at times ambivalent and contradictory. It is also not surprising,
however, that the Moroccan women I met frequently referred to Europe,
North America, and, at times, women’s lives there. With very few excep-
tions, the women I interviewed in Morocco have family members living
abroad (primarily in France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain), and a few from
more well-off families have even visited Europe and the United States. The
women’s narratives do not provide a unified alternative to dominant
neoliberal discourses of freedom. They do, however, offer antiessentialist
accounts of freedom and the subject that provide insight into the moral
geographies that shape Moroccan women’s mobility, while complicating
the facile equation of the “West” with freedom and “the Arab world” or
“Islam” with a lack of freedom.
In my discussions with Moroccan women in France and in Morocco
about their everyday experiences of place, mobility, and freedom, two gen-
eral themes emerged: the notion of freedom as relational (i.e., connected to
other individuals) and the notion of freedom with limits. I discuss these two
notions of freedom in separate sections, and in a third section I consider the
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 157

intersections of women’s narratives of freedom and the moral geographies

that influence their mobility and behavior.

Freedom as Relational
While many women were, to varying degrees, critical of societal and famil-
ial constraints on both their mobility and identity, most, but not all, of the
women expressed themselves in relation to their family or the community,
and few seemed willing or able to jeopardize their family’s support. Many
of the women articulated, in different ways, the constant and often acute
tension between family/societal constraints and individual desires (see
Mills, 1999, “good daughter” vs. “modern woman,” p. 92). As Ruggerini
(1997) also found in her work with Moroccan and Tunisian women, ten-
sions between individual aspirations and family expectations and cultural
norms do not result in a blanket rejection of one or the other. With more
limited access to educational and employment opportunities than men,
women find that family relations and networks are essential for them to
maintain, and for many women family ties are a strong source of pride and
identity (see Ruggerini, 1997). Women across the socioeconomic spectrum
adhere to gender-appropriate norms—at times in order to maintain their
honor and standing in the family so as not to jeopardize their access to ba-
sic resources, and at other times simply in order to avoid the often painful
and ostracizing consequences of their transgressions.
This tendency to express identity in relational terms is not, however,
necessarily feminist or counterhegemonic to essentialist notions of the sub-
ject as free and autonomous. Nonetheless, expressions of relational identity
and freedom do reflect alternative accounts of the subject that neither as-
sume nor deny individual autonomy. In arguing that Moroccan women ar-
ticulate a notion of relational freedom and identity that is different from
Western liberal conceptions of subjectivity and freedom (see Hirschmann,
1996), I do not wish to romanticize the existence of “community” in Mo-
rocco or to suggest that women do not simultaneously have or wish to have
a certain degree of autonomy. The notion of interconnectedness does not
exclude the existence of individual identities and differences (Young, 1986/
1995). Rather, to say that freedom and identity are relational for many of
the Moroccan women I met is to underline the fiction of the unfettered, dis-
embodied, autonomous, and universal subject (see Smith, 1993) of hege-
monic discourses of freedom and modernity.
In their respective works, Ossman (1994) and Bennani-Chraïbi (1995)
investigate how Moroccan youth negotiate their “self-making” in a world
of competing images and models of “ways of being.” The young people
with whom they spoke often expressed tensions between individual desires
and the expectations or restrictions of family, religion, and/or society. Like-
wise, Guénif Souilamas (2000), in her research with women in France of
158 Geographies of Mobility

North African origin, found that women are often not willing to sacrifice
either their bonds to their families or the personal adventure that freedom
offers. Instead, they construct their own type of freedoms and identities
that she (along with others; e.g., Bennani-Chraïbi, 1995; Mills, 1999) has
labeled “mutations.” These tensions between personal desires and expecta-
tions of families are readily apparent in these interviews, as well.
Halima,14 a 28-year-old divorced woman from a rural region of Mo-
rocco, left her son with her parents in order to find work in France. As
Halima’s narrative elucidates, her expression of relational freedom under-
lines the opportunities that such connectivity has afforded her. Her story
stresses how one way for women to ensure their safety and the maintenance
of their honor with increased mobility is to be accompanied by family
members and to extend the definition of family to include people consid-
ered as family, but who are not.

“I came [to Montpellier] with a man from my village, his wife and chil-
dren. . . . My father wasn’t too crazy about me coming, but my father
isn’t very strict. Mostly I’m afraid of my oldest brother. He said it was
shameful that I leave like that, but I don’t think so. I just went to my
aunt’s, that’s all! In general, they weren’t against it. The girls encouraged
me to leave, my aunt talked to my parents about it. I didn’t have the cour-
age to talk to them. My father preferred that my brother go in my place
because he needed to work . . . thanks to my aunt [I was able to come]. I
could never have come by myself. There’s also my aunt’s husband who
thinks of me as his daughter, and he said that to all the people from my
village here [in Montpellier].”

Halima and the people from her village use the notion of “family” to in-
clude fellow villagers, rendering her mobility outside the village morally ac-
ceptable. In essence, her narrative creates a constant presence of family at
all points during her move to and within France as a way to counteract the
“shamefulness” of her mobility. Halima’s experience suggests that, even
when women may have the financial means to travel or migrate, the possi-
bilities for both small- and large-scale mobility are often significantly re-
duced if the proper familial networks are not in place. Thus, mobilizing
family networks may offset some of the restrictions on women’s mobility,
in part by providing an acceptable justification for altering gendered moral
geographies. In turn, and in the case of Halima—as we will see later—this
may open up other opportunities for women’s mobility in and through new
spaces, further transforming normative moral geographies.
Rabéa is a severely disabled 41-year-old woman who came to Rabat
from a rural area with her daughter after her husband divorced her. She
eventually remarried and now lives in a small one-room windowless apart-
ment with her husband and her daughter’s 3-year-old child. When I asked
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 159

her if she thought Moroccan women needed more freedom, along with
making reference to education and religious beliefs, she articulated the im-
portance of considering the self and the community in relation to freedom.

“Women need a type of freedom that they will know how to manage. For
example, [freedom is] for educated women, not uneducated women!
First of all, a woman has to be afraid of God. She shouldn’t do anything
that will bring on the anger of God or that of her household. For exam-
ple, a woman who has freedom must know how to manage it, so that she
uses it for her own good and for the good of others, not the woman who
does things that are harmful to herself, to society, her husband, and her
home. This type of woman should not have her freedom. [It must be] a
freedom that will serve her interests, the general interest and that of her
children.”

Clearly, Rabéa approaches her understanding of women’s freedom from

within the confines of religion and the patriarchal nuclear family. Her nar-
rative echoes nationalist religious discourse on women’s role in society, un-
derlining the importance of women being educated in order to be able to
“manage” (through self-discipline) herself and her household. To be sure,
the type of relationality that Rabéa expresses can be interpreted as condoning
and reproducing patriarchal control over women (see Joseph, 1997). Her
narrative recalls the discourse of early 20th-century Moroccan nationalists
who focused on women’s central role as guardians of the community—
Islamic and national—and who rejected certain notions of women’s rights
that they associated with the West and colonialism. At the same time,
Rabéa does not erase herself or the possibility of individual desires and in-
terests in her narrative, but rather objects to a type of freedom that she
thinks would be harmful to both women and others. This notion of respect
for and consideration of others reflects Rabéa’s religious beliefs, and also
her adherence to a particular moral order.
However, the type of relationality that she expresses when speaking di-
rectly to issues of women’s freedom and indirectly of their morality does
not preclude her embracing individual identity and desires that may run
counter to community norms elsewhere. 15 For example, later on in the in-
terview Rabéa said, “I hope to go to Spain or France someday, to discover
another world and other peoples.” At another point she contended that
“women must be able to choose the man they want to be with, because of-
ten the family intervenes [to impose a choice]. . . . she needs to be with the
man she wants, that she knows well and gets along with,” making it clear
that she does not always think women should be subsumed by the interests
of the family. Furthermore, the importance and weight of language should
not be overlooked in considering the types of responses that my questions
on women’s freedom elicited.16 Many women I spoke to implied that they
160 Geographies of Mobility

have or would like to have certain types of freedom, but when I used the
word in French (liberté), or its Arabic equivalent (hurriya), it was necessary
for me to be more specific about what I meant by the term in order for us
to come to a common understanding.17 Otherwise, I soon realized, we both
made certain presumptions about what the word meant without knowing
we had different definitions.
As I suggested above, relational freedom can also present obstacles
for women. Leila, a 36-year-old single, unschooled woman, articulates
how she has “total” freedom, but only insofar as she is accompanied by
her father.

“My father gives us total freedom. We can swim in front of him at the sea
. . . he brings us to the beach, to the café. Wherever we go, he’s with us.
But for us to go out without his permission, he doesn’t accept that. . . .
[Women in Europe] live better than we do. They rent [their own apart-
ments]. Here, you can’t rent an apartment and live alone. Plus, you
wouldn’t have the means to do it. [In Europe] girls have their freedom
when they’re 18 years old, they have the means [to take advantage of it].
Our society is bad. If you leave home [before you get married], they inter-
pret it differently. It’s as if you’re leaving so you can go do bad things,
when you just want to be independent.”

Leila expresses her frustration with Moroccan society that equates women’s
desire for independence and autonomy with wanting to do “bad things.”
She articulates, then, how women’s individual freedom and mobility are re-
stricted through their association with immoral behavior and sexual pro-
miscuity; their bodies are thus used to define and regulate the community/
national moral order. Leila refers to women’s lives in Europe in order to
negatively evaluate Moroccan women’s inability to live independently. She
contrasts their lives and means with her own as she regrets that her only
option for freedom in absence of her father is to get married—this being the
only legitimate reason (and economic possibility) for many Moroccan
women to leave home. In this respect, relational freedom for many Moroc-
can women can be rather limited. At the same time, as in Halima’s case, the
freedom to be mobile can, at times, be made possible only through such
relationality as family networks.

Freedom with Limits

In addition to expressing tensions between constraints on identity/mobility
and individual desires, a number of women spoke of the notion of “free-
dom with limits.” Ossman (1994, p. 145) mentions how the youth she
interviewed spoke about desiring freedom, but not “total” freedom. She in-
terprets this articulation of a limited freedom as an expression of the fear of
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 161

transgressing boundaries. Alternatively, one could understand this desire

for freedom with limits as a way that women claim a certain agency over
their lives and actions—in essence, by accepting and reproducing the con-
straints on their mobility and identity that patriarchal society imposes. Em-
bracing a notion of freedom with limits could also be considered as an
oppositional stance (whether conscious or not) toward the dominance and
perceived freedom of the “West,” where women (often equally essential-
ized) are believed to have “total” freedom that has resulted in nefarious
self-indulgence, the breakdown of the family, and a general loss of morals.
Some of the Moroccan women with whom I spoke reacted negatively
to the idea of women’s freedom because they, like Leila’s narrative high-
lighted, associate women’s freedom with sexual promiscuity. Thus, when I
asked the questions “Do you feel you have the freedom to do what you
want?” or “Do you think Moroccan women need more freedom?” quite
often women assumed that I was asking if they do or want to do things that
are considered immoral for “well-educated” and “respectable” women to
do. Khadija, a 35-year-old single woman I met in a literacy center in Rabat
(she was originally from a rural town) associates having her freedom with
acting in a “respectable” manner:

“Up until now, I have my freedom, but a limited freedom, not so you can
do whatever you want, but within what’s respectable. For example, not
in order to go to a seedy place, but a freedom that I have to be responsible
about. I don’t have the idea to go do something bad because I have my
freedom, no. . . . It depends on the person’s upbringing, you understand.
There are girls who say to their family that they’re going to their girl-
friend’s house, but they go someplace else. Or her girlfriend goes some-
place too, and she doesn’t have a good reputation. Maybe someone saw
her [someplace she shouldn’t have been] so they don’t give her her free-
dom anymore. Me, no. They see that I do fine and I don’t do anything
bad, so they give me my freedom.”

Like Rabéa, who spoke about women needing to know how to “manage”
their freedom, Khadija talks about being responsible about her freedom. In
both cases, it is women’s own self-discipline that determines whether they
should be able to keep their freedom. For Khadija, freedom is her reward
for not transgressing social norms of women’s appropriate behavior—in
short, for adhering to the dominant moral geographies for women.
Some women like Khadija spoke about “limited freedom” or “free-
dom with limits” to express the idea that they felt having total freedom
would mean they were not virtuous women, but to have limited freedom
means they are masters of their freedom, can use it wisely to good ends,
and will not let it get out of hand. Rather than seeing themselves as “un-
free” or “oppressed,” some women feel that to limit their own freedom, to
162 Geographies of Mobility

be in control of their freedom and mobility, they can be sure to be perceived

as virtuous and “well-educated” women, which reflects back on their
honor and that of their family, and, which, if they are single, bears on their
marriage prospects.
I met 23-year-old Fatima in a literacy center in Salé. She had worked
for a number of years as a “maid”18 for her uncle and had never gone to
school. She recently married and is living with her husband’s family until
she is able to join him in France.

“I have my freedom, but I can’t go past my limits. I’m free now [that I’m
married], I can do what I like. . . . I set my own limits, because you
shouldn’t abuse your freedom. . . . I don’t even go out with my sister. I
come to the center, I go straight home, I do my prayers, I study a little,
that’s it. [My husband’s family] knows that I won’t go past my limits. . . .
I set them for myself, I’m self-taught. I give myself the freedom I need.
When I was younger, my father would send me to get something. I could
have gone walking around Rabat, for example, but I didn’t do it. I al-
ways came home at the time he told me to. I could leave school and walk
around town if I wanted, but I don’t like to do such things.”

Khadija and Fatima both talked about “freedom with limits,” and their
narratives imply the close connection between the way a woman limits her
own freedom by controlling her visibility and behavior in particular
places—thereby respecting the dominant moral geographies—and, in re-
turn, securing her “good reputation” and ensuring that she be allowed to
keep this “limited” degree of freedom.19 Limited freedom can thus be un-
derstood as Moroccan women’s maintenance of gendered moral codes of
behavior and mobility through their own self-discipline. These seemingly
contradictory impulses between freedom and self-restraint are in fact part
and parcel of the construction of the modern woman in many Middle East-
ern contexts (see Abu-Lughod, 1998).
On the other hand, if I asked questions related to (rather than directly
about) women’s freedom and their freedom of movement—their desires for
the future or their children’s future, their hopes to travel, to go to school, to
get a job, to choose a husband—then women did not assume I was asking
about the freedom to do “bad things,” and their narratives surrounding po-
tential acts of freedom were often much more positive. By distancing myself
from the explicit use of “freedom” language that both implies (and, to a
certain degree, imposes) a comparison with “Western” women and sug-
gests the transgression of social mores, some Moroccan women offered
more critical accounts of their situation. When I spoke with Iman, a 45-
year-old married woman studying in a literacy center in Rabat, about her
opportunities to work outside the home and how life has changed for
women in Morocco, she said:
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 163

“I had the opportunity [to work overseas], twice. . . . I had an opportunity

[to leave] but we grew up in a place where it was shameful for girls to do
the most normal things, we weren’t allowed to speak, to do certain
things. So how do you expect me to have the courage to go live by myself
and confront another way of life? . . . Today, I try to take my revenge
through my children . . . I won’t let my daughter get married if she does-
n’t have a weapon under her arm. What is her weapon? It’s her work. Be-
cause times have become difficult. Today, if a girl doesn’t work, no one
will want her [for marriage]. And for yourself, you’ll end up bored just
staying at home, all day at home, it’s not possible. That’s life, it’s in this
way that life has changed. But before, women didn’t go out, it was
shameful! I had several opportunities to work, but my husband didn’t
want me to go out. Today, if a job came along, he would accept it! Why?
Because he’d like me to. Conditions don’t permit us to sit around doing
nothing. If a person can help out, she does.”

Iman gives an impression of a very strict moral geography during her

youth, one that was both externally and internally imposed. Ingrained feel-
ings of shame and fear prevented her from taking an opportunity to go to
France that perhaps few women would turn down today. She contrasts that
with current times, when economic hardship has made it both possible and
necessary for women to leave home and be more mobile, and presumably
this means that the shame previously associated with women leaving the
home has dissipated to a certain degree. But she also says that having a job
and being financially independent have become very important in order for
women to find a marriage partner. A certain amount and type of freedom is
therefore necessary in order to find a good husband, keeping the notion of
women’s freedom and mobility in order to earn wages in an acceptable
realm of family and community values. But Iman also brings up the issue of
women being bored at home, how it is not possible to sit home all day, as
she implies women were expected to do when she was younger. When she
says that “it is in this way that life has changed,” it seems that in part she is
referring to the development of women’s independent interests outside the
domestic sphere and their desire and ability to be a visible, if not an active,
participant in public life.

Intersection of Women’s Freedom, Discourse,

and Moral Geographies
Feminist research has suggested the role that the development of capitalist
consumer culture has played in challenging gendered moral geographies, by
increasing women’s mobility and freedom (although circumscribed and dif-
ferentiated) through leisure and consumer activities outside the home (see
Bondi, 1998; Bondi & Domosh, 1998). Linda McDowell (1999) has re-
164 Geographies of Mobility

ferred to this as “consumption as (partial) liberation” (p. 160)—“partial”

because when constructed primarily or solely as consumers rather than as
producers, women are manipulated by, rather than active agents in, capital-
ist relations of production. In this section, I draw on feminist research that
addresses the intersection of consumption and place to analyze the narra-
tives of some Moroccan women who express their experiences of freedom
by referring to the different moral geographies that shape their mobility—
geographies which often are accompanied by shifts in their subjectivity and
modes of dress as well.
Bondi and Domosh (1998) have noted how the increased surveillance
of urban consumer spaces offers safety and reassurance for middle-class
women, whereas women’s nighttime mobility remains problematic because
they fear more for their safety when streets become deserted. While this is
also true to a certain degree in the Moroccan context, the moral geogra-
phies that result from cultural norms surrounding women’s honor can
make this same daytime surveillance of consumer spaces a factor that limits
rather than expands women’s mobility because they risk being seen in the
“wrong” place with the “wrong” person (much like Bondi & Domosh,
1998, describe for a 19th-century woman in New York City). In Morocco,
the surveillance provided by consumer culture does at times provide greater
safety and mobility for women, but at other times it comes at the expense
of the anonymity often required for women to express themselves in ways
that challenge societal norms (Davis-Taïeb, 1998; Wilson, 1981).
Davis-Taïeb (1998) investigates how changes in the Moroccan and
global economies have come together with changes in women’s individual
desires, showing how a certain type of visibility for Moroccan women has
become acceptable in particular urban establishments, such as “salons du
thé” and “glaciers” (teahouses and ice cream parlors) and, more recently,
McDonald’s, as opposed to the morally suspect locations of cafés and bars.
“Being seen” in a place considered morally inappropriate for women jeop-
ardizes her reputation (bringing her “purity,” [i.e., virginity] into question),
affecting both her prospects for marriage and the honor of her family. To
be sure, women of all ages in Morocco have forged paths into male-
dominated spaces—and often with the help of consumer culture as well as
women-oriented nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—but women are
not equally positioned to benefit from these opportunities. Furthermore, in-
creased opportunities for some women have been dependent on the exis-
tence of large inequalities between women in Morocco.20
Modes of dress—often articulated as the juxtaposition of the hijab ver-
sus the miniskirt—is central to many Moroccan women’s narratives, nota-
bly those who have migrated to France. When talking about the hijab,
Halima (identified and quoted above) articulates the variable nature of the
moral geographies that influence her behavior and mobility, and how
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 165

she has considered the ways in which this flexibility might give her more
freedom:

“If [women] want to take the hijab off, they have to put it back on once
they go back to the village because people know one another there. Once
you leave the village, you can do what you want. . . . I said to myself that
once I’m in France I can take off the hijab and even wear a miniskirt, but
once you go back home, you have to respect the people of the village and
their traditions. . . . For us, we say that it’s shameful to do this thing or
that thing, that you have to fear God. We put limits on ourselves. . . . In
Rabat . . . you can find older women who don’t wear the hijab. But back
home in our village, even if you get married young, you automatically
have to wear the hijab after getting married, whether you pray or not, in
both cases you have to wear the hijab. If you don’t do it, it’s considered
shameful. When you see women in Casablanca and Rabat on television,
you see that they are dressed exactly the same as women here [in
Montpellier]. . . . At home, I would go with my neighbors to the boule-
vard [main street], we’d laugh, go to the gardens, it was good. Here, I
haven’t yet gone out in the streets, I just know the road between the
house and the store. Back there I have the neighbors and the neighbors’
daughters for company . . . I haven’t yet tried to see if there’s more free-
dom [in France], but according to people, there’s more . . . Here [women]
can work, do what they want, buy what they want, not like in the village.
If you need something, you have to ask someone to buy it for you, and
they can accept or refuse. You can’t go buy things you want by yourself.”

For Halima, the shift in her sense of having to answer to her community
and their norms of moral geography is not a question of being in Morocco
or in France, but of being inside or outside her village, suggesting (as men-
tioned earlier) the importance of a certain anonymity for women’s freedom
that urban life can provide. She defines a stricter moral geography con-
nected to her village of origin and a greater sense of freedom away from the
village. But at the same time, ironically, her mobility is more limited in
France than it was in her village because she does not have her village
neighbors to accompany her and she does not speak French. In addition she
lives in a close-knit Moroccan community in France where she knows
many people who know her family or people in her village and who con-
sider her like family, and this extension of the “gaze” of her village limits
her mobility as well. But what is important in Halima’s mind is that the
gender-appropriate behavior of dressing a certain way is valid primarily in
her village, where she feels most known and responsible for respecting the
norms of the community. At the end of this excerpt, Halima brings up the
idea of freedom as the right of a divorced woman to share in the wealth of
166 Geographies of Mobility

her household, the freedom for a woman to work, and also the freedom to
consume, to buy what she wants. She expresses here her frustration with
having desires and entitlements that could not be fulfilled within the con-
fines of Moroccan village life and as a divorced woman there. And more
explicitly than Iman above, she mentions the freedom to be able to choose
what she consumes as something she desired but did not have in the village,
suggesting that, for her, consumption is a morally appropriate form of free-
dom that can address her sense of individual desires without significantly
affronting community norms.
Another woman with whom I spoke at one of the literacy centers,
Laetifa, talked about her preference for city life and brought up the issue of
there being nothing to do (for leisure) in the country. Laetifa, a 35-year-old
single woman, moved to Rabat with her three sisters from a rural village
when she was 23 years old after her mother passed away and her father re-
married. She asked, “Freedom to go where?”

“Life in the country is monotonous. You spend your days in the same
house, there’s nowhere to go. If you go somewhere, to do what? But in
the city, when you’re bored and you put on your djellaba21 to go out, no
one asks you where you’re going. You go out for a bit for a change of
scenery. In the country, no, you stay at home. There’s nowhere to go. . . .
Now it’s over. I have my freedom, but it’s too late. What am I going to do
with this freedom, you understand? You need it when you’re 18 or 16
years old, you have to take advantage of it . . . go out with boys, hang out
in cafés with them, [that way] you’re not ashamed of them. Today, we
have our freedom but at a late age. Even if we live in the city now, we got
our freedom too late.”

Laetifa’s thoughts on freedom underline the association she makes between

women’s freedom and urban life, something at least partially related to her
sense that there are more places to go and things to do there. Yet, now that
she lives in the city, Laetifa says that she feels she is too old to take advan-
tage of the freedom she has and is past the likely marrying age, implying
that having freedom earlier in life is desirable, particularly for going out
with boys and learning how to feel comfortable around them (in her words,
so “you’re not ashamed”). For Laetifa, life in the country did not provide
her with the sort of freedom she desired, in part because of her daily re-
sponsibilities, but also because, having not been sent to school, she did not
have access to the primary place where it is appropriate for girls and boys
to intermingle. Further, while she is deeply unhappy about being unmarried
and without children, this is not so strong that she is willing to go back to
the country to live. Laetifa thus expresses her sense that having freedom in
the Moroccan countryside is almost like not having it all, since it did noth-
ing to alter the type of life she had there. One of her brothers who lives in
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 167

France has provided Laetifa and her sisters with a house in Rabat to live,
however, and through this she expresses at least one type of freedom that
many other women do not have: to choose whom she will or will not marry
and where she will live, as she imagines a different type of life and future
for herself than the one she experienced in the country.
Najia, a 30-year-old graduate student I met in France, initially left Mo-
rocco to pursue graduate studies. Unlike Halima—and the majority of un-
schooled Moroccan women I met in France—she was able to leave Mo-
rocco without being accompanied by a family member. This fact, along
with her education level, ability to speak French fluently, and relative finan-
cial independence, enables her to experience a degree of autonomy and
freedom of movement that she juxtaposes to more constrained moral geog-
raphies in Morocco. At the time of our interview, Najia had recently mar-
ried a French man without her father’s knowledge and was planning to
move to Montreal with him.

“I feel more independent in France. . . . I’m from a very, very traditional

family. I was independent during the day, but still my father didn’t come
to see what I was doing during the day, because for them I was at the uni-
versity. . . . But at night, well, friends wanted to go out and everything,
but it wasn’t possible for me. . . . It’s true that at the time I needed that
freedom, but when you know the risks that there are in Casa and every-
thing, we didn’t even want to take them. Go out at night, where? To go to
the discos? It wasn’t my thing. . . .
“In Morocco I feel good, and here I feel good too. Here I can allow
myself to do anything. When I say anything, I mean, dress the way I
want, how I feel. Back home in Morocco, that’s just not possible. Not be-
cause women there don’t dress like they do here, but they go to the beach,
to bourgeois neighborhoods, or whatever. But to put on a miniskirt in a
working-class neighborhood, it’s out of the question, it’s difficult. Plus
[in Morocco] my father is traditional, and I can’t allow myself to wear a
miniskirt in front of him because it’s an insult. . . . So there are restric-
tions, you can’t be comfortable everywhere, you always have to pay at-
tention to what you wear.”

Najia’s moral geographies are temporal as well as spatial—going out at

night in Morocco was not possible for her not only because her family did
not allow it, but also because of the real danger involved, as well as a lack
of desirable places to go. For Najia, her freedom is defined in relation to
her sense of independence, notably, a certain distancing from her family. In
France, she says she dresses how she pleases, partly because she does not
worry about her father seeing her, partly because she implies that it feels
generally safer. In Morocco, in contrast, what she and other women wear
varies depending to a greater degree on the specific places they go. Interest-
168 Geographies of Mobility

ingly, she expresses more freedom in the way one can dress in the bourgeois
neighborhoods of Casablanca and the beaches, where certain “Western” or
“modern” modes of dress and behavior are more common (and where
more foreigners go), and so are perceived as less shocking and provocative.
In making the distinction between bourgeois and working-class neighbor-
hoods, Najia alludes to the notion of class-based definitions and modes of
freedom for women that feminist scholars have discussed in other contexts.
If, as Bondi (1998, p. 179) asserts, “class privilege may be a pre-condition
for the ‘feminization’ of urban space,” without the widespread economic
development required for the establishment of a large middle class with
surplus income, leisure time, and the corresponding activities and spaces, it
is uncertain to what degree women in Morocco can normalize their pres-
ence in public spaces—even as consumers—and especially at night.
What seems clear, however, is that for Najia a certain bourgeois life-
style and identity is associated with a particular type of mobility and free-
dom for women. In part, her socioeconomic and educational status, urban
origin, and fluency in French enable her to easily identify with and repro-
duce European constructions of modern women’s freedom and mobility.
For this reason, there is a clear distinction in her narrative between the
moral geographies regulating her mobility in France and those in Morocco.
Halima, on the other hand, who “hasn’t yet tried to see if there’s more free-
dom” in France, grew up in a rural village, did not go to school, and speaks
very little French or Arabic, expresses a distinction between village and city
life within Morocco, but she perceives city life in Morocco and city life in
France to be basically the same. Like Laetifa, it is the urbanness of Halima’s
life, as well as Najia’s, that provides the potential at least for new forms
and expressions of freedom, but certainly no guarantees. While there are
significant differences between Najia, Halima, and Laetifa’s experiences of
freedom and mobility—due in large part to their different educational and
financial situations—they are all equally aware of the different moral geog-
raphies regulating their lives and the need to modify their behavior
accordingly.

FREEDOM’S FUTURES

Many Moroccan women I spoke with expressed, implicitly or explicitly, a

desire to have more freedom of choice in their daily lives. But because the
use of freedom discourse has always been political (see Foner, 1998), it is
important to think about freedom in more critical and contextual ways. It
is counterproductive to resort to simplistic oppositions between “free” and
“oppressed” women, or to engage in discourse that argues for the “emanci-
pation” or “liberation” of essentialized groups of women. As long as par-
ticular forms of cultural identity and associated freedoms are perceived as
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 169

emanating from places (e.g., Western Europe and the United States) that
have long treated Muslim countries and peoples with disdain, hatred, and
violence, many Muslim women and men (including decision makers) will
continue to embrace aspects of their cultural heritage that firmly run coun-
ter to those forms of identity and definitions of freedom.
In this chapter, by taking into consideration the changing nature of
moral geographies and the role that different notions of freedom play in
this process, I have explored how Moroccan women’s mobility is at times
facilitated and at other times constrained depending on political economic
processes as well as on a woman’s particular family and socioeconomic
context. The notions of freedom that Moroccan women have articulated
here—freedom as relational and freedom with limits—and their expression
of the interconnection between freedom and moral geographies demon-
strate both the multiple and contextual nature of freedom discourse, and
also offer nonessentialist accounts of the subject and of place. Such ac-
counts of freedom and moral geographies are a beginning place for under-
standing the complex and changing factors influencing Moroccan women’s
mobility and experiences of place, and for providing alternative narratives
to divisive discourses on “free Western” and “oppressed Muslim” women.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is based on a paper given at the annual conference of the Association
of American Geographers in New Orleans in March 2003. Many thanks to Rachel
Silvey for organizing the session, and to both her and Vicky Lawson for comments
on a previous draft. Special thanks to Caroline Nagel for her helpful comments and
extensive editing of this chapter. I am especially grateful to all of the Moroccan
women who shared their stories with me. All views presented and any errors in the
chapter remain my own. I gratefully acknowledge dissertation research grants from
the National Science Foundation (No. BCS-0082253), Foreign Language Area
Studies, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and dissertation write-up
support from the American Association of University Women (Educational Founda-
tion American Fellowship).

NOTES

1. Claims that culturally specific notions of freedom do exist are often founded on
culturally specific understandings of the individual or personhood. For exam-
ple, both Majid (2000) and Sadiqi (2003) argue for a notion of the collective
self (for Muslims and Moroccans, respectively) based on according primary im-
portance to religious/community identity. This leads, in Majid’s case, to the as-
sertion that there exists a specific Muslim notion of freedom.
2. For example, in his editorial “Saudis in Bikinis” (New York Times, October 25,
170 Geographies of Mobility

2002), Nicholas Kristof embraces the project of “liberating” Muslim women.

He concludes the article, based on interviews conducted with Saudi women, by
saying: “I kept asking women how they felt about being repressed, and they
kept answering indignantly that they aren’t repressed. So what should we make
of this? Is it paternalistic of us in the West to try to liberate women who insist
that they’re happy as they are? No, I think we’re on firm ground. If most Saudi
women want to wear a tent, if they don’t want to drive, then that’s fine. But
why not give them a choice?” For similar patronizing rhetoric, see also
Maureen Dowd’s “Frederick’s of Riyadh,” New York Times, November 10,
2002. Hirschmann (1998) offers an insightful feminist reading of veiling that
attempts to address the issue of women’s free agency.
3. For example, on February 28, 2002, Diane Sawyer aired Journey Out of Dark-
ness to recount her trip to Afghanistan to interview women she had met during
her previous visit there in 1996; Oprah aired a show on “Women of Afghani-
stan” on June 27, 2002; on September 29, 2002, the New York Times Maga-
zine featured a piece on Afghan girls going back to school after the U.S. inva-
sion, “Shabana Is Late for School.” Similar claims about the liberating effects
for Iraqi women of the United States-led war have been made; for a critique,
see, for example, the editorial on Middle East Report, 230 (Spring 2004), “Sex-
uality, Suppression, and the State” (available online at www.merip.org/mer/
mer230/mer230_ editorial.html).
4. For the early 1990s, see “Le Maroc commence à obtenir des resultats économ-
iques encourageants,” Le Monde, May 24, 1994, and “Its Economy Rising,
Morocco Lures Investors,” New York Times, November 11, 1993; for both
1991 and 1999 indicators, see World Bank (2001).
5. Data on remittances are from the official website of the Moroccan Office des
Changes at www.oc.gov.ma. In June 2002, US$1 = 10.8 MDH (Moroccan
dirhams).
6. “Les transferts contribuent à l’atténuation de la pauvreté,” La Gazette du
Maroc, No. 222, July 4, 2001, p. 36.
7. Since the creation of the European “Schengen Space” in 1990, visas to Europe
have been even more difficult for Moroccans to obtain. Even so, according to
one survey, in 2001, almost one out of every four high-school graduates in Mo-
rocco applied for a student visa to study in Europe, while 82% of high-school
students said they would like to leave Morocco (Vermeren, 2002). Despite the
increased difficulties that Moroccans face in France (and Europe in general), the
number of illegal immigrants detained in Spain and Morocco or who have
drowned attempting to cross the Strait of Gibraltar separating Morocco and
Spain continues to mount. Every year an estimated 100,000 Moroccans at-
tempt to illegally migrate (Vermeren, 2002) and between 1997 and November
2001, 3,286 Moroccans drowned attempting to do so (see “Immigration clan-
destine: 4000 “Harragas” morts en 5 ans,” La Vie Economique, August 31,
2001, and “La ruée vers l’autre,” La Verité, July 6–12, 2001).
8. Numbers vary greatly depending on data source; estimates are as high as 5–7
million Moroccans living in all foreign countries (Vermeren, 2002); France’s
1999 census records the Moroccan population at 529,059, in Institut National
de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques et Ministère de l’Economie, des
Finances et de l’Industrie (2003).
Moral Geographies and Women’s Freedom 171

9. For the 1989 event, see Gaspard and Khosrokhavar (1992); for the 2003 de-
bate, see “Ban Religious Attire in School, French Panel Says,” New York Times,
December 12, 2003, and Paul Silverstein’s “Headscarves and the French Tri-
color,” Middle East Report, January 30, 2004 (available online at www.merip.
org/mero/mero013004.html).
10. See Griffiths (1996) on the difficulties of estimating women’s employment rates
in Morocco.
11. For coverage of the election results, see www.arabicnews.com.
12. See Freeman (2004b) for a discussion. See also “Le nouveau code de la famille
annoncé par S.M Mohamed VI devant le parlement,” Libération, October 13,
2003; “Le roi, les femmes et les frères,” L’Intelligent.com (online publication of
Jeune Afrique), October 21, 2003; and “Morocco Adopts Landmark Family
Law Supporting Women’s Equality,” available online at www.learningpartnership.
org/events/newsalerts/morocco0204.phtml#adfmdoc.
13. While there is a small Jewish population in Morocco and there are many Jews
of Moroccan descent in France, I only interviewed Muslim Moroccan women
for this study. I refrain from repeatedly designating these women as “Moroccan
Muslim women” since I believe that there is a tendency to point out religious
belonging where Muslims are concerned, but the same is not true for other reli-
gions (see Nagel, 2001).
14. Pseudonyms are used for all women interviewed.
15. See Chapter 3 in Gokariksel (2003) for an interesting discussion of communitar-
ianism versus individualism in the contemporary narratives of Turkish women.
16. Escobar (1995) and Laroui (2001) have noted the importance of paying atten-
tion to the way European-defined modernity imposes itself via language.
17. In addition, my status as a white, French-speaking “Western” woman certainly
influenced the types of responses elicited, although it is difficult to know how
exactly. I discuss at length the relevance of intersubjectivity in my research in
Freeman (2004a).
18. Seventeen of the 39 women I interviewed in literacy centers in Morocco were
working or had previously worked as live-in maids. The terms used in Moroc-
can Arabic (kheddama) and French (bonne or petite bonne) are both pejorative;
thus, I prefer to use the English term “maid” rather than the more politically
correct “domestic worker,” which I believe erases some of the stigma and disre-
spect the women working in this position carry around with them.
19. There is obviously a difference between the articulation of beliefs and norms
and actual behavior, and women’s narratives need to be interpreted primarily as
expressions of norms (see Davis, 1987; Ossman, 1994).
20. A prime example of such interdependence is the prevalence in urban areas of
live-in maids who are recruited from rural areas. Girls are hired, sometimes at a
very young age (7–10 years old), and often work long hours for low wages—
usually all of which is sent back to their families. In a context where gender roles at
home have remained unchanged for most Moroccan families, the need for domes-
tic help has increased as more urban women are employed outside the home.
21. A djellaba is a one-piece garment that many Moroccan women wear, with or
without a headscarf. Although there are many different styles and fabrics, it is
often used as an easy, comfortable item to put on over whatever one happens to
be wearing at home.
172 Geographies of Mobility

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GeographiesSpaces
Negotiating of Mobility

7 Negotiating Spaces of the

Home, the Education System,
and the Labor Market
The Case of Young, Working-Class,
British Pakistani Muslim Women

ROBINA MOHAMMAD

D
ifferent forms of nationalism draw on and reinforce very dif-
ferent ideas of womanhood (Yuval-Davis, 1997). A common feature of
right-wing nationalist discourses is the centrality of women to the collective
identity. The burden of bearing this collective identity is demanding.
Women are called on to perform the ideal of womanhood that marks the
collectivity, which in turn circumscribes their experiences and access to so-
cial and economic advancement.
As Graham (1995) notes, collective responses to political and socio-
economic instability and/or marginalization tend toward a reactionary re-
treat into “tradition” that has implications for the position of women and
the performance of womanhood. Discourses that promote a “return to tra-
dition,” often to recover a mythical golden age, may be underpinned by re-
gressive, radically conservative interpretations of religious ideologies, as,
for example, in the Franquista project (1939–1975) in early 20th-century
Spain. General Franco’s coup in 1936, a reactionary response to the social
instability generated by the progressive reforms of the secular, democratic,
Republican regime, was supported by the Catholic Church. General Franco’s
governance drew on and formulated a nationalist form of Catholicism that

178
Negotiating Spaces 179

emphasized the hierarchically organized Catholic family as a foundation of

the nation. The centrality of the Catholic family and women’s role within it
as mothers and wives was a significant (but not the only) factor in circum-
scribing women’s experiences and opportunities in Spanish society during
the Franquista period. In a contemporary example, radical, right-wing
Hindu nationalism (termed Hindutva) is on the rise in the “new India” that
is emerging with economic and social changes unleashed by economic liber-
alization. Hindutva ideology prioritizes the Hindu family as the basis of the
Indian nation, promoting a vision of womanhood that foregrounds their
role within the family.
Regressive nationalisms that draw on Islamist ideologies can be under-
stood as a response to Western imperialisms and the failure of Western mo-
dernity to deliver progress. Islam acts as a sign around which alternative
modernities can be forged. These modernities are marked by culturally spe-
cific and radically conservative interpretations of Islam that, as with the
discourses of National Catholicism and Hindu nationalism, place stress on
the family (Taraki, 1995) and the role of women as mothers of the collec-
tivity (see Afshar, 1988, for the case of revolutionary Iran, and O’Kane,
1997, for the case of the Taliban’s Afghanistan; for post-Zia Pakistan, see
Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987, and Chenoy, 2002).
In this chapter I situate working-class, British, Pakistani Muslim women
within the context of a global decline of secularism and reassertion of right-
wing religious—in this case Islamist1—ideologies to offer at least a partial
explanation of their continued social and economic marginality in Britain.
Drawing on data from an empirical study conducted in Reading, UK, I
highlight how Pakistani communities in Britain retain and continuously re-
new links with a simultaneously real and imaginary homeland through eco-
nomic interests as well as social and kinship networks strengthened by mar-
riage. Thus the ideals of womanhood promoted by right-wing forces in
post-Zia Pakistan travel through these networks to influence, albeit un-
evenly, working-class Pakistani communities in Britain. These ideals, as I
have noted, emphasize women’s place within, and relationship to, the Is-
lamic family, which is perceived within British working-class Pakistani
communities to be under threat from Western values, a threat whose con-
firmation is found in the high divorce rates in the West (e.g., Sarwar, 1980).
A twin approach is utilized to ensure that women conform to this
ideal. First, there is an emphasis on the socialization of children and the
transmission of values to future generations (which, in itself, stresses the
significance of the mothering role) that promote self-regulation. Second, a
regulatory framework involving parents and the local Pakistani community
is put in place to ensure that women comply. Parental regulations sup-
ported by community surveillance seek to control and limit women’s access
to particular spaces and times that may be perceived as a threat to the Is-
lamic family. The constraints imposed on women are by no means imposed
180 Geographies of Mobility

in a uniform way and, in fact, are negotiable to varying extents. The degree
of constraint also appears to be dependent on the socioeconomic status of
the family and, within this, the level of parental education: the higher the
level of parental education, the greater the possibilities for negotiating pa-
rental constraints. It is also important to bear in mind that constraints are
not imposed on inactive, passive objects, but on subjects who are always in
the process of becoming. These women, whose subjectivities are produced
across a matrix of discourses—Western liberal, secular, consumerist, as well
as Islamist—may not respond to parental and/or community regulation in
accordance with expectations. They may comply with, reject, negotiate, or
reinterpret the ideals required of them. The discussion that follows high-
lights working-class British Pakistani women’s struggles to perform ideals
of Pakistani Muslim womanhood, to participate in post-16 education, and
to have access to opportunities not just for paid work but to aspire to a
range of careers beyond the professions. In the next section I discuss the
history of Pakistanis in Britain and their ongoing relationship to the home-
land that supports the concern for and maintenance of a Pakistani Muslim
identity in Britain.

IN THE GRIP OF THE HOMELAND:

PAKISTANI MUSLIMS IN BRITAIN

The women interviewed for this study are from families who originate in
the region of Mirpur in Pakistan. Migration to Britain from the South
Asian subcontinent was facilitated initially by the existence of colonial
ties, which allowed Indians and Pakistanis to cross political boundaries
with relative ease. Mirpuris in particular constituted a large percentage of
recruits for the British Army and Navy, opening up the possibility of set-
tlement in Britain. Thus, early migrants from this region in the period
immediately prior to and after World War II were primarily seamen set-
tlers. The majority of other early migrants were from the professional
classes. These settlers, in turn, opened up the possibilities of migration
for other Pakistanis as they became the first link in a process of chain mi-
gration. Subsequent migrants, however, were largely from working-class
rural origins.

Push-and-Pull Factors
Anwar (1979) notes three main “push” factors influencing outward migra-
tion: the partition of the subcontinent in 1947; the construction of the
Mangla Dam in Mirpur in the early 1960s, which displaced a large percent-
age of the population and which amplified the chain migration opened up
by early settlers; and the low productivity of agricultural lands in Mirpur,
Negotiating Spaces 181

which encouraged young men in the region to seek livelihoods elsewhere

(Anwar, 1979).
At the same time, the availability of work and British policies for the
recruitment of cheap labor provided significant “pull” factors. In the pre-
1960 period, the Pakistani government, like the Indian government, had
placed stringent controls on intercontinental travel, which kept outward
migration to a minimum. But in 1960 the Indian Supreme Court ruled that
it was unconstitutional for the Indian government to deny passports to In-
dian nationals, leading to the relaxation of these restrictions and promoting
parallel developments in Pakistan. At the same time, immigration restric-
tions imposed by the British government in the 1962 Commonwealth Im-
migrants Act led, ironically, to an acceleration of immigration from South
Asia as those already in Britain sought to make their living arrangements
more permanent and to “beat the ban” by bringing in family members
(Hiro, 1991).
The majority of Pakistani arrivals in the early 1960s had been males
who saw their residence in Britain purely as a means of making money.
Their stay in Britain was seen as a temporary sojourn away from home. But
the imposition of restrictions beginning with the 1962 Commonwealth Im-
migrants Act changed this attitude and forced a reconsideration of the na-
ture of their presence in Britain. The arrival of wives and children to join
husbands and fathers in Britain led to the beginnings of “communities”
among Pakistanis (Hiro, 1991), most notably in Manchester (northwest),
Bradford (Yorkshire and Humberside), Birmingham (West Midlands), and
London (see Table 7.1).

Marginality and the Grip of the Homeland

Pakistani settlement in Britain has not, as one might expect, resulted in a
detachment from or loss of connections with the homeland; nor has it di-
minished the sense of being Pakistani and Pakistani Muslims. Rather, the
links between the homeland are continuously renewed, facilitated by trans-
portation and technological developments, and reinforced through mar-
riage. Ballard (1991) noted over a decade ago that as the second generation
of Pakistanis was coming of age, the trickle of young women and men ar-
riving in Britain as brides or bridegrooms of young British Pakistanis was
rising again. Aziz al Azmeh (1993) has also remarked on the practice of
British Pakistanis seeking conservative (“traditional”) young women from
rural regions as brides for their British-born sons. At the same time, as
many of my respondents highlighted from their personal experience (see
Mohammad, in press) and the experiences of their friends and relatives,
some British Pakistani women continue to be encouraged or even to be co-
erced to marry men from Pakistan.2
As Ang (1993, p. 40) argues, this concern with homeland religiocul-
182 Geographies of Mobility

TABLE 7.1. Regional distribution of Pakistanis in the

United Kingdom
Region Percentage
Northeast 1.88
Northwest 15.16
Yorkshire and Humberside 19.58
East Midlands 3.72
West Midlands 20.68
East 5.19
London 19.10
Southeast 7.83
Southwest 0.90
Wales 1.11
Scotland 4.25
Northern Ireland 0.09

Total population of British Pakistanis: 747,285

Note: U.K. Census 2001, Office of National Statistics (2004b).

ture and the “identification with an imagined ‘where you are from’ is . . .
often a sign of, and surrender to, a condition of actual marginalization in
the place ‘where you’re at.’ ”3 This “semi-industrialised, newly urbanised,
working class community that is only one generation away from rural peas-
antry” (Modood, 1992, p. 261) is so economically and socially margin-
alized in British society (as I explain in greater detail below) that it may be
referred to as an “underclass.” It is in this context that the family becomes
significant. As Taraki (1995, p. 645) has highlighted, “Radical Islam . . .
created an area of [Muslim] cultural resistance around women and the fam-
ily which came to represent the inviolable repository of Muslim identity.”
Thus the family offers working-class British Pakistanis both a refuge from
marginalization and a means of resistance, through the marking and main-
tenance of a Pakistani Muslim identity that centers on women.

Marginalization, Collective Identity, and Womanhood

Kandiyoti (1993, p. 376) argues that women often find themselves the
“privileged signifiers of difference.” As mothers they bear the responsibility
for the reproduction of the collectivity not only in physical terms, but also
in ideological terms through the transmission of culture to future genera-
tions. As the guardians of collective identity, women are guarded and their
bodies ordered in space and time (Afshar, 1994). Their bodily presence and
visibility in spaces defined as masculine become subject to varying but strict
Negotiating Spaces 183

regulations. Thus, in the Pakistani context,4 the process of Islamization

proceeded, in part, through the regulation of women’s bodies, as did the
Islamization of Iran following the revolution in 1979 and the Taliban-
ization of Afghanistan during the 1990s. Women’s bodies are made central
to the construction, maintenance, and performance of a collective identity.
Such rigidly constructed and imposed gender divisions mark the domestic
place of the home and family as distinct from the public sphere that lies be-
yond these. Women’s roles as mothers of the collective naturalize their
place within the home and family and make marriage discursively and in
practice a key marker that shapes the trajectory of their lives. Their (future)
marriage mediates their place within the natal family as well as the family
of future in-laws.
Women’s (hetero)sexual purity5 is represented as key to marriage and
the formation of Muslim families. At the same time, women’s bodies are
perceived to exude sexuality that is seen to entice and distract men, thereby
threatening their (hetero)sexual purity (Afshar, 1988; Mernissi, 1975).
Women are scripted as “naturally” sexually provocative, hence their associ-
ation with fitna (chaos) in Islamic society (Badran, 1995; Mernissi, 1975).
Women must be kept separate from unrelated men by restricting them to
domestic spaces within the confines of the family. If they do enter public,
masculine space, then they must ensure that their sexuality is firmly con-
tained through coverage of head and body. Hair is regarded as being as sex-
ually enticing as the body. It forms part of what the Qur’an refers to as
women’s “ornaments” that they must hide from the gaze of unrelated men.
Thus, prior to venturing out, they must cover their hair and hide the con-
tours of their body by creating a private space around the body, thus
desexualizing it.
Veiling, or purdah, can take a variety of forms (including the chador
and the burqa), but often involves a total coverage of the body, including
the face.6 When veiling7 is an imposition rather than a free choice,8 it can
be experienced as a cumbersome and disabling confinement (Mumtaz &
Shaheed, 1987).
The fixation on women’s (hetero)sexual purity and its impact on
women’s spatial mobility may become especially significant in the diasporic
context, as evidenced by the case of working-class Pakistani Muslims.
Yuval-Davies (1997) notes that in situations in which individual men and
collectivities feel threatened by “others,” the regulation of women is inten-
sified. Saifullah Khan’s (1982) study of Bangladeshi women in Bradford,
England, for example, found that the practice of purdah was more extreme
and rigid there than in Bangladesh. As noted earlier, working-class British
Pakistanis respond to racialized and class-based marginalization, as well as
to the traumas of dislocation and resettlement in a new and often hostile
world, by seeking a refuge in collective identity. As bearers of this identity,
women become subject to tighter regulations that are similar to those im-
184 Geographies of Mobility

posed on women in the homeland but also differ as they are adapted to the
particular requirements of the diasporic context (see Mohammad, 1999).

METHODOLOGY

The data for this chapter are drawn from a 1995 study undertaken in
Reading, England, investigating the barriers to Pakistani women’s partici-
pation in the labor market (see Bowlby, Lloyd-Evans, & Mohammad,
1997). The project was funded by the Reading Borough Council in con-
junction with the Pakistani Community Centre.

Socioeconomic Profile of British Pakistanis

A glance at the socioeconomic profile of Pakistanis across the United King-
dom confirms their marginal status among ethnic minority groups. Data
for levels of educational attainment at the age of 16 suggest that out of all
ethnic groups, Pakistanis achieve the fewest GCSE9 grades A through C,
with the exception of black Caribbean and “other black” groups. In all eth-
nic groups girls did better than boys (see Figure 7.1). With the exception of

FIGURE 7.1. Educational attainment at 16 by ethnic group and sex, 2002. Source:
National Pupil Database, Department for Education and Skills (2002).
Negotiating Spaces 185

FIGURE 7.2. People of working age with no qualifications, by ethnic group, shown as a
proportion of the total working-age population (males ages 16–64, females ages 16–59),
2001–2002. Source: Annual Local Area Labour Force Survey 2001–2002, Office for Na-
tional Statistics (2004a).

Bangladeshis, Pakistanis are most likely to leave school with no formal

qualifications (see Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.3 shows that, with the exception of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis
in Britain have the highest unemployment rate of all ethnic groups, with fe-
male unemployment being slightly higher than that for males. Economic in-
activity rates are, again with the exception of Bangladeshis, the highest for
Pakistanis. Those for Pakistani women, standing at 72%, are far higher
than for Pakistani men at 28% (see Figure 7.4), though it is important to
remember that this only records economic activity in the formal labor mar-
ket, while many Pakistani women engage in the informal economy to gen-
erate income (see Brah, 1996). It is notable, however, that Pakistani women
have a rate of entry into the professions which, at 11%, is higher than that
for British white women, although it is lagging in comparison with “other
white,” Indian, and Chinese women (at 21, 16, and 15%, respectively). Pa-
kistani women’s entry into professional occupations is considerably higher
than that for Pakistani men, which, at 9%, is among the lowest of all the
ethnic groups. This reveals Pakistani women’s preference for professional
occupations, which is encouraged and supported by their parents, as I dis-
cuss below.
186 Geographies of Mobility

FIGURE 7.3. Unemployment rates by ethnic group, 2001–2002. Source: Office of Na-
tional Statistics Office (2004d).

The Study
The empirical study was carried out using semistructured, in-depth inter-
views with 25 women between 15 and 30 years of age. Respondents were
recruited through local schools and contacts within the Pakistani commu-
nity using the snowball method. The areas covered by the questionnaire
were as follows: school experiences (including subjects taken at GCSE and
A-level,10 level and form of participation in extracurricular activities,
relationship to teachers, and access to career advice); labor market partici-
pation (including work experience, training, access to transportation, and
employment held at the time of the interview); labor market expecta-
tions (including future career plans, preferences for full-time or part-time
employment, wage expectations, and ideas about “good” and “bad” jobs);
and finally, home and family (including the family’s length of time in Brit-
ain and parents’ occupations and education levels). The questionnaire pre-
sumed that the respondents had free choice in making key decisions about
their lives, but as one 15-year-old girl remarked in response to the question
“Would you like to be in paid work?,” “Asking this of people with no con-
trol over their lives is stupid.”
Twenty of the respondents were between 15 and 19 years of age. Two
respondents were 20, and three were 25 and above. Of the 20 respondents
ages 15–19, all but two (both 16-year-olds) were students. The majority of
Negotiating Spaces 187

FIGURE 7.4. Economic inactivity rates for people of working age, by ethnic group and
sex, 2001–2002. Source: Office of National Statistics (2004c).

the respondents over age 15 had achieved at least six GCSEs on completion
of a 2-year course of study. Of those in post-16 education, five were study-
ing for vocational qualifications (or NVQs11), and six were either studying
for or had achieved three A-levels. Only three respondents, Zara, Reena,
and Tara, had attended or were attending college. For these women, the
path from school to university was neither smooth nor direct, and the issue
of space–time constraints dominated all the interviews.
Only three respondents at the time of interview were in paid work:
Selina (age 20), Sharon (age 20), and Nina (age 25). Selina had held a vari-
ety of jobs and was working on the shop floor of a major supermarket.
Sharon was working on the shop floor of a department store. Nina, who
took a Youth Training Scheme (YTS) placement after leaving school,
worked as an administrator and had changed to part-time work after hav-
ing a baby.
The main concern of the majority of young women interviewed was
negotiating parental permission to access post-16 education (including uni-
versity) and/or entry to the labor market. Few felt that they were in a posi-
tion to think more concretely about the direction they were taking and
where they wanted to be in terms of future careers. It is important to note
that the questions of space–time constraints that I discuss below do not re-
late simply to social marginality, but to interlocking multiple exclusions,
188 Geographies of Mobility

and that there is a considerable variation in the imposition and negotiation

of constraints even among this small, relatively homogenous group. It is
also notable that women who were higher academic achievers were those
whose parents had higher levels of education. Parents with a higher level of
education were also less restrictive of daughters. It appeared that those par-
ents with the lowest levels of education did not prioritize the education of
their daughters, and that they, moreover, seemed to view education as an
obstacle to their daughters’ true vocation in life: the formation of a Muslim
family through marriage and the roles of wife and mother.

OBSTACLES TO EDUCATION

“Pakistani girls and women have a lot to offer. Unfortunately, we are

denied our right to go further and to pursue our goals, dreams, and ambi-
tions. Our families are still living in the dark ages, and instead of encour-
aging . . . us to blossom, attempt to stifle any growth they feel threatens
their control over us and place unjustified obstacles in our paths to keep
us isolated and trapped.” (—SEEMA, age 25)

Women’s educational trajectories are directed by the concerns relating to

collective identity in four related ways. First, the centrality of the family to
processes of collective identity construction and maintenance means that in
the diaspora, as in the homeland, Pakistani Muslims, particularly those
who are working class and of rural origin, place a stress on marriage when
considering the future for Pakistani Muslim women. Second, the impor-
tance of marriage raises concerns for women’s (hetero)sexual purity, which
leads to restrictions on women’s spatial mobility that indirectly undermine
women’s access to education. Third, for some parents education is viewed
as loosening familial control over women by encouraging independent
thought and by enabling social mobility and assimilation into wider, white
society, which is seen to undermine the very foundations of collective iden-
tity. Fourth, even when parents are not concerned with the influence of ed-
ucation per se, they may prohibit their daughters from continuing in educa-
tion when it comes into conflict with parental marriage plans.
Often, women are prepared for their roles as wives and mothers from
birth. Farah, age 16, whose engagement for marriage was decided by her
parents upon birth, comments, “Women are sold at an early age.” Another
respondent, 17-year-old Layla, declares: “Marriage is something that I feel
is emphasized too much in our religion. Everybody has to get married. I am
not against people getting married as long as they want to.” Farah and an-
other respondent, Zubia, left the education system at age 16, that is, at the
earliest opportunity. They are both engaged to be married and have not
been permitted by their parents either to continue in education or to enter
Negotiating Spaces 189

the labor market. They are to “sit at home” until marriage. After marriage,
as Farah, who is betrothed to her paternal cousin, explains, “They expect
you to cook and clean, no chance to work outside the home.” Undertaking
housework is part of the training of daughters. As a respondent in Afshar’s
study (1994, p. 135) pointed out, “We have to teach our children two sepa-
rate sorts of things; one is about cooking and cleaning and things like
that.” My respondent Sabia confirms this reality when she argues that
“teachers, especially males, should be more understanding toward the diffi-
culties we have to face at home. We have to do housework, which affects
the time we have left to do other work.”
Thus an emphasis on marriage means that women’s formal education
cannot be allowed to undermine the important skills they need to develop
for their roles as wives and mothers. Neither the participation in post-16
formal education nor participation in the formal labor market can be taken
for granted as a choice to be exercised by women. The idea of marriage
stresses that daughters are paraya dhan—that is, they are a form of wealth
that belongs not to their parents, but rather to their future in-laws. This
means, as Sheena’s father reminds her, that the decision for her to pursue a
career after marriage is in the hands of her future husband and in-laws.
The importance of women’s (hetero)sexual purity, both real and imag-
ined (being seen as [hetero]sexually pure is as important as actually main-
taining purity) means that women’s access to spaces perceived to be threat-
ening to (hetero)sexual purity is regulated and limited, thus affecting
women’s participation in the education system and the labor market. In the
diasporic context, as in the homeland, public space is coded as masculine.
But in Britain, public space is also liberal in that there are no state regula-
tions prohibiting and policing relations between men and women in keep-
ing with the requirements of the Pakistani Muslim community. Moreover,
the presence of Western values beyond the front door means that there is an
absence of a wider community framework of surveillance as there might be
in the homeland. In addition, the spaces of education such as schools, col-
leges, and universities, as well as those of the labor market, are often
closed, opaque spaces that block the policing gaze of parents and the Paki-
stani community.

SPACES OF SCHOOL:
OBSCURING THE PARENTAL GAZE

Pakistani parents perceive their daughters’ (hetero)sexual purity to be put

at risk by the existence of opportunities for them to develop relationships
with unrelated men in spaces outside the home, particularly when encour-
aged and supported by the immorality of liberal Western culture (Modood,
1992). This culture not only exists outside the front door but also manages
190 Geographies of Mobility

to pervade the home through television and other media (Ahmed &
Hastings, 1994). Parents seek to control these risks by drawing on Islamist
discourse produced within the homeland that sets out ideals of Muslim
womanhood, and by socializing girls to conform to these ideals through
self-regulation. In addition, parents seek to control daughters’ access to
what they consider dangerous spaces that may threaten their (hetero)sexual
purity. Many respondents, for example, agree with another respondent’s
claim that “hanging around town is [seen as] wrong because men are
around. Girls aren’t allowed in town for very long.”
The space of the school, although clearly Western and liberal, may be a
single-sex one, and hence feminine (this option is popular within the Paki-
stani community; indeed, a number of my respondents attended single-sex
schools) (see also Afshar, 1994). These are some of the concerns that have
encouraged a demand for Muslim schools (see Joly, 1986; Kelly & Shaikh,
1989). The space of the school tends to be perceived by parents as highly
regulated and disciplined in a way that certain spaces of post-16 and cer-
tainly post-18 education (i.e., college and university) and labor markets are
not. The significance of this distinction is stressed by a number of respon-
dents. Rhea defined for me the difference between “school” and “college”
or “university”:

“What they [parents] believe is at school you have the supervision of

teachers. At our school that is definitely what it is. If they find some of the
Asian girls doing things they shouldn’t be doing, then, because the teach-
ers are so aware of Islamic culture and the Hindu culture and all the other
multicultures, they do inform the parents, and the parents are aware of
that. . . .”

Zara also drew attention to the fact that

“lessons [at college] are not controlled that strict. Teachers are more lib-
eral. If you want to do the work it is up to you to get it done. They won’t
hassle you or anything. Schools are not like that: a couple of absences
and they [the teachers] would notice and get in touch with the parents.”

As the first substantial space outside a home environment to which Paki-

stani children are exposed and in which they spend a significant amount of
time, school is the place in which the respondents first experienced the issue
of spatial constraints. Not only their presence within the school but also
their movements between home and school are often tightly regulated. This
is particularly evident in the area of extracurricular activities. As Sharon re-
marked, “Most [extracurricular] activities were after school. Therefore re-
strictions from home caused problems.” Selina also pointed out that she
was unable to participate in extracurricular activities “because they were
Negotiating Spaces 191

after school and parents didn’t want me out after school.” It is notable that
only the three respondents who attend a girls-only grammar school have
participated in the full range of extracurricular activities irrespective of the
timing of the activities. Another two respondents were able to participate
because the extracurricular activities that interested them took place at
lunchtime, and so did not raise the issue of being present in school after
hours when school regulations might be relaxed.
Some parents, especially those who themselves have a limited educa-
tion, are not just concerned about the threat to (hetero)sexual purity pro-
duced by women’s access to particular spaces but are concerned with the
psychological influence of education they might receive. Historically, in
South Asia “education was seen as a means for loosening the control exer-
cised by men over women. . . . It is precisely for this reason that it played a
central role in the struggle for women’s rights in India” (Mumtaz &
Shaheed, 1987, p. 38). Selina, for instance, enrolled in a sociology major
against her parents’ wishes. She told me that her parents were concerned
about its influence on her. They would not allow her to spend much time in
her own room—time they felt would facilitate contemplation and question-
ing. Under pressure from them, she abandoned her major. In her study of
the Yorkshire-based Pakistani community, Afshar (1994) discusses two sis-
ters who were chaperoned daily to and from school by their father and who
were closely supervised at all times. These sisters responded by “breaking
out.” They left home, cut their hair, and later married white men. Similarly,
Selina and her twin sister responded to strict regulation by their family (see
Mohammad, 1999) by leaving home. Both went on to undertake university
degrees. Selina’s twin, Anila, took a degree in English and published a book
of poetry. Selina herself undertook a foundation course that provided ac-
cess to university to study sociology. While Anila has consistently refused
contact with her family, Selina has gradually reestablished relations with
her family, who are now prepared to accept her on her own terms. On my
last contact with Selina she had suspended her studies during her final year
because her father had a terminal illness. Temporarily, she was at home
supporting her mother following her father’s death.
By contrast, 25-year-old Seema’s parents were less concerned about the
influence of education on her thinking than they were with ensuring that
her marriage, arranged with a relative in Pakistan, would not be put in
jeopardy by his difficulties in gaining a British visa. British fiancées of over-
seas Pakistanis must be in paid work to show that they are able to support
their fiancés in order to strengthen their application for a British visa. After
her engagement, Seema was forced to leave school at the earliest opportu-
nity (after GCSEs). She entered the labor market and worked for 2 years.
During this period her fiancé failed to get a visa. She then made a decision
to study for her A-levels part-time. With her fiancé’s visa still held up, she
decided to attend university to study law. When she informed her family of
192 Geographies of Mobility

her decision, her father refused to speak to her for 6 months. On comple-
tion of her degree, she married her fiancé, who had finally arrived in Britain
by then. After marriage she found that her husband didn’t approve of her
undertaking paid work. She notes that she would like to undertake paid
work because “I’m bored! I need to use my brain to do something worth-
while. I feel like I’m wasting precious time and could be doing so much.”
She has applied for several jobs in a variety of fields, including charities,
but has “been unsuccessful because they usually don’t want someone who’s
genuinely interested but has no experience.” Seema’s path to higher educa-
tion and her negotiation of entry into paid work has involved many twists
and turns. It is difficult to retain a clear sense of direction. In part, this re-
lates to uncertainties over marriage and opportunities to pursue paid work.
In part, it relates to the difficulties of following a straight trajectory in the
context of the different demands made on British Pakistani women. At an-
other level, some Pakistani women, as many respondents noted, may not
have any particular trajectory in mind because they view continuing in edu-
cation as a means to defer marriage for a few years.
The presence of Pakistanis in higher education is among the lowest of
all the ethnic groups with the exception of Chinese and Bangladeshis. Paki-
stani women participate in higher education at a rate lower (by about a
third) than that of Pakistani men (Higher Education Statistics Agency,
1995). The most recent data available confirm that Pakistani and Bangla-
deshi women are the least likely to hold degrees (Office of National Statis-
tics, 2004). Of my respondents, only the seven working toward their A-levels
seemed able to develop a clear direction for their studies. These young
women hope to pursue studies in law, medicine, pharmacology, and lan-
guages at university. While women from less-educated backgrounds are
subject to tighter spatial constraints on their home ground, these women
are able to consider courses at the universities away from home. One of
these seven women remarked, “Generally I feel luckier than some other
Asian girls who have been prevented from studying exactly what they want
because of parents.”
However, the opportunities available to the young women planning to
study away from home must not be taken to suggest that their parents do
not share concerns about their daughters’ (hetero)sexual purity and their
reputations within the community. For the more educated parents, there is
a tension between a desire to educate daughters and concerns of honor and
standing within the community (Afshar, 1988). Moreover, it is often the
community that questions, criticizes, and goads parents about their deci-
sions to allow daughters to study at university, particularly where these are
away from home. As Polly explains,

“As the time approached for me to leave, friends of my father began to

turn him against the idea. One friend warned him ‘they get up to all sorts
Negotiating Spaces 193

of things, I know because my son is at university and he tells me what

girls get up to.’”

Mona, whose father is a research scientist, has been permitted to pursue a

career in medicine away from home. A major factor in this relaxing of reg-
ulations is that she has spent the last 5 years in Pakistan. She tells me that
her family moved to Pakistan when she was 12 so that “we, the children,
would have the same values as our parents.” This parental strategy to en-
sure against their children’s assimilation to the West has encouraged a more
liberal approach toward their daughters.

THE GENDERING OF JOBS AND THE WORKPLACE

One means of negotiating parental constraints in the pursuit of higher edu-

cation, particularly with educated parents, is the study of subjects that are
highly valorized within the Pakistani and more broadly the South Asian
communities. As one respondent noted, “Medicine [is a] prestige career.
People like to say ‘My daughter is a doctor.’ ” It is in this context that the
majority of the respondents placed professions such as doctor, dentist, law-
yer, and pharmacist in the category of “good” jobs.
Apart from jobs that are usually perceived as “bad,” such as cleaner
and refuse collector, respondents also mentioned nursing as a relatively
low-status occupation. One respondent said that nursing is “not approved
of because it is considered a dirty job changing bed pans.” Nursing is an ex-
tension of women’s caring role in the home, but, unlike in the home, nurses
are not caring for their own family members but for unrelated men and
women. Waitressing is also “disapproved of because of the male factor,”
that is, interactions with men.
Respondents were asked to name typical men’s jobs and typical
women’s jobs. Three that crop up repeatedly are taxi driver for men and
sewing (factory work) or shop assistant for women. Taxi driving is popular
among Pakistani men (most respondents have a relative or know someone
who drives taxis) because they make good money on the job, but it is a
low-status occupation. In Pakistan historically, for those women who are
uneducated or less educated, as one respondent states, “if you are going to
work, you either teach or sew. To them these are perfectly respectable jobs,
[particularly] sewing, because you are at home.”
As this quote indicates, the spaces and times in which jobs take place
are gendered, in that the place and time in which paid work is performed is
significant in dictating the form of work Pakistani women are able to con-
sider. Taxi driving, an example of a “man’s job,” is a relatively fluid occu-
pation in terms of both space and time. It involves mobility and travel and
is also less fixed to particular hours: shifts can be stretched and juggled.
194 Geographies of Mobility

“Women’s jobs,” identified as shop or factory work, are far more spatially
and temporally fixed. Women are contained within the shop or on the fac-
tory floor where they typically work set hours. Both spaces are shared with
other employees and, in the case of the shop floor, also with members of the
public. Both of these spaces are relatively open to a range of gazes that may
serve to constrain or to enforce particular behaviors. The disciplinary gaze
of the employer, for instance, regulates workers not only for their efficiency
but also, particularly in the case of the shop floor, appropriate behavior in
dealings with members of the public. The shop floor is also open to the
gazes of parents who can come in to inspect their daughters at work. In
contrast, the taxi, in addition to being a mobile space, is also a relatively
closed, individualized space that does not require or allow the same level or
type of discipline that exists on the shop floor or in the factory. The disci-
pline that is imposed on the taxi driver relates more to the operation of his
vehicle on the road than to the individual himself.
The time and place of work was stressed by respondents as significant
in persuading parents of their entry into the labor market. It is notable that
only three respondents—all pursuing professions—and Selina, who has left
home, were open to the idea of working “anywhere.” Sana, who has a
place at university to study medicine, is keen to go “wherever my job takes
me”; Zena would like to work in London because the city offers the “best
opportunities.” The majority of respondents, whether single or married
with children, stressed that if they were to look for paid work they would
only consider Reading. The farthest they would contemplate were the sur-
rounding areas. Some, like 17-year-old Marina, who is studying for her A-
levels, reminded me that “my parents don’t allow me to be outside any-
where alone,” and that jobs involving distance away from the home are not
suitable.
Many of the younger respondents had negotiated parental permission
to work very locally during school holidays (for a discussion of how young
women negotiate parental constraints, see Mohammad, 1999). The major-
ity were required to be home by early evening, which also restricted them
to the proximity of their locality. They did not see this situation changing if
and when they were in permanent employment. These constraints prohibit
entry into jobs that involve evening or night shifts or that require atten-
dance at training courses away from home. Sharon recalled how she has
had to turn down a number of work opportunities that required her to do
evening hours on a regular basis. She has also had to turn down opportuni-
ties for promotion within her present job which would move her from gen-
eral sales to becoming a representative for a cosmetic house—such a pro-
motion would involve spending a week away from home on a training
course.
Tara noted that when travel away from home is required as part of
paid work or for educational purposes, places that are familiar—those per-
Negotiating Spaces 195

ceived by her parents as culturally similar to the everyday home environ-

ment—are much more likely to see an easing of parental restrictions than
those places that seem foreign. A school or work trip to Edinburgh, for
example, would be more likely to find parental approval than one to Paris
despite the geographical proximity of Paris. Tara told me that it is very dif-
ficult for Pakistani women like her to embark on careers that might involve
regular travel away from home. She suggested that the most she can expect
to negotiate is a few, occasional, nights away from home during the week.
Weekends, she argued, are a different matter. She drew attention to the
ways in which particular times such as the weekend, like particular spaces,
are seen to be more conducive to immoral activity “because of all the stuff
you can get up to. The weekend is free time for you to do what you want.”
It is a time–space that offers greater opportunity to socialize with the oppo-
site sex and hence to encourage office romances and liaisons.
Parental concerns are heightened with respect to the opacity of partic-
ular spaces such as the office. Unlike in South Asia, working-class, British,
Pakistani women are required to be simultaneously visible and invisible. Al-
though a number of women defined waitressing as a bad job because it en-
courages encounters and interactions with men, in practice it is accepted
that women will encounter men in the public arena. But when these en-
counters and interactions take place in spaces that are relatively open to the
public/parental/community gaze, then this gaze works to discipline, limit,
and control them. So while women must avoid drawing the attention of the
masculine gaze in public spaces, they must also ensure that they remain vis-
ible to their families to facilitate parental policing. This means that some
parents may show a greater preference for their daughters to work on the
shop floor (in their own locality) than in the office. Although on the shop
floor women may be more subjected to the male gaze and have the possibil-
ity of a greater number of encounters with men, these encounters are regu-
lated by the disciplinary gaze of the store and the public as a whole, includ-
ing parents, who can make an inspection of their daughters’ performance
anytime.
Thus the requirements of maintaining a distinctly bounded collective
identity ensures that the access of women to post-16 and higher education
cannot be taken for granted. Some women are able to negotiate the pursuit
of education and subsequent entry into the labor market by studying for a
few high-status careers. This finding helps to explain the statistical evidence
highlighted earlier showing the high percentage of Pakistani women in the
category of professionals relative to white women. For Pakistani women,
the preference for and stress on entering the professions is likely to be
greater than for British white women. However, the education system as a
mechanism for sorting and sifting out high achievers for the professions
means that access is not possible for the mass of Pakistani women who as-
pire to them. For the mass of young women, negotiation of parental per-
196 Geographies of Mobility

mission for entry into the labor force is contingent upon many factors, in-
cluding the timing of marriage and the nationality of the future fiancé. If
and when they are able to enter the labor market, they may have to con-
front a whole set of racist stereotypes that block their progress. At the same
time, they may remain subject to tight regulations that limit and prohibit
participation in many forms of paid work, particularly of a more profes-
sional nature, that might involve travel. Such constraints serve to under-
mine women’s progress in paid work and access to promotion. Thus the
majority of Pakistani women remain in low-level jobs that hold limited
possibilities for financial independence, and therefore do not challenge
women’s position within the Pakistani community.

CONCLUSION

I started the chapter by looking at the rise of conservative, radical, religious

nationalisms in the context of the decline of secularism and the loss of faith
in Western rational modernity. Religious nationalisms place a stress on the
family and on women’s roles as the bearers of collective identity and as the
mothers of future generations. Women are the public face of the collectivity
and custodians of its cultural and religious values. This makes women both
the “guardians” and the “guarded” and legitimizes the imposition of physi-
cal and spatial constraints. I traced the impact on women of the rise of
Islamism in Pakistan and how Islamism has informed the ideals and prac-
tices of Muslim womanhood in the Pakistani diaspora.
The requirements for the performance of Muslim womanhood in
Great Britain, however, is not the same as it is in the homeland, but is
adapted to take into account different spatial practices and norms in the
country of settlement. The national space of the homeland is regulated to
maintain the segregation of unrelated men and women. State and societal
surveillance ensures against any visible signs of activities of a sexual nature.
By contrast, the liberal Western state and society allows the free mingling of
unrelated men and women and does not exercise moral disapproval of pre-/
extramarital (hetero)sexual activity, which is a key concern for the Paki-
stani community, as women’s purity is linked to marriage, the family, and
collective identity. I then discussed the ways in which the relationship of the
family and marriage to nationhood and collective identity prioritizes the
roles of wife and mother for women. The idealization and performance of
Muslim womanhood mediates women’s access to and participation in the
education system and labor market, and in some instances enables and even
compels their entry into the labor market. Zubia, for example, laments that
her fiancé was not from Pakistan. If he had been, she would have had to
take on paid employment to secure a British visa for him. As it stood, her
Negotiating Spaces 197

parents did not believe that she needed to continue with her education, so
prior to marriage she remained at home.
I have highlighted how, within the broad requirement of the perfor-
mance of Muslim womanhood, the level of education of parents seems to
be a key factor influencing the nature and extent of the spatial and tempo-
ral constraints on women with respect to the education system and labor
market. Parents who were relatively more educated encouraged the aca-
demic education of their daughters. Daughters who were more academi-
cally able were better positioned to negotiate parental and community con-
cerns to pursue the high-status and highly regarded professions such as
medicine and law. They seemed to be subjected to fewer restrictions with
respect to how long and where they studied and with respect to their entry
into the labor market.
Respondents’ vision of good jobs broadly reiterated the consensus of
the Pakistani community. “Good” jobs are those that are visible and that
allow young women to be monitored. It is interesting to note that one ex-
planation given for judging a job to be “bad”—that it involves encounters
with men—was not applied to the professions, which almost always require
such encounters. According to this criterion, childcare and infant-school
teaching would have been at the top of the “good job” list, but such “fe-
male jobs” did not feature on the good job lists of any respondents.
The number of young women able to achieve entry into the profes-
sions even with the support of parents and the education system is limited.
For the majority of British working-class Pakistani women, access to higher
levels of education and entry into the labor market cannot be taken for
granted. They have to negotiate parental and community religiocultural re-
strictions, and even if they are successful in this task, they have to negotiate
racialized sexisms in the education system and the labor market. Moreover,
when women are able to negotiate an entry into the labor market, parental
constraints ensure that they are restricted to work that is undertaken at a
set place near the parental or marital home and that has fixed hours. This
precludes higher status, better paid work that might require training away
from the regular work site, travel, or longer, more fluid hours. It reinforces
the glass ceiling that undermines women’s rise in the labor market.

NOTES

1. Islamist discourses are those that promote the production of specifically Mus-
lim subjectivities. It is important to note, however, that these discourses are not
singular but multiple and contradictory (Sayyid, 1997).
2. It is important to bear in mind that forced marriage is not a practice legitimized
by Islam, even in its most conservative forms.
198 Geographies of Mobility

3. In this regard, it is important to note that links with the homeland and home-
land religioculture intersect with more localized processes to produce particular
identities. For British Pakistanis, identification as Muslim was greatly enhanced
by the “Rushdie Affair” (see Modood, 1992).
4. Although Pakistan was founded on the basis of religious identity, it was broadly
committed to secularism until Zia-ul-Haq’s coup (1977–1989). Since its found-
ing in 1947, in return for women’s support for the nationalist movement, suc-
cessive governments had promoted women’s rights. This changed with the dic-
tatorship of General Zia. His form of Islamism saw a significant erosion of
women’s rights (Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987).
5. Women’s (hetero)sexual purity is intimately linked to the concept of izzat, or
honor of her father and her family. Afshar (1988) points out that women’s (het-
ero)sexual purity is made a condition of making (a good) marriage and that
marriage is a means for parents to transfer the responsibility of guarding their
daughters’ bodies to more able young men.
6. According to Hansen (1967, p. 71), the practice of veiling was not introduced
by Islam: “Seclusion and veiling are phenomena . . . foreign to Arabs and un-
known at the time of Mohammad,” but were present for millennia in the
Mesopotamian/Mediterranean region (see also El Guindi, 1999).
7. A veil/headscarf has become (both for Muslims themselves and for the West) a
primary signifier of Islam. Yet Shaarawi (1986), writing on Egypt in the
1920s, argued that veiling was a social convention connected with class (see
also El Guindi, 1999). The veil is read as an instrument of women’s oppres-
sion, yet the veil also acts as a symbol of liberation and/or resistance. Women
may veil in order to achieve greater freedom from social constraints through
maintaining an image of purity, and the veil may symbolize a conscious rejec-
tion of Western values or an assertion of nationalism or revivalism (Afshar,
1994, p. 135).
8. The notion of free choice, of course, is problematic because discourses work
not by controlling people from above but by promoting self-regulation. Dis-
courses seek to produce particular subjectivities, meaning that subjects will
“freely” choose to perform in particular ways (see Rose & Miller, 1992). This is
not to say that there can be no resistance.
9. “GCSE” refers to the General Certificate of Secondary Education, which in-
volves a 2-year course of study undertaken from the age of 14. It provides
young people with a basic grounding in a range of around 10 subjects. Students
may leave school at the age of 16 with the GCSE qualifications or stay on to
undertake a 2-year course of advanced-level (“A-level”) studies in up to four
subjects, which enables access to university education.
10. The structure of A-level study has undergone some changes in recent years but
my respondents followed the format described in Note 9.
11. This stands for National Vocational Qualification. These are post-16 voca-
tional qualifications that prepare students for employment. They are under-
taken at colleges of further education, which are distinct from universities in
that they rarely if ever offer degree courses. By contrast, colleges of higher edu-
cation, like universities, offer degree courses.
Negotiating Spaces 199

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Sarwar, G. (1980). Islam: Beliefs and teachings. London: Muslim Educational Trust.
Sayyid, B. S. (1997). A fundamental fear: Eurocentrism and the emergence of
Islamism. London: Zed Books.
Shaarawi, H. (1986). Harem years: The memoirs of an Egyptian feminist (Trans. &
Ed. by Margot Badran). London: Virago Press.
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Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender and nation. London: Sage.
Discourse,
The Headscarf
Representation,
Issue in Turkey
and the Contestation of Space

Part III
Discourse, Representation,
and the Contestation
of Space
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Discourse,
The Headscarf
Representation,
Issue in Turkey
and the Contestation of Space

8 Islamism, Democracy, and

the Political Production of
the Headscarf Issue in Turkey
ANNA SECOR

W
hat has come to be known as the “headscarf issue” (baêØrtüsü
meselesi) has taken up a prominent position in the symbolic lexicon of the
struggle between political Islamism and state secularism. In the mid-1980s,
protests erupted in major Turkish cities, as students mobilized against the
state’s enforcement of antiveiling dress codes in spaces such as the universi-
ties, courts, and state offices. With the Islamist party achieving electoral
successes in the mid-1990s, the headscarf issue has continued to operate as
a flashpoint for Turkish politics. In Turkey, as in France and Egypt, protes-
tors and Islamists have argued that state regulations restricting veiling dis-
criminate against pious Muslim women who feel pressured to choose be-
tween their faith and their education or profession.1 Further aggravating
the conflict, the Turkish government passed a law in 1997 that increased
compulsory primary-school education from 6 to 8 years in the public, secu-
lar schools. Previously, girls could be withdrawn from the secular schools
after the sixth grade and enrolled in the religious (imam-hatip) middle
schools, where veiling was permitted and gender segregation practiced. Un-
der the new legislation, adolescent girls were forced either to attend school
unveiled or not at all.2 The impact of the 8-year education law on the
imam-hatip schools and women’s veiling practices was not incidental, but
rather occurred as part of the “February 28th Process” through which the
secular establishment, led by the military, forced the elected Islamist party

203
204 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, from office and sought to (re)establish

secular control over the public sphere (Yavuz, 2000).
Along with other elements of dress and adornment, veiling is an em-
bodied spatial practice through which women are inserted into relations of
power in society.3 These relations of power inscribe “regimes of veiling,” or
spatial hegemonies (however partial and impermanent) within which par-
ticular veiling laws, rules, or norms hold sway (Secor, 2002). For example,
while veiling may represent an informally and unevenly enforced norm in
particular neighborhoods, in other spaces (such as university classrooms)
not veiling is the dominant and formally regulated mode of attire for
women. Through these sociospatial regimes, veiling practices become
intelligible—that is, they come to be seen and understood in particular
ways that are often tied up with ideas of womanhood, honor, and shame.
As women traverse urban spaces, their mobile and embodied practices of
veiling or not veiling contribute to the production, and sometimes subver-
sion, of these spatial regimes. At the same time, formal and informal veiling
regimes are bound up with the techniques of government, such as policing,
that regulate particular spaces. Veiling thus becomes a site for both the dis-
ciplinary administration of bodies and the regulation of populations—what
Foucault calls “biopower,” referring to the forms of power that interweave
sexual and bodily conduct with questions of national policy (Foucault,
1978).
This chapter is concerned with how the sociospatial practice of veiling
has come to function as a site of politics in Turkey. It begins from several,
interrelated questions, each of which is explored through the discursive
analysis of focus-group texts. First, How are veiling practices constituted
through a diversity of practices and associated meanings in Turkish society?
I begin with a discussion of the way veiling has been constituted through
the practices of nation-state formation in Turkey. Using focus-group texts,
this section also draws forward the complexity of veiling practices as they
are differently enacted and interpreted across urban communities in Istan-
bul. The second overarching question that this chapter addresses is: How is
the practice and regulation of veiling (or “the headscarf issue”) constituted
as a political issue? I argue that veiling practices, and the related debate sur-
rounding religious education, work as points of capture within the power-
ful, competing discourses of democracy and Islamism in Turkey. Finally, I
pose the question, How do regimes of veiling or not veiling situate individ-
uals and populations in relation to governmental practice and technologies
of citizenship? By “technologies” of citizenship, I refer to what Nikolas
Rose (1999) calls “an assembly of forms of knowledge with a variety of
mechanical devices and an assortment of little techniques oriented to pro-
duce practical outcomes” (p. 52). Regimes of veiling, whether formal or in-
formal, are instrumental in promoting the citizenship rights and identities
of certain subjects as opposed to others; such processes can be traced in the
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 205

ways in which focus-group participants experience and represent their own

relationships to the police, the military, and the courts, as well as to such
mythical entities as “the state” (devlet), “the people” (halk), or “the na-
tion” (millet). Furthermore, the spatiality of veiling practices and regula-
tions means that these techniques are deeply implicated in contests over
“public” and “private,” the limits of state intervention, and the power of
Islam.
Together, these questions contribute to an understanding of the spatial
production of veiling regimes that links practices of government to ques-
tions of identity. Drawing on Foucault’s idea of “governmentality,” this ap-
proach anticipates the problem of “who we are when we are governed in
such a manner” (Dean, 1999, p. 17, emphasis in original; see also Foucault,
1994). That is, I am interested both in how the regulation of veiling posi-
tions individuals and populations as objects of government, and in how
veiling becomes a channel through which individuals constitute their own
self-identities as political subjects, and thus as citizens. Giorgio Agamben
(1998) argues that these two lines of analysis, which Foucault terms “polit-
ical techniques” and “technologies of the self”, converge to constitute the
citizen, “the new biopolitical body of humanity” (p. 9). In this chapter, I
seek to demonstrate how this convergence takes place through the produc-
tion of veiling as a political issue in Turkey.
This chapter is based on fieldwork carried out in Istanbul at various
times between 1998 and 2003. Over this time period, I conducted 22 focus
groups with differently positioned Istanbul residents: rural–urban migrants,
Kurds, Alevis, Islamists, and so on. In each case, focus groups consisted of
7 to 10 participants who did not previously know each other and who were
selected as part of a target group (e.g., younger migrant women who had
been in the city for less than 10 years, or lower-class men who had been ac-
tive in political parties, or Alevi youths). These participants were identified
either through informal networks or through a database compiled from
survey research. While many of my general observations are based on im-
pressions gathered from all of these discussions, this chapter will draw
mostly from two focus groups, one with women and one with men, con-
ducted in the summer of 2003.4 Part of a larger project on civil society in
Istanbul, these groups were comprised of people first contacted through a
representative survey of Istanbul residents.5 Focus groups provide particu-
larly rich texts for the discursive analysis of meaning as contingently and
collaboratively constructed through social interaction (Wilkinson, 1998).
Discussants in these two groups were invited to participate based on
their involvement in some kind of religiously oriented associational activity,
whether as Islamist party members, participants in nongovernmental Islam-
oriented organizations or charities, attendees at informal religious meet-
ings, or as protestors and activists in the headscarf campaigns. Because of
their involvement in these activities and their support for Islamist political
206 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

parties,6 I refer to these participants as “Islamist” men and women. How-

ever, this should not be taken to imply that all of these participants sub-
scribe to a clearly articulated, consistent political agenda. As the criteria for
selection indicate, “Islamism” in this case may refer to religious, social, and
political engagement. Furthermore, it is more and more understood that
political Islamism in Turkey is an umbrella movement, striated by different
perspectives, interests, and social positions (BuÈra, 2002; Houston, 1999;
White, 2002). For these reasons, the term should be understood in such a
way that does not presume particular positions or ideologies, but rather
serves as shorthand for participation in a set of diverse practices.

VEILING PRACTICES AND

CONTESTED MEANINGS IN TURKEY

Practices of veiling have been bound up with questions of national identity,

ideology, and state practice throughout the 20th century. As in other Mid-
dle Eastern contexts, the scripting of veiling practices in Turkey has taken
place in dialogue with European imperial discourses that cast the veil as a
synecdoche for the “barbarity” of Muslim societies (Göle, 1996; Ahmed,
1992). In a spirit of Westernizing reform that can be traced back to the
Tanzimat (reorganization) of the late Ottoman era (1839–1876), Mustafa
Kemal “Atatürk,” the former Ottoman general who led the Turkish revolu-
tion, founded the Turkish republic in 1923 based on secularist, modernist
principles. Adopting European legal codes, banning the Islamic caliphate,
and creating a department, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet
êleri BakanlÏÈÏ), for the management of religion and religious education,
the laic republic7 attempted to reorient the Turkish population toward sec-
ularist, modernist, and nationalist ideals. As part of this project of recultur-
ation, Atatürk denounced the practice of veiling and encouraged women to
don European dress. Men were also directed to adjust their self-presentation;
not only was the new face of the republic a shaven one, but the late
Otoman fez was banned and replaced by the brimmed hat in public affairs.
The republican elite initiated a transformation of everyday life that
ranged from language reform to the construction of new urban spaces and
the promotion of “Westernized” lifestyles. Not only were girls to become
educated alongside boys in public school, but many also attended voca-
tional women’s schools and became active in the workforce of the new
state. As Navaro-Yashin (2002) has argued, new consumer habits, focusing
on dress, were to define the “modern woman” as distinct from “the back-
wards Islamist woman” in the discourses of the secular mainstream (p. 86).
Through the reorganization of elements of dress, bearing, and manners, the
Kemalists8 attempted to create embodied cultural forms that would facili-
tate the inscription of a new Turkish national identity (Bourdieu, 1997). In
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 207

the process, a new spatial imaginary was asserted over and against previous
forms of sociospatial organization.
In her work on veiling and civilization, Nilufer Göle (1996) describes
how the Turkish mahrem (the sphere of domesticity, secrecy, the family, and
the forbidden) had been the object of modernizing reform since the
Tanzimat period. She argues that “the most resistant antagonism between
the Islamic and the modern Western civilizations” can be grounded “in the
organization of interior and exterior spheres, as well as in the separation of
male and female” (p. 14). “Women’s place,” that is, their visibility in public
or their presence in the mahrem, has come to define the degree to which so-
ciety has been either Westernized or Islamicized. It was in this context that
the Kemalist state sought to shift the boundaries of the mahrem and the
namahrem (exterior) and to redefine women’s roles in society through edu-
cation and entrance into waged labor. At the same time, the project of
Kemalism was neither absolute nor internally coherent, and its effects on
gender, spatial practices, and culture have registered unevenly across Turk-
ish society.
The simple headscarf, a square of fabric used to cover a woman’s head
and hair to varying degrees, never did disappear from practices of dress in
Turkey. According to a nationwide survey conducted by Ali †arkoÈlu and
Binnaz Toprak (2000), only about 27% of Turkish women go out on the
street with their heads uncovered today, though this national statistic
masks a great deal of rural–urban and regional variation. Despite the con-
sistent presence of head covering, the growing popularity of veiling among
the middle classes in the 1980s and 1990s has been interpreted as indicat-
ing “the re-Islamization of personal relations, public spaces and daily prac-
tices” (Göle, 1997, p. 51). In part, this (re)interpretation of the headscarf
has stemmed from the new forms of veiling that have become popular
among lower-middle-class and middle-class university students in urban ar-
eas. While their mothers may have worn a simple headscarf (baêØrtüsò), or
may have left their heads uncovered, these young women have adopted
new styles of “turban” (türban) that reflect both changing class dynamics
and the politicization of Islam in Turkey. Combined with other elements of
dress such as raincoats, the new headscarves are larger, more colorful, and
more likely to be tightly pinned under the chin and draped fully over the
shoulders than the older forms. This form of veiling, called tesettür, regis-
ters particular class- and consumption-based identities at the same time as
it is often interpreted through the lens of Islamist political mobilization in
Turkey (KÏlϸbay & Binark, 2002; Saktanbar, 1994). According to the sur-
vey conducted by ÇarkoÈlu and Toprak (2000), 15.7% of Turkish women
adopt this “turban” style of veiling, while 53.4% wear the headscarf. A
third mode of veiling that has also gained in popularity in recent decades is
the black ¸arêaf, or full body veil. Unlike the other “headscarf”-based veil-
ing forms, the ¸arêaf may sometimes include facial covering as well, leaving
208 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

only the eyes or the eyes and nose exposed. The ¸arêaf remains a garment
worn by a small minority of women (3%, according to ÇarkoÈlu &
Toprak, 2000) and is frequently associated with tarikatlar, the Islamic
brotherhoods that are officially outlawed but nonetheless thriving in urban
areas.
Veiling practices vary in form and meaning. In focus-group discus-
sions, women both distinguished their own veiling (or not-veiling) practices
from others and debated the meaning of personal and community practices.
Part of the mobility of veiling as a symbol derives from its shifting position
within different interpretations of Islamic doctrine and the requirements of
religious practice and belief (see Secor, 2002). Further, the articulation of
veiling practices within Islam varies across the local contexts of villages,
communities, and neighborhoods. In focus-group discussions, the meanings
of veiling practices were contested, unfixed, and charged with controversy.
Is veiling about sin (an issue between the individual and God) or about the
preservation of women’s honor (a social issue)? Is veiling something that
should be understood as forced on women (by communities, families, or
male relatives), or something that women choose as an expression of inner
faith? When is veiling a traditional practice, when is it a sign of religiosity,
and when does it function as a political symbol? Played out through
women’s conversations and debates, these questions speak to the ways in
which veiling practice is modulated across different sociospatial contexts.
While much of this chapter will concentrate on the headscarf in politi-
cal discourse and practice (particularly drawing on the focus groups with
“Islamist” participants), the following dialogue, which took place among
older Kurdish women, is intended to highlight the range of veiling practices
and regimes of social control within which women negotiate their everyday
lives in Istanbul. Nazan, 9 who wears a casual headscarf, is a 40-year-old
mother of seven children who migrated from Siirt 14 years ago. Semiha,
who wore a headscarf to the focus group but removed it once seated with
the women, is 50 years old and the mother of six children. She is from
Diyarbakir and came from the Bismil district to Istanbul 5 years ago.
Gòldem did not wear any kind of headscarf. She is 41 years old, has three
children, and migrated from Malatya 14 years ago. Finally, Feriha, who
wears a headscarf, migrated from Bitlis 15 years ago and is the mother of
eight children. Although this dialogue is telescoped at two points for brev-
ity, its flow and rhythm are preserved to illustrate how questions of repre-
sentation and meaning are interwoven through a debate over the politics of
veiling, both within local communities and the wider national context.

MODERATOR: I’d like to pass to another topic. Among us there are two la-
dies who wear the headscarf. Why do you wear it?
NAZAN: The headscarf is in our traditions, in our hometown [memleket] we
should not show our hair, even a strand of hair, it must be covered. But
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 209

to cover we don’t wear the turban [türban], we wear a scarf. Every-

body according to their own desires. If I want I can uncover, but this is
what is natural for me.
SEMHA: I don’t agree with you.
NAZAN: I wanted it like this, I liked it like this. I liked myself dressed like
this. It is something from within me.
...
G¥LDEM: When it is bound up with tradition, that is one thing, but some
use it politically.
NAZAN: That is not us.
G¥LDEM: I wasn’t talking about you.
MAKBULE: In our villages it comes from our mothers and our fathers. Our
traditions are like this, yes.
G¥LDEM: I’m saying, if it is covering for tradition, my mother covered her
head lightly and so did my grandmother. But when this is carried out
for political reasons, that is when I find it wrong. There are many who
use it politically.
SEMHA: Our friend [Makbule] said, “I am free, I can wear it or not.” I defi-
nitely didn’t agree. Without a doubt, for us in the east [of Turkey], our
elders don’t accept you if your head is uncovered, “You, you’re going
to hell, or you’ll be a whore”. . . . I am not free, my daughter is not
free. . . . I mean, nobody goes to heaven or to hell with their clothes.
NAZAN: I wear a headscarf. An uncovered woman, a covered woman, how
do I know that I will go to heaven? Maybe she will go to heaven.
...
FERHA: Actually, I used to have my head uncovered. When I was single I
wore it but not this often. But after I was married I covered my head
like this. I definitely covered it myself. Look, I am married for 30 years,
and not once has my husband told me to wear this. We don’t have that
problem.
SEMHA: But most of the pressure comes from the community, from society.
FERHA: We also have daughters, and all of them have their heads uncov-
ered. There is no pressure among us.
SEMHA: We cannot go outside with our heads uncovered.
FERHA: No, there is no pressure among us.

When Nazan is asked why she veils, she immediately points out both that
she does not wear the kind of headscarf associated with the Islamist politi-
cal movement (the turban) and that she has chosen to veil of her own voli-
210 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

tion. Later in the focus-group discussion, she reiterates that her community
does not veil “fanatically” (aêÏrÏ kapanmÏyorduk), and further asserts that
there is no tie between religiosity and covering, that it is just “normal.”
Likewise, in the above dialogue, she assures Semiha that she does not ex-
pect covered women to be more likely to go to heaven than uncovered
women. This is a case in which the headscarf is worn neither as a political
marker nor as a sign of Koranic literacy or piety. Both Güldem and Nazan
draw a stark line between this “traditional” veiling and the kinds of prac-
tices they associate with political Islam. This delineation reproduces ele-
ments of public discourse (both secularist and Islamist) surrounding the
headscarf issue in Turkey. For example, it echoes the distinction made in a
1990 advertisement, placed in an Islamist women’s magazine, for tesettür
garments, that proclaimed “Veiling is not a tradition, but a law of Allah”
(KÏlϸbay & Binark, 2002, p. 503). Veiling for reasons of tradition is thus
distinguished from the new “conscious” veiling practices of the Islamist
movement.
Finally, a second fault line appears in the above dialogue when Semiha
airs her disagreement with Nazan over the issue of veiling choice. In the
conversation with Feriha that follows, it becomes apparent that the two
women’s communities practice very different veiling regimes. This diversity
of practices across localized migrant networks undermines attempts to gen-
eralize about veiling as a discipline and a choice. Thus the headscarf main-
tains an ambiguous and shifting relationship to constellations of gender re-
lations, community norms, religion, and politics in Istanbul. The following
section seeks to position the veil within political discourses that transect lo-
cal, national, and international scales.

THE “HEADSCARF ISSUE” AS SITE

OF ISLAMIST/DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

Veiling, in all its various forms, did not become a site of political intensity
in Turkey (or elsewhere) because it is inherently controversial or peculiarly
political as a form of dress (Eickelman & Piscatori, 1996). On the contrary,
the symbolic potency of veiling derives in large part from its historical in-
scription within orientalizing discourses (YeÈenoÈlu, 1998) and the ways in
which it was subsequently swept up within the modernizing currents of na-
tionalist imagination (Göle, 1996). In addition, I argue that the contempo-
rary political significance of the headscarf arises from the nodal function it
has come to play within Islamist, secularist, and democratic discourses. The
“headscarf issue” has been, in effect “issue-tized”10 through discourses of
Islamism and laicism, and within a transnational “individual rights” dis-
course that claims democracy as its organizing term. As such, veiling is also
taken to represent a particular ideal of gender relations, although in fact
there is no simple or stable relationship between veiling practices and re-
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 211

gimes of gender. In short, the headscarf has become a point of capture, a

site of intensity, for the ongoing negotiation of powerful and competing
ideologies circulating in Turkish society.
The function of the “headscarf issue” within the currents of Islamist
and democratic politics in Turkey can be identified in the invocation of reg-
ulatory veiling codes in the conversations of Islamist participants and oth-
ers. When discussing the necessity for Islamicization in Turkey, movement
participants very often point first to the injustice of the formal and informal
regulation of women’s veiling in public institutions such as schools, univer-
sities, courts, and the spaces of the state, especially the Turkish Grand Na-
tional Assembly (parliament). In my focus groups with Islamist partici-
pants, the question “Is Turkey a democracy?” led directly to the question of
the headscarf and its regulation by the state. Restrictions on veiled women’s
mobility within public spaces function both as evidence against the state
and its claims to democratic legitimacy and as proof of the need for
Islamicization of the public sphere.
The following dialogue between women in the group of Islamist par-
ticipants provides a window into the rights-based discourse within which
the headscarf issue is called forth. It begins with Meryem, a 49-year-old
illiterate woman who wears a full black ¸arêaf pinned under her chin, de-
scribing her experience at a march against the headscarf regulations.
Havva, who is 41 and a primary-school graduate, wears a scarf that is
wrapped loosely, but thoroughly, and pinned under her chin. Ceren, who
wears a headscarf as well, is 45 years old and has a middle-school educa-
tion. Like the others, she is a housewife and a mother.

MERYEM: What we enjoyed was like this, I mean, we were the people
[bütün halk biz]. It was like this, I mean: Let them remove the
headscarf! Covered people want to dress like this and they won’t be ex-
cluded! No one will go to school! We watched the evening news. They
went and took the diploma wearing a wig. Why must it be like this,
how did this situation come to be?
HAVVA: There are human rights. It is said that everyone is equal, and equal-
ity is taken from your hand.
CEREN: Pardon, can I say something? Twenty-four years old, with an imam-
hatip degree from Istinya Imam Hatip school, she cannot find work
and now sits at home for 3 years . . .
MODERATOR: Your daughter?
CEREN: My daughter.

There are three moments in the above discussion that are particu-
larly significant for an understanding of how the headscarf issue has
come to function within political discourse in Turkey. First, Meryem is
212 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

talking about acts of resistance, about becoming “the people” (halk)

through public action, at the same time as she is wondering why these
actions have become necessary. She invokes both a refusal to be ex-
cluded and a willful self-exclusion that presumably would reveal the fra-
gility of the system: “No one will go to school.” The incident that she
refers to, in which girls attended public school wearing wigs to maintain
their modesty, further serves to illustrate the potential for everyday sub-
version of the formal antiveiling regime. The second significant moment
is Havva’s appeal to human rights, a term that must be understood as
international in provenance and linked to domestic discourses of democ-
racy, Turkey’s bid for European Union membership, and the transnation-
alization of the headscarf issue. In her construction, Havva also highlights
the hypocrisy of the Turkish republic’s claims to the equal treatment of
its citizens. Third, Ceren brings the discussion back to the impact that
the headscarf dispute has had on her own life by describing her daugh-
ter’s situation. Although her daughter was able to attend a religious high
school, she has not found work; the unspoken implication is that her
unemployment results from the foreclosure of avenues for veiled women
and imam-hatip school graduates. The headscarf is thus inserted within
multiple interrelated frames of reference. As a site of resistance, the
“headscarf issue” is paradoxically both the site of the state’s failure and
a sign of grassroots empowerment. Further, it is a nodal point in na-
tional and international discourses of democracy and the state. And fi-
nally, the headscarf comes to stand in for the injustice, inequality, and
futility that saturate the difficult daily lives of ordinary people who
struggle to find work and make ends meet in Turkey’s fraught economy.
In the process of its “issue-tization” the headscarf in Turkey has be-
come bound up with an internationalized language of rights, democracy,
and equality. When Eren, a theology student in the group of Islamist men,
says, “I accept the headscarf as a basic human right,” his statement echoes
the pronouncement of the head of the Great Mosque of Paris who, in 1989,
argued: “If a girl asks to have her hair covered, I believe it is her most basic
right” (Soysal, 1997, p. 516). In her study of Muslim communities in
Berlin, Birmingham, and Marseilles, Yasemin Soysal (1997) concludes:
“The Islamic organizations I study do not justify their demands by reaching
back to religious teachings or traditions, but by recourse to the language of
rights, and thus, of citizenship” (p. 519). Indeed, participants in the group
of Islamist women called upon European and U.S. practices regarding veil-
ing rights and religious education to support their arguments against the
Turkish state’s laic practices. Although the context for my study is quite dif-
ferent from Soysal’s, my point is simply that the connection between
women’s veiling practices and human rights claims is being formulated in
relation to wider articulations of Islamic politics. At the same time, one
cannot say that the democratic, rights-based discourse takes the place of re-
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 213

ligious rationalizations for veiling in Turkey, as Soysal implies it does in her

study. Rather, it is the failure of the state to put into practice its professed
democratic ideals that gives the Islamist movement purchase for its central
argument in favor of the Islamicization of the public sphere. Describing the
mass media campaign of the Refah Partisi (RP) in the 1991 elections, the
first in which the Islamist party positioned itself as a potentially broad-
based movement, Ayse šncò (1995) describes a television spot in which
only one of the seven women shown had her head covered:

The only “turbaned” female was a young girl, directly addressing the
viewer to say that she was expelled from the university during her senior
year because she used a headscarf (the word “turban” was not used because
it signifies radical Islam), followed by a voice-over pledging that no one will
be discriminated against because of her beliefs and practices when the RP is
in power. (p. 61)

There is thus a double movement: headscarf proponents call upon a power-

ful, internationally sanctioned discourse of rights, and the Islamist move-
ment takes on the mantle of democratization through its support for veiled
women in the public sphere. While staunch secularists continue to claim, in
effect, that the headscarf violates the pure realm of the secular state as envi-
sioned by Atatürk, the most common objection voiced among ordinary
people is against the politicization of the headscarf and the “use” of veiled
women for political ends (as Güldem explains in the first dialogue). The re-
sult is the political production of the “headscarf issue,” articulated within a
relatively consistent set of terms.

AMBIVALENT CONSTRUCTIONS: VEILING RIGHTS

AND THE REGULATION OF DRESS AND DAILY LIFE

Among the effects of this production is an ambivalent articulation of “hu-

man rights” within Islamist discourses. In the focus group with Islamist
women, this emerged most strikingly from their discussion of other spatial
practices of dress. In the following dialogue, discourses of morality and
public composure veer toward the reversal, rather than the abolishment, of
the regulatory regime of public dress legislation and enforcement. We have
already encountered Havva and Ceren in the previous dialogue; this discus-
sion also includes Emel, a 29-year-old high-school graduate who is a house-
wife with one child; Belgin, a 27-year-old housewife and primary-school
graduate with no children; and Arzu, a 37-year-old, middle-school gradu-
ate, and mother of two children. All of the women wear headscarves, ex-
cept for Arzu who attended the meeting wearing an elegantly tailored,
dark-blue ¸arêaf, one perhaps reserved for special occasions.
214 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

EMEL: Covered families see the clothing outside, those whose bellies are un-
covered. This can’t be. All the men see it and look. I mean, a belly
shouldn’t be uncovered outside.
...
BELGIN: It is necessary not to have an effect [by wearing sexy clothes at
school].
HAVVA: There should be a clear rule [for dress in schools]. Of course, they
can go with their heads uncovered.
MODERATOR: Who is going to put this in place?
ARZU: The state will implement it, our state.
MODERATOR: But I thought we didn’t like the state’s dress codes!
CEREN: I mean, it is important to correct the state’s rules. Those who go
around so uncovered must be removed, I’m very sorry!
ARZU: Maybe we also don’t like what the state measures as justice.
CEREN: The state’s men make the law. I mean if there is a state, the laws are
made within this state. The rights of citizens, the law, can everything be
asked from the state?
MODERATOR: I am asking you.

When pushed to address the seeming contradiction between their previ-

ously expressed rights-based opposition to state intervention in veiling
practices and their support for legislation against immodest dress, Ceren
and Arzu argue that it is not a question of attenuating state control over
women’s dress, but rather of recalibrating the “justice” of the state to better
harmonize with their own, Islam-informed perspectives. The state is thus
invoked as the source of law and of right, and asked to implement and en-
force sanctions against particular modes of dress. At the same time, we can
read in Ceren’s final question an ambivalence, an uncertainty, as to what
exactly the role of the state might be in regard to rights and the law. The
discussants are not suggesting that uncovered heads fall in the category of
that which should be regulated by the state; like veiled women in other fo-
cus groups, participants in this group insist that veiling should not be an
enforced practice. However, uncovered bellies and miniskirts are frequently
cited (in this group and others) to illustrate the cultural politics of the for-
mal enforcement of the antiveiling regime. Indeed, the 1980 “Dress and
Appearance Regulation” (issued by military leaders who had then seized
power through a coup d’etat) not only barred headscarves from university
campuses but also contained directives against long hair and facial hair for
men and miniskirts for women (Olson, 1985). Yet, while measures have
been taken against veiled women, the policing of hemlines on university
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 215

campuses has been a low priority. The question thus becomes one of gover-
nance, as state interventions reinforce lines of distinction in Turkish society
by positioning female subjects in different ways depending on their dress
and adornment in the public arena.
The ambivalence of veiling rights discourses can also be read in the
representation of male bearding in focus-group discussions. Aspects of self-
presentation, such as facial hair, prayer beads, and the typical collarless
shirt, function to mark men as Islamist in Turkish society—though cer-
tainly not unambiguously, since beards, for instance, have also carried a
leftist meaning. Although beards were cited alongside veiling as marking
certain people and communities as “others” in opposition to the practices
of secularism, women expressed mixed views regarding the significance of
bearding both in Islam and as a “right.” When discussing formal and infor-
mal regulations against facial hair in professions and schools, Belgin and
Ceren had the following exchange:

BELGN: A person with a beard can cut it. The beard isn’t that important. I
mean so what if a man has a beard? I think men are better looking
without beards anyhow.
CEREN: In the view of our religion, a woman with the ¸arêaf and her hus-
band with a beard are put into practice in the Sunna. The Prophet had
a beard, and a robe [cüppe], of course.

For Belgin, the beard is simply not that significant, perhaps in part because,
unlike the veil, it does not operate to signify, however ambivalently, partic-
ular formations of gender ideology, honor, and purity. However, Ceren’s re-
ply situates the beard within the same set of Islamic practices as the ¸arêaf
(though she herself does not wear this garment). In any case, sanctions
against beards fail to spark the same moral and political discourses that are
mobilized around questions of veiling, further illustrating the specificity of
the headscarf issue as a nodal point in political discourse in Turkey.
The idea of veiling as a human right represents a particular conjuncture
of democratic and Islamist politics, a point at which these powerful legitimiz-
ing discourses interact to catalyze the “headscarf issue” as a shared construc-
tion and political focus. By understanding the political production of the
headscarf issue in this way, we are also able to unravel some of the seeming
contradictions of Islamist political discourse. For while rights are invoked in
support of veiling practices, headscarf supporters otherwise express a desire
for the Islamicization of governance rather than its “democratization” per
se.11 An example from the group of Islamist men illustrates this dynamic and
further evokes the headscarf as an issue situated within everyday practices of
government. Adem is an unmarried, 30-year-old high-school graduate and
the owner of a shop that sells watches and cell phones.
216 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

“The headscarf is forbidden at the university, fine; why isn’t the miniskirt
forbidden? I mean, when we talk about human rights, one is below and
another is above. When we talk about human rights, one person’s rights
will not be another’s. I mean they say that one tyrannizes the other, but it
also goes the other way. What one of them does is right, but according to
whom? What you did is wrong according to me, what is right to me is
wrong to you. Politics is found in the center of this, but we can’t find the
center. We have no politics.”

Adem’s statement encapsulates a sense of “rights” in Turkey as being not

only unevenly protected by the state, but profoundly incommensurable. In
this discourse, the (iconic) miniskirted woman is shown to have more rights
than the (iconic) veiled woman under the current state-enforced secular he-
gemony: “One is below and another is above,” as Adem says. However,
there is no resolution of this problem possible through a universalist human
rights regime within which, presumably, everyone’s rights are protected. In-
stead, the secular–Islamist contest is seen as a zero-sum game being played
out in the Turkish political field, a jockeying for position within a hierarchy
of rights. For Adem, this represents a failure of politics, not because secu-
lar–Islamist positions should be equally valued or protected—which he sees
as impossible due to their differing ethical systems—but because there is no
consensus taking shape, no middle ground between these polarities. With-
out this shared ethical ground, no “politics” is possible. A particular under-
standing of “rights” (as hierarchical) and “politics” (as premised upon
shared ethics) is thus filtered through the practices and discourses that have
come into play around questions of veiling in Turkey.
Participants in the group of Islamist men grappled with questions of
veiling and other norms of dress in relation to government, law, and rights.
In the dialogue that follows, these issues are discussed among three of the
men. Eren is a 27-year-old theology PhD student; because of his education,
he was frequently looked to as an authority in the group. In terms of age
and education, Hakan is at the other end of the spectrum in the group; a
49-year-old fisherman, watermelon peddler, and father of three children, he
has only a primary-school education. While Eren is clean-shaven and wore
a neatly pressed white shirt to the meeting, Hakan, with his skull cap and
long beard, presented a markedly “Islamic” appearance. BarÏê, who drives
a taxi, is 42 years old, has a high-school education, and is the father of
three children.

EREN: . . . I accept the headscarf as one of the basic human rights. At the
very least this is a symbol of religion. I see it as a necessity, and as such
a human right. . . . This is a commandment of religion, they [women
who wear the headscarf] view it as necessary and they have completely
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 217

internalized this, and when this comes off, a person feels naked, but
from above there is this insistence that you come out from under it.
HAKAN: Excuse me, can I ask something, to get help with it? Now, I didn’t
go to school, I struggled with primary school and dropped out. Now,
as I understand it, to go to university with a headscarf is forbidden. Is
there any law like that for an earring? A boy wears an earring, can he
also not enter, doesn’t this also break the law? I mean they talk about
documents of human rights, is there a difference between them?
EREN: Well, the one who wants to wear a headscarf, and the one who wants
to wear an earring—
HAKAN: Is there a difference? Seeing that the law is broken, whether you
enter with an earring or with a headscarf, is there a difference? I’m
thinking like this but then . . . it’s because I’m ignorant.
MANY AT ONCE: EstaÈfurullah [“Please don’t say such a thing about your-
self”].
EREN: I think there is something theoretically different about the situations
. . . I view the headscarf as a basic human right.
MODERATOR: Okay, I will ask something. Is the headscarf a political issue in
Turkey?
BARIê: Now when I am starting to eat I say bismillah [thanks be to God],
but another eats without saying this. This is also a symbol. One begins
saying bismillah, one doesn’t, if that [the headscarf] is a symbol, this is
a symbol. If to say bismillah is harmful to the foundation of this coun-
try, it [the headscarf] is also wrong, the two are tied.

After Eren reiterates the oft-cited basis of veiling as a human right, Hakan
intervenes with his sheepishly posed question. Although it is somewhat am-
biguous, in my understanding Hakan’s question goes to the issue of why
certain aspects of dress codes (such as prohibitions against earrings for
men) are not policed, while the secularist antiveiling regimes are formally
enforced. Hakan presents this as an arbitrary application of the law. In my
interpretation, he does this to highlight the cultural politics behind the
headscarf regulations (just as the women did by pointing out the lack of
antiminiskirt enforcement), rather than as a true confession of ignorance.
In response, Eren distinguishes the veil as a particularly significant, reli-
giously commanded, article of dress that can therefore be counted as a “hu-
man right.” He thus makes a distinction between the legislation of veiling
regimes and other kinds of dress codes based on their status in relation
both to human rights and to Islam. Finally, BarÏê’s analogy between the
headscarf and the Muslim practice of saying bismillah situates the head-
scarf within the symbolic lexicon of Islam. By suggesting that these prac-
218 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

tices and the threat that they pose to the state are equivalent, BarÏê elides
the differences between them (e.g., that one is public and visible while the
other is private and aural) in order to magnify their similarity within the
repertoire of Islamic symbolism. The state is thus seen as operating within
an anti-Islamic register that seeks to criminalize habitual “private” reli-
gious practices.
The production of the headscarf as an issue that stitches together dem-
ocratic and Islamist discourses gives rise to some ambivalent constructions
in Turkish political discourse. While the headscarf is framed in terms of hu-
man rights, everyday understandings of rights and government are formu-
lated within the context of the daily negotiation of politics and identity in
Turkey. In a milieu where the state is understood as acting to assert the
rights and interests of one group (the secular elite) over another (the Islamic
folk), rights come to be understood as a product of cultural hegemony. The
strategy of Islamist politics, then, is both to condemn the hypocrisy and vi-
olations of the secular establishment and to advocate for an Islamicizing
corrective.

BIOPOWER AND THE DISCIPLINING

OF ISLAMIST SUBJECTS

In this section, I turn to the question of how veiling and other Islamist prac-
tices situate subjects in relation to governmental practice and the technolo-
gies of citizenship. I argue that the administration of veiling practices per-
forms one aspect of biopower, which refers to the exertion of power over
life through both the disciplining of bodies and the regulation of popula-
tions (Foucault, 1978; on veiling, see also Ong, 1990). As a technique of
biopower, the spatial regulation of women’s dress is enacted by a range of
institutions (e.g., families, police, courts, and the army), and works at mul-
tiple levels, from the delineation of secular spaces to the prescription of
bodily conduct. Situated within this web of regulation, veiling practices be-
come a critical site for struggles over the delineation of public and private
realms, the limits of state intervention, and the enactment of citizenship
rights. It is within these struggles that liberal ideas of rights and privacy are
called forth to assert the limits of state power over bodies, lives, and spaces.
Veiling regulation as a technique of biopower takes place within the
context of broader practices of laicism in Turkey. While these practices
have a long history, arguably the most recent secularist intervention was
what has come to be known as “the February 28th Process,” an 18-point
antifundamentalist program initiated in 1997 by the National Security
Council, a military–civilian state advisory body established by the 1982
constitution. Focus group participants referred to this process as marking a
shift in the position of Islamism in Turkey. For example, in response to one
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 219

of the first questions asked, “How have you come into contact with state
institutions in your daily life?”, Eren discussed the headscarf issue and his
sister’s inability to continue studying due to the 8-year education law. He
went on to add the following:

“The Constitutional Court closed the Refah Partisi [in 1998]. They had a
concept of laicism, if I remember correctly, that defines laicism as ex-
tending into the family. It used a concept of laicism in the family, like reli-
gion. After seeing this you say, now this here, if it will enter to here, to my
mahrem [private, domestic] arena, then nothing remains. It will be able
to penetrate all areas. There is such an image. In that case there is a de-
struction of trust. Like it or not, ownership is reduced [sahiplenme
azalÏyor ister istemez]. The situation when the military comes up against
the nation, like in the 28 February situation, has this kind of psychologi-
cal effect. I mean, in general I have not come into confrontation with the
state, except as a family and psychologically. . . .”

In this statement, Eren is referring to the January 1998 Constitutional Court

ruling that shut down (not for the first or the last time) the Islamist party (RP),
which had come to power having gained a plurality of votes in the previous
elections. Hakan Yavuz (2000) summarizes this ruling as follows:

In its decision, the Turkish court argued that laicism is not only a separation
between religion and politics but also a necessary division between religion
and society. This justified regulation of social life, education, family, econ-
omy, law, daily code of conduct and dress-code in accordance with the
needs of everyday life and the Kemalist principles. (p. 38)

This court decision figures in Eren’s narrative as a moment of realization,

the point at which he comes to understand that the state’s laicism is a legiti-
mizing discourse for biopolitical techniques of government that operate on,
through, and potentially against populations, or what he calls “the nation”
(millet). He locates his encounter with the state within the realm of psy-
chology, in that he was disturbed personally by the implications of the
court’s ruling, and within his family, where his sister was affected by the
state’s regulation of veiling practices. While his statement that “ownership
is reduced” translates oddly into English, I have preserved the construction
rather than trying to smooth it out because it expresses a particular concep-
tion of governmental practice and that which escapes its grasp. The
mahrem, that is, the domestic, feminine sphere, is thus pictured as that
which is owned—in other words, private—and also that upon which the
laws of Islam alone are expected to act. In Eren’s statement, it is thus not
simply that the Turkish state has sought to cleanse Islam from the public
sphere, but rather that it has sought to organize populations through inter-
220 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

vention in the conduct of everyday life. Furthermore, what is at stake is not

only the specific issues of women’s dress, mobility, and education, but the
very boundary between the private and the public in Turkish society and
the limits of state intervention.
These biopolitical practices situate “Islamist subjects” in relation to
the police, the courts, and “the state” as it is mythologized in the Turkish
context (see Navaro-Yashin, 2002). Such practices beg the question posed
by Mitchell Dean (1999) and quoted at the outset of this chapter: Who are
we when we are governed in such a way? The question calls for an analysis
of how practices of government and authority are linked to modalities of
identity and citizenship. Some of these social effects can be traced through
the everyday practices narrated by focus-group participants. In particular,
encounters with the police and the military figure as sites of government
and “subjectification,” that is, as spaces where individuals find themselves
taking up particular positions in relation to other entities (such as “the na-
tion,” “the people,” or “the state”) and establishing themselves as political
subjects. In the group of Islamist women, participants discussed how their
veiling practices prevent them from attending military ceremonies for their
sons. Moreover, both men and women talked of police discriminating
against their communities and families because of the presence of veiled
women and bearded men; BarÏê referred to “insinuations” being made at
the police station because the men in his community are bearded, and Arzu,
whose son did not pass the police academy exam, surmised that the reason
might have been that “they do research, our men are bearded.” In this way,
practices associated with the police and the military delineate spaces both
for the regulation of Islamist identities and for the identification of Islamist
subjects.
Islamist women’s discussions of the impact of the 28th February pro-
cess on the imam-hatip schools reiterated their impression that juridical
and policing practices place their communities under a cloud of suspicion.
Havva was especially agitated as she demanded to know: “How many peo-
ple have imam-hatip graduates killed? Why are these forbidden? How
much damage have they done to this country?” Later, she again brought up
the way that imam-hatip schools, their graduates, and their proponents
were cast as somehow dangerous or criminal.
In fact, in some of their everyday religious practices, focus-group par-
ticipants found themselves coming under the discipline and surveillance of
the police:

EMEL: In our house we had religious meetings, these were taken from our
hands.
MODERATOR: How? Who took them?
EMEL: They came from the police station and forbade us to have one more
meeting.
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 221

CEREN: They [neighbors] must have complained.

EMEL: And for one year we didn’t go, why? I want to learn religion, and
other things.
CEREN: They are done in secret.
EMEL: They are done in secret. At one house today, we become afraid . . .
CEREN: From the point of view of religion, we are not free.
EMEL: It’s just a conversation after all! [Sohbet ya!]
CEREN: Women get Koran lessons in secret. You can’t gather with 10
women, immediately the police come down, as though there is a com-
plaint.
MODERATOR: In your nearby environment, in your neighborhoods, is it like
this?
CEREN: Yes. One by one we go out to the house where the discussion
[sohbet] will be . . .

Emel and Ceren’s discussion of clandestine meetings for Koranic study and
conversation among women draws attention to how complaints by neigh-
bors and police surveillance work to position Islamist women as criminal in
relation to the disciplinary biopolitical technologies of government.12 It is
not that Koranic study is illegal in Turkey; on the contrary, after 5 years of
primary school, students have the option of signing up for extracurricular
Koran courses that are organized through the Directorate of Religious
Affairs—in other words, under state supervision. In this context, Ceren and
Emel’s dialogue captures feelings of unease and reveals the tactics, such as
changing the place and going to the house stealthily, one by one, which are
used to keep these meetings under the radar.
In these discussions, participants both recount how the practices of
government have situated Islamist subjects and voice objections to what
they see as processes of marginalization and criminalization. In these ways,
the discussions among focus-group participants express an awareness of
how the Islamist–laic contest continues to play out through policy, enforce-
ment practices, and political discourses. The “issue-tization” and ambiva-
lent construction of veiling practices in Turkey take place within this con-
text of governmentality and biopolitical production.

CONCLUSION

What remains unspoken in this chapter is what is perceived to be at stake

for the secularist state in the regulation of veiling practices. It is not simply
a desire for power that has led to regulations over women’s dress in certain
spaces in Turkey, but rather a particular constellation of fears and desires
222 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

through which the veil has come to be seen as a symbol of resistance to

Ataturk’s modernizing reforms, especially concerning women’s roles in so-
ciety, and of the potential for Islamist revolution. As Esra šzyürek (2003)
shows in her discussion of the 1999 controversy sparked by Merve
KavakcÏ, the Refah Party parliamentarian who attempted to take her oath
of office while wearing a headscarf, the incursion of veiling into regulated
spaces is often seen as the potential harbinger of an Iranian- or even
Taliban-style reconfiguration of space, gender, and power in Turkey. News-
papers, protestors, and other analysts accused KavakcÏ, who had both
Turkish and U.S. citizenship, of being at once an American provocateur and
an Iranian agent. Along with then prime minister Bulent Ecevit’s famous
statement, “Please let this woman know her place,” these events once again
positioned the headscarf as a symbol of the dangerous porosity of bound-
aries.
Finally, what is at stake in the contest over the headscarf in Turkey is
the question of how the techniques of government, operating on and
through populations, structure and define the gendered spaces of political,
social, and religious life. In the attempt to delimit state intervention and to
assert the political subjectivity of citizens, liberal democratic discourse (mo-
mentarily, contingently) articulates with pro-veiling arguments in Turkey. I
argue that the assembly of knowledge and practices surrounding women’s
head covering works to situate individuals within particular relations of
power that are articulated at once through Islamist and liberal-democratic
discourses. When the “headscarf issue” thus operates as a point of capture
for Islamist and liberal-democratic arguments, this both affects how rights
are understood in the Turkish context and positions Islamists in a particu-
lar way vis-à-vis society, the state, and international human rights dis-
courses. The discipline and regulation of veiling thus operates as a tech-
nique of biopower that is encountered within the everyday spaces of the
police, the military, the army, schools, and legal rulings. Certainly, there is
much at stake in the headscarf contest, both for Islamists and for secular-
ists. Furthermore, these discourses and practices are themselves mobile; not
only is the correspondence between veiling and particular sociospatial re-
gimes of gender itself multiple and shifting, but so too are conceptions of
rights, democracy, and the state. Let this study appear not to arbitrate the
Islamist–secularist conflict, but to provide a partial window into its politi-
cal production.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the support of Grant No. BCS-0137060 from the National
Science Foundation for this research. I would also like to thank the team at the
Social Research Center (Sosyal AraêtÏrmalar Merkezi) in Levent, Istanbul, for all
The Headscarf Issue in Turkey 223

their help with this project. This chapter has benefited from the comments of partic-
ipants at the Pennsylvania State University Geography Department Coffee Hour,
where I presented a previous version of this argument. I would also like to thank
Banu GØkariksel and the editors, Ghazi-Walid Falah and Caroline Nagel, for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft. I alone am responsible for the contents of this
chapter.

NOTES

1. See Elizabeth šzalga (1998) for a discussion of the legal history of veiling in the
Turkish republic. See also Emelie Olson’s (1985) work on the headscarf dispute
in the early 1980s.
2. The imam-hatip schools, or preacher schools, were first opened in 1950 by the
state Directorate of Religious Affairs, which regulates all mosques in Turkey.
Their purpose was to train imams, who would then be employed by the
mosques as civil servants. In 1973, their charge was expanded as they began to
admit girls as well. By the late 1990s, the imam-hatip middle schools and high
schools graduated far more people than were employed by the mosques and
had simply become a religious alternative to secular education. After the 1997
law went into effect, the middle schools were gradually shut down, though
imam-hatip high schools are still in operation.
3. In Turkish, what I am calling “veiling” is most often referred to in terms of
“covering,” and in the specific terms of the headscarf or turban. I use the term
“veiling,” as it has been used elsewhere in the literature on gender and Islam, to
refer to practices of covering women’s heads, hair, and sometimes bodies and
faces for the purposes of modesty and honor and as an Islamic practice.
4. The group with Islamist women was facilitated by a trained female moderator
and myself. The group with Islamist men was facilitated by a male moderator
while I observed, with the consent of the participants, on a closed-circuit televi-
sion in another room. I chose to absent myself from the room for this discus-
sion because I thought that my presence, as a woman in a male space, might ex-
ert some effect on the conversation. I found the experience of watching the
group on television alienating and afterward decided it was probably unneces-
sary or not worth the peculiarity and the feeling of surveillance. This was the
first focus group I had done with men, and for later focus groups with men I
participated in person. The discussions were loosely structured but guided by
questions about associational life and everyday encounters with state institu-
tions.
5. The survey was of 4,005 Istanbul residents and was conducted in the summer
of 2002 as part of a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation
called “Reshaping Civil Society: Islam, Democracy and Diversity in Istanbul”
(BCS-0137060). Fourteen of the focus groups were also conducted as part of
this project. I received assistance with the survey and focus groups from the So-
cial Research Center (Sosyal AraêtÏrmalar Merkezi) in Levent, Istanbul.
6. Because of occasional shut-downs by the Constitutional Court and an internal
split, it is worth clarifying the lineage of Islamist parties in Turkey. First orga-
224 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

nized (under different names) in the 1970s, the Refah Partisi (RP), led by
Necmettin Erbakan, came to municipal power in Istanbul and Ankara (and
other municipalities) in 1994, and to national power with a plurality of the vote
(around 20%) in 1995. It was shut down in 1997, whereupon the Fazilet Partisi
(FP) took its place. The FP did not garner a plurality in the 1999 national elec-
tions, but did make it into parliament once more. However, it too was shut
down and subsequently replaced by two parties, the Saadet Partisi, which con-
tinues under Erbakan’s leadership, and the more popular Adalet ve KalkÏnma
Partisi, more commonly called Ak Parti, led by Recep Tayyip ErdoÈan. The Ak
Parti, which has eschewed the “Islamist” label and prefers to be considered
“Muslim democrat,” garnered an unprecedented 34% of the national vote in
November 2002.
7. Laicism (laiklik) is the Turkish term for secularism and reflects the particular
form that secularism has taken in Turkey, with the institutionalization of state
control of religion.
8. “Kemalists” refers to the political elite who practiced the reformist and West-
ernizing principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatòrk.
9. All names are pseudonyms.
10. See Ayêe šncü’s (1995, p. 53) discussion of how “Islam, as packaged for con-
sumption by heterogeneous audiences becomes an issue, something that has to
be addressed and confronted—provoking pro and con positions” within the
Turkish mass media in the 1990s. I borrow the term “issue-tization” from her
provocative argument.
11. As Jenny White (2002, pp. 166–170) points out in her study, and as my focus-
group discussions also illustrate, one response of Turkish Islamists to the ques-
tion of whether Islam and democracy are compatible is to argue that “Sharia is
democracy,” since contained within Islam are all the general goods associated
with democracy. Thus the Islamicization of society would obviate the need for
“democracy,” at least by that name.
12. I am reminded that when this focus group was assembling and the group of
veiled women disembarked from the van in the street in Levent and entered the
research quarters, we joked about how the neighbors would become suspicious
of our activities.

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Discourse,
The Women’sRepresentation,
Mosque in Gabiley
and the Contestation of Space

9 Social Transformation
and Islamic Reinterpretation
in Northern Somalia
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley

ABDI ISMAIL SAMATAR

Transformations in the lives of Muslim women are overlooked

or misunderstood when seen solely in terms of Islam or
religious revival. The focus of Islam as determinant of
women’s place has largely ignored the role of the world system
and capitalist expansion in shaping gender relations,
emphasizing instead unchanging religious texts and traditions.
Studies of women’s integration into the world system, on the
other hand, often analyze the material changes in women’s
lives without connecting them to processes of religious and
cultural transformation.
—BERNAL (1994, p. 59)

P
recolonial Islamic practice in Somalia was among the most
liberal in the Muslim world regarding gender relations and women’s in-
volvement in economic and social life. The country’s colonization and the
economy’s commercialization induced contradictory social processes. These
processes simultaneously intensified men’s control over women and their
resources and created new opportunities for women’s advancement. The
dynamics generated by these twin processes conditioned emerging patterns
pertaining to women’s role and social location in Islamic northern Somalia.
An issue central to these patterns was women’s access to Islamic and secu-
lar education.

226
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 227

Most Islamic societies have denied women the opportunity to gain sig-
nificant training in Islam, although the holy Qur’an and the prophet’s
Hadith urge all Muslims to seek knowledge:

God will exalt those who believe among you, and those who have knowl-
edge, to high ranks. (Qur’an xx, 114)

The search for knowledge is a duty for every Muslim, male or female—
Hadith. (May, 1980, 386-6)

The denial of Islamic education to women and girls for several centuries led
to an absence of Muslim women educated in Islamic affairs and of female
religious leaders. This established a tradition in which only men interpreted
the holy text and the prophet’s sayings. In the process, women lost many
freedoms they had gained in Islam’s early years. For instance, the opportu-
nity to interpret Islamic canons and to lead prayers, both of which were
possible for learned women during the prophet’s life, almost vanished.
Muslim women in many Islamic societies have struggled to regain lost
ground and to empower half of the Islamic umma (the community of all
Muslims) in accordance with Allah’s sense of justice (Afshar, 1996). Central
to these engagements has been access to Islamic education, in particular,
and to the opportunity to gain leadership in Islamic affairs. The establish-
ment (1970–1972) of a women’s mosque in the town of Gabileh, located in
northwest Somalia, was a historic benchmark in the annals of the Somali
and Islamic worlds.1 My claim is that the women who built possibly the
first women’s mosque in the world had two goals. Their first and foremost
objective was to create an autonomous space that would allow women to
join men in prayers and other religious rituals without transgressing on Is-
lam’s tenets.2 Their second purpose was to establish a center where women
could learn and deepen their understanding of the Qur’an and other Islamic
texts. Such a center suggested an implicit criticism of Islamic practice,
which did not provide women with the opportunity to study Islam. This
censure also challenged men’s interpretation of Allah’s fairness and justice.
For example, the Qur’an and the Hadith do not mandate that women pray
in the back of the mosque. As a result, the essence and spirit of Islam do not
prohibit women from praying in a separate but adjacent mosque. Accord-
ing to this interpretation, women would stand in lines parallel to the men’s
lines, rather than behind them. This practice could suggest that men and
women are equal in Allah’s eyes, as both submit to Allah’s will in their
prayers. The introduction of such a practice is also in accord with the hajj
(Islamic pilgrimage) convention where women and men perform their obli-
gations without regard to sex segregation and gender hierarchy in terms of
geographic location (Nanji, 1996).
Finally, the women’s mosque in the seemingly conservative small
228 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

town of Gabiley signals the availability of a progressive Islamic alterna-

tive to a Euro-Americacentric view of women’s liberation. This alterna-
tive liberation disconnects Islam from the patriarchal practices of differ-
ent cultures in the Muslim world. Islam-based women’s liberation will
help eliminate women’s isolation and redefine the public–private divide
without abandoning the decency and mutual respect stipulated by the
Qur’an and Hadith.
The rest of this chapter is divided into four parts. The first section
schematically outlines the structure of northern Somali society’s precolonial
pastoral economy, its division of labor, and the political and religious role
of men and women. The second section highlights the ways in which colo-
nialism and intensified commercialization affected women’s role in the
economy, the consequent redefinition of Islamic practice regarding middle-
class women’s dress code and mobility, and the secular education of girls.
The patterns set during the latter years of colonial rule gained strength after
independence in 1960. This long historical outline is necessary to context-
ualize the establishment of the women’s mosque in Gabiley. The third sec-
tion narrates the story of the women’s mosque. The chapter’s conclusion
assesses the significance of the mosque’s establishment and its limited con-
tribution to progressive Islamic reform in Gabiley and the rest of Somalia.

PRECOLONIAL POLITICAL ECONOMY,

WOMEN, AND ISLAMIC PRACTICE

Precolonial northern Somali society consisted of two distinct but connected

parts: the commercially oriented small towns dotted along the Gulf of Aden
and the pastoral interior. Among the major coastal towns were Zeylac,
Bulaxaar, Berbera, Maydh, Calaula, Hobyo, Muqdisho, Marka, and Barawa.
The story of these port towns is told elsewhere (Alpers, 1983; Kapteijns &
Spaulding, 1989; Kassim, 1995; Reese, 1999). The focus of this chapter is
the predominantly pastoral northern Somali society.
The division of labor in this pastoral society dovetailed with patriar-
chal, but relatively open, cultural norms (Kapteijns, 1999; Samatar, 1989)3
and a relaxed interpretation of Islam. Men and women were fully involved
in the production of necessities for the family, although in different spheres.
Women were responsible for building portable homes in pastoral areas and
mud huts in settled communities. Their responsibilities also included main-
taining the house and managing small ruminants such as sheep and goats.
When rainwater was within easy reach of the community, women took
sheep and goats to the watering holes. The small stock had to stay close to
settlements as it required frequent (alternate days) watering, unlike camels,
which could go without water for up to 15 days. Girls looked after these
animals as long as they stayed within a half-day walk of the village. Fur-
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 229

thermore, married women and their unmarried daughters traveled some

distance to collect firewood and reeds for making house mats and carpets.
Married women had more mobility, while their teenaged daughters faced
greater restrictions, particularly as they approached marriage age (15–20).
Finally, although women were restricted to the domestic sphere, they were
still allowed to participate in a wide array of productive and social activi-
ties that took them away from home.
In contrast, men, particularly young ones, tended to large livestock,
such as camels, and maintained water wells. They would regularly be away
in distant grazing areas for months. During the wet season, men and their
camel herds traveled some distance to save the rangeland close to the settle-
ment for the dry season. Men also left home when they went out to explore
new grazing areas. Men plowed the fields, using a hoe or oxen-mounted
wooden plow, weeded the farm, and harvested the produce, usually sor-
ghum, maize, and beans, in the few farming communities in the western ar-
eas of northern Somalia. They protected the fields from scavenging beasts
and birds and maintained the underground granaries.
Livestock was the main form of capital in this mainly pastoral society.
Access to rangeland and water were the conditions necessary for this capi-
tal’s reproduction. A household or an individual family owned neither the
rangeland nor the water resources. Men from several families dug and
maintained water wells. These families shared use of the wells. The whole
community or several communities had usufruct rights to rangeland within
reasonable proximity of the settlement. Rangelands, except those that were
closed off (xidhmo) to save them for needier times, were open to all mem-
bers. The elder’s council was responsible for deciding to close off a grazing
area. In addition, the area surrounding a community was not used for graz-
ing during the rainy season. Most livestock did not need to stay close to the
village when water and grass were plentiful.
Unlike this relatively complementary division of labor in the economy,
men were hegemonic in the domains of formal politics and religion. The
council of elders responsible for managing community affairs was exclu-
sively male. Although all adult men did not necessarily participate in the
council’s deliberations, the process was open and fairly democratic. Despite
the absence of bureaucratically sanctioned mechanisms for selecting elders
and council leaders, individuals rose to prominence and gained respect for
their ability to clearly articulate issues and to render fair and balanced judg-
ments in disputes. The council had the authority to ensure that community
members abided by the dictates of Islam, Somali Xeer (customary law), and
the edicts of tradition. The council’s authority extended to deciding on
women’s role in the economy, their claim to property, and their treatment
by kinfolk. Although women were physically absent from these councils,
they significantly influenced the elders’ deliberations and decisions. Women
who were culturally knowledgeable used their superior understanding of
230 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

tradition to influence community affairs through their husbands, fathers,

and brothers.4
Men held sway in religious affairs and related scholarship and ceremo-
nial matters. Women were not formally barred from studying Islam, but
they were not encouraged to do so.5 Their knowledge of Islam was limited
to what they learned as children from their mothers and as adults from
their husbands. In Somali mythology, there were no women whose religious
reputation, even in fiction, came close to the fame of the Somali ruler
Araweelo. This mythical female became the lord of the land. Araweelo had
the reputation of being a tough ruler who is said to have castrated all men
except those from whom she wanted to have children. There are no other
known women who presided over such councils or who became rulers of
their communities. Muunisa is the only mythical religious female leader.
The devil is said to have seduced her on her way to prayers. Consequently,
she lost both faith and face. The only female religious leader whose life is
documented historically is Sheikh Dada Masiti, who became a leading Is-
lamic figure in her hometown of Barva in the latter part of the 19th century
(Kassim, 1995). The religious division of labor reinforced what patriarchal
culture already sanctioned.6 Women were relegated to work in the domestic
sphere and excluded from gaining religious titles, such as wadaad, sheikh,
or imam.
These political and religious demarcations partially governed socio-
spatial practice and gender ideology. Women’s mobility was not severely re-
stricted. Kapteijns and Spaulding (1989) note that a few women may even
have been key links in the trade between pastoralists and coastal towns. Al-
though women were barred from certain public spaces, such as the elders’
council, and from conducting religious ceremonies, such as the Mowleed
(the prophet’s birthday celebrations), they participated in many other out-
door economic and social activities. For example, unlike in some Islamic
societies, northern Somali women openly and publicly participated in cere-
monial dances with men.
In addition, men were excluded from intruding into the women’s
arena. In fact, men who partook in a women’s gathering were labeled
dumar shaneyeh (he who is the women’s fifth column). Fearing such a bit-
ing label, most men did not interfere with women’s spaces. Women pro-
tested when men intruded into their domain, and the elders’ council acted
swiftly to correct such contravention. In summary, women were not con-
fined to the home, except during the last month of pregnancy and the 40
days after the birth of a child. Beyond these limits, women went almost
anywhere necessary to accomplish their tasks.
Finally, women’s and men’s traditional dress was relatively unre-
strictive. Women’s dress consisted of a long wraparound cotton sheet
(qayd) that left a woman’s neck, face, hands, and part of the shoulders un-
covered. This dress was similar to the guntiimo used in more recent years in
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 231

southern Somalia. In contrast, two cotton sheets constituted men’s tradi-

tional pastoral dress.

COLONIAL TRANSFORMATION, WOMEN,

AND SECULAR AND ISLAMIC EDUCATION

Colonialism and the commercialization of social life and subsequent

transformations in the northern Somali pastoral economy inevitably en-
tailed changes in the practice of Islam and other cultural norms (see Figure
9.1) (Samatar, 1997).7 This section briefly describes how the dynamics of
colonization and commercialization affected the division of labor, and the
reinterpretation of Islamic practice to sanction housewivization of middle-
class women and to impose a new dress code on women. Furthermore,
it sketches the manner in which colonial secular education was intro-
duced into northern Somalia and how it reinforced discrimination against
girls.
The colonial state reinforced Somali patriarchy in the way it reinter-
preted Islamic law (Shari’ah) with the help of native ulema (the body of
mullahs). The state promulgated new laws that enhanced male dominance
and control. At the same time it also opened career opportunities for
women by establishing girls’ schools during the final days of colonial rule.
Similarly, commercialization induced parallel processes that led to the
housewivization of women in middle-class families and the entry of poor
urban women into market opportunities.
As in other African regions, colonialism in Somalia brought new pro-
cesses of articulation in the regional and global economy. The changes colo-
nialism induced included commercialization of key resources and rapid ur-
banization. The division of labor described above remained intact in the

New laws reifying male dominance

Colonization

Girls’ schools and career opportunities

Housewivization of middle-class women

Commercialization

Opportunities for self-employment in the new markets

FIGURE 9.1. Impact of colonization and commercialization on gender division of labor

in northern Somalia.
232 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

rural areas until the middle of the 1930s (Samatar, 1989). However, the
control and use of small livestock was noticeably changed, as they were
quickly and progressively commoditized. Women’s grip over small rumi-
nants began to loosen. This stock became the colony’s chief trade commod-
ity, and men were the principal organizers of this trade. They marketed and
sold the animals. Although cash from the sales technically belonged to the
household, the men retained full control over its distribution. The wife re-
ceived some money to be used for family sustenance, while the man re-
tained some for his use. This change indirectly, but radically, undermined
women’s access to and control over this key resource. It also increased a pa-
triarch’s control over the labor of women and female children.
The establishment of colonial urban centers and the expansion of old
coastal towns, both linked to the new commodity economy, accompanied
the commercialization of the rural economy. The growth of urban centers
gained momentum as trade increased briskly between 1925 and 1940
(Samatar, 1989). The principal towns were Hargeisa (the colonial capital),
Berbera, Burco, Boraama, Cerigabo, Gabiley, and Laas Canood. The ex-
pansion of the colonial urban economy led to the emergence of an urban-
based class social structure. The dominant players in this new social econ-
omy included traders, the staff of the colonial administration, and teachers.
This transformation led to the development of a new family type and new
household relations.8 Men in the emergent class whose income or salaries
were high enough sought housewives rather than wives who remained ac-
tive in the economic sphere. Members of this group who had livestock in
the countryside often had second wives to attend to their property. This
new relationship confined the wives to the home and separated them from
domestic work altogether if their husbands’ incomes were sufficient to pay
for domestic help. Middle-class households borrowed girls from their rural
relatives and paid them a token wage in return. The higher the wealth and
income of a household, the more domesticated were its female members.
These household arrangements were the ideal image of the urban, middle-
class Somali family. Families whose wealth or income was not sufficient to
hire domestic help had to resort to old ways. Women in these families be-
came village or urban market women, such as butchers. Others, particu-
larly in smaller towns and villages, practiced rural occupations, such as
rearing livestock.
Islam was also redefined as social differentiation unraveled. The first
sign of this was using Islam to defend housewivization.9 Such use of Islam
was evident in work and dress. Middle-class wives were excluded from pro-
ductive economic activity outside the home. Moreover, this group’s move-
ments were curtailed, although they could visit friends and relatives.
Dress vividly captures the changing conceptions of appropriate con-
duct and presentation. In pastoral communities, the traditional wrap-
around, white, cotton sheet with no sleeves and a scarf (masar or gambo)
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 233

covering the hair of married women were the norm. In the new urban soci-
ety, the one-piece dress (toob) with sleeves (or sleeveless if the woman
worked outside the home) and an extra shawl became requisite. The toob,
adopted from coastal towns, was accompanied by a heavy, long, flowing
skirt (googarad) that covered all of the lower body except the heels. The
shawl was not required inside the home unless men were visiting. In some
instances, the new dress code included the shadir and the hijab. This urban
dress code became the norm for females, starting at age 14. Wives of the
commercial and administrative classes could afford this attire, but even
lower-class women attempted to follow suit, given the higher status con-
ferred by the dress code.10 Currently, in a phase of intensified conserva-
tism,11 the shawl is tied under the chin, protecting the neck and much of the
face from vision.
The toob–googarad–masar–gambo–shawl dress code made some head-
way in the countryside until recently. However, given its restrictiveness, it
never became the norm in pastoral–farming communities. The old dress
code prevailed in the countryside for the most part. Rural women wore ur-
ban dress if they could adapt it to their work demands. In later years a
more flexible and lighterweight sleeveless dress, called the diric, replaced
the toob, particularly with the younger generations. Finally, the determi-
nant for urban versus rural dress codes was and still is the degree of a
woman’s involvement in productive labor.
Colonialism set in motion a number of processes that gave men greater
opportunities to secure their interests. Women’s autonomy worsened, and
they became more dependent on men, who interacted with the increasingly
commercialized and bureaucratized society. Pastoral women had to rely on
men to sell their animals so they could have cash to purchase the needs of
the household, and urban middle-class women became relatively isolated
housewives. While the middle-class, housewife-based urban family became
idealized, poor women in towns could not afford this lifestyle and had to
engage in petty trade and other means to support their families (Cabdillahi,
1998).
By the mid-1950s a clear rural–urban divide in economic organization,
hierarchical structure, and gender ideology existed in northern Somalia. Al-
though the new economy and the reinterpretation of Islam disadvantaged
women, most women who were poor and mostly rural escaped the ideal
family code’s restrictions. However, the unavailability of Qur’anic and sec-
ular education to women blocked their participation in the higher echelons
of the new economy and society whether they were rural or urban, middle
class or poor. Western and Islamic education proved to be critical in form-
ing gender roles. Qur’anic schools were accessible to small numbers of chil-
dren in traditional pastoral communities. These were boys’ schools, and the
duration of training was rarely more than 2–3 years. The boys were then
expected to contribute to the household. Only a few exceptional boys were
234 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

trained beyond this to become religious authorities, or waddads. The young

men who pursued Islamic teaching then had to travel beyond their villages
and live in Islamic centers, such as Harar, under an accomplished sheikh’s
tutelage. Young girls did not receive similar Islamic training (Xassan,
1999).
Colonial education entered this terrain. Unlike in many parts of colo-
nial Africa, Christian missionaries did not venture deep into Somali terri-
tory. There was one mission school for orphans in the port town of Berbera
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Muslims’ early-morning call to
prayers irritated those staffing the small colonial administrative station in
Berbera. The officers felt that the call disturbed their sleep and ordered its
discontinuation. This raised the ire of a young dynamic sheikh who had re-
cently returned from a long tour of Islamic training in Mecca and Medina.
Sayid Moxamed Cabdullah Xassan defied the order and had several con-
frontations with colonial authorities. In the end he left for the interior to
organize a liberation war to rid the country of colonial infidels and mis-
sionaries. He almost succeeded in doing so in 1910, when the British evacu-
ated the last stronghold of Berbera. The liberation war lasted until 1921,
when British war planes bombed Sayid Moxamed’s forts. This was the first
time British war planes were used in subjugating local resistance in the col-
onies. Sayid Moxamed fled deep into the Somali–Ethiopian region. From
that time Islam became the main source of resistance to British rule, and the
authorities never dared to restrict prayers again.
The British attempt to establish secular education confronted the com-
munity’s suspicion regarding the real agenda behind such a program. The
colonial authorities and several Somalis who supported secular education
constantly argued with religious leaders (Somaliland Protectorate, Educa-
tion Department, 1956; Celmi & Muxumed, 1999). Two incidents high-
light these confrontations. First, colonial education authorities wanted to
use Latin script to write the Somali language in order to teach it in schools.
This experiment was modeled after the Kiswahili experiment in British East
Africa. Community elders and religious leaders vehemently opposed this ef-
fort, and it was shelved until 1971, 11 years after the British and Italian
Somalilands united to form the Somali Republic. Those who opposed Latin
script claimed that it was a colonial strategy to introduce Christianity and
to reduce the proud Somali to the status of the East African Bantus
(Samatar, 1989).12 The only Somalis who were educated beyond basic liter-
acy in Arabic and arithmetic were sons of notables sent to Aden and Sudan
(British Somaliland Protectorate, 1934).
The second instance exemplifying the resistance to colonialism oc-
curred in Gabiley. A British colonial education officer and his Somali
assistant13 came to town in 1951 to convince village elders to establish an
elementary school. Primary schools had already been established in Har-
geysa, Boorama, and Berbera in the 1940s. In spite of this, Gabiley resi-
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 235

dents pelted the officers with stones and ran them out of the village
(Cabdillahi, 1986). The elders claimed that establishing an elementary
school was another Christian ploy. Only one village resident stood up to
the crowd in support of the school.14 Despite massive resistance, the school
was built in 1953.
The larger community and those who resisted secular education de-
manded that boys be educated in Islam and be able to read the Qur’an as
prerequisites for enrolling in secular schools. The colonial authorities ceded
to this agenda. With this concession, the number of secular and Qur’anic
schools increased. Boys learned the Arabic alphabet and memorized the
Qur’an. Although these schools were for boys only, a few girls attended
them. The main Qur’anic school in Gabiley, established in the late 1940s,
grew substantially once secular education was promulgated. Macalin
Xassan Fahiye ran this Qur’anic school. Many villagers who attended this
school fondly call it Ma’alin Hassan University. The few girls who attended
Macalin Xassan’s school did so in the early 1960s. The girls of that genera-
tion do not have similar nostalgic memories of the institution (Cusman,
1998).
Boys began attending Qur’anic and secular schools in Gabiley. The
prerequisite for secular school admission was a child’s ability to recite all
the chapters in the first Giz of the Qur’an.15 Many boys who met this re-
quirement never entered secular school due to the scarcity of these institu-
tions.
In contrast, girls could not attend secular schools because they did not
have the requisite Qur’anic knowledge and because of the patriarchal pro-
hibitions imposed on women. This systematic exclusion of girls from
Qur’anic and secular education reinforced the middle-class notion of the
ideal family and of women’s role in it. Girls did not need an education as
they were expected to marry young. The colonial government did not allo-
cate any resources for girls’ education until the last years of colonial rule.
The first and only girls’ elementary school was established in Burco, a
town that was at the forefront of antisecular education resistance, in 1953.
The school started with two European mistresses and 30 Somali girls.
Twelve of the girls were borders (Somaliland Protectorate, Education De-
partment, 1953). This school was turned into a girls’ intermediate school in
1957. Another girls’ intermediate boarding school was established in
Hargeisa in 1962. Science and math were not taught in girls’ schools, as
students were prepared to become housewives for the emergent male elite
(Xudhuun, 2000). Only a few escaped this fate. The two most illustrious
exceptions became a nurse and a school principal in the late 1960s. Others
became government clerks, some leaving the service when they married.
This environment did not nurture confident young women. In fact, a large
number of girls who went to school dropped out as their parents tacitly en-
couraged them to marry before they became “too old.”16 In contrast, the
236 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

boys received lifelong professional skills training through the Clerical

Training Center in Hargeisa, the Teachers’ Training Center in Camoud, sev-
eral intermediate boarding schools, and two senior boarding secondary
schools in Sheikh and Camoud. These boys became independent Somalia’s
administrators, teachers, medical professionals, and political leaders.
The Somali government’s view regarding girls’ education was ahead of
public sentiment. Steeped in patriarchy and mesmerized by the seeming
glory of daughters and sisters living as housewives of well-to-do men, So-
mali men were not inclined to push a public agenda centered on girls’ edu-
cation. Despite this unsupportive social climate, the new government
opened up schooling opportunities for girls. By the late 1960s, many girls’
elementary schools existed across the country. Additionally, a large number
of girls were also attending what were previously boys’ intermediate
schools.
Expanding secular education for girls induced growth in girls’ Qur’anic
schools. In Gabiley, Macalin Xassan University became a coeducational in-
stitution in the early 1960s. Later other coeducational Qur’anic schools
were established.17 For the first time in Somali history, girls had open ac-
cess to religious education. Once girls learned the requisite first Giz, they
went to government schools. Islamic history and the Qur’an were among
the subjects taught in the secular schools. Moreover, some students in secu-
lar schools spent their summer vacations in Qur’anic schools to deepen
their knowledge of Islam.
Gabiley’s first girls’ elementary school was established in 1964 as part
of the independent government’s national education initiative. The school
consisted of one rented room in the center of the town’s main street. Eleven
girls were enrolled in standard one. The 11 girls faced adjustment problems
during the early days, as some men and boys opposed this development.
Some boys in the town harassed these first-graders; the school uniform that
included a short skirt exacerbated this harassment. Despite these problems,
many of the opinion makers in the village, such as Haji Asker Cabdillahi,
fully supported girls’ education and the new school in Gabiley. Three years
later the school moved to a new building adjacent to the boys’ elementary
school. By this time, more than 100 girls were enrolled in this coeducational
day school. The school had male teachers except for the recently hired reli-
gious instructor.
A Somali family from Allah-Ibadey, a town on the Somali–Ethiopian
border, settled in Gabiley in the early 1960s. Sheikh Ismail, the father of the
family, was hired as a religious education teacher in the boys’ elementary
school. His wife, Sheikh Marian Sheikh Ismail,18 was also a student of Is-
lam, trained by her father and her husband. Sheikh Marian’s skills found a
ready market in the community.
A small but vibrant women’s center called Sitaad existed in the village
from the late 1950s (Kapteijns & Ali, 1996).19 A number of middle-aged
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 237

and older women established the Sitaad center.20 A few of the older widows
supported themselves and their families. These women’s meager resources
built the small mud-adobe building that housed the center. All women were
practicing Muslims who observed the five prayers of the day and fasting
during Ramadan month.
While men could gather and pray at the main mosque to celebrate reli-
gious occasions and gather at the teashop for socializing, women had no
similar public gathering spot. The Sitaad center, located on the periphery of
the main village, was the only public space where women could gather. It
was a devotional space where women sang religious songs and attended to
some of their collective concerns. Since none of the center’s founding mem-
bers were trained in Islam, Sheikh Marian was an Allah-sent blessing for
the group. The sheikh was immediately inducted and began leading prayers
and preaching in the center. She also began to teach the women basic Is-
lamic history and the Qur’an.
With the increased demand for girls’ religious education, Sheikh Mar-
ian began running her own Qur’anic school a few months after she arrived
in Gabiley. She became an instant celebrity as the only female Qur’anic
teacher in town and in the region. The Qur’anic school gave her exposure
in the community and with public officials. The girls’ government elemen-
tary school then recruited her as the school’s religious teacher. The author
was a junior colleague of Sheikh Marian during his national service years in
1972–1973.
The development of secular education opportunities for girls and the
concomitant demand for Qur’anic education generated a self-reinforcing
dynamic where women gained access to two spheres heretofore forbidden
to them. Knowledge of the Qur’an as a prerequisite for secular school ad-
mission created, in this instance, a new tradition in which Islam and secu-
larism mutually reinforced each other’s growth, defying the often-noted
immutuality of tradition and modernity.

THE WOMEN’S MOSQUE

Gabiley was established as an agricultural village in the early 1930s.

Gabiley had six teashops and 26 retail stores in 1945. The expanded transit
trade between Ethiopia and Somalia during the Italian occupation of the re-
gion in the period 1939–1941 significantly stimulated the village’s eco-
nomic activity (Samatar, 1989). Despite trade expansion, Gabiley remained
a sleepy religious village until the late 1950s.
Gabiley’s first permanent mosque was built in the late 1940s and reno-
vated in 1958. A second and smaller mosque was established in 1963. Men
used the two mosques for prayers and other Islamic functions. These
mosques were not called “male” mosques, although they were essentially
238 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

for males. Women rarely prayed or worshipped in the mosques. Occa-

sionally women prayed in the back of the mosques, particularly during the
two annual Islamic celebrations, the Eids.
Nearly 10 years after the establishment of the Sitaad center (1968–
1969), the Sitaad community members considered expanding the center
into a mosque and women’s community center. They sought financial help
from town merchants and the district commissioner.21 Their request was
turned down; indeed, the women received no assistance from any man or
authority they approached. The men told the women that the Sitaad center
did not need to be upgraded into a mosque. Furthermore, the women were
told that they could pray in the verandahs of the existing mosques. The
women were angry and felt betrayed because some leaders ridiculed their
plan. However, these setbacks simply fortified their resolve to establish
their own mosque.22
After noting the town leaders’ behavior, the women reorganized them-
selves and resolved to build the mosque on the empty plot straddling the
main mosque and Macalin Xassan’s Qur’anic school.23 The group applied
for a land grant for the plot from the local government. They received the
permit for the 2-acre plot free of charge. Such a grant was not unusual,
since all unoccupied land belonged to the state. What is not known is why
the town leaders and the district commissioner who ridiculed the women’s
request for help did not block the land grant. Possibly the application for
the plot went to a low-level clerk who was not informed about what the
leaders thought of the women’s request. Moreover, it is also possible that
everybody knew about the land grant application, but the officials could
not legally stop it. The land and the building were not subject to any taxes.
The construction of the first women’s mosque in Somalia, and possibly
the first mosque built by women for women in the world, began in 1970.24
Organizers included Sheikh Marian Sheikh Ismail, Xalimo Cabdillahi,
Amina Sheikh Muse, Casha Maweel, Fatimo Kahin, Cibado Celmi, Casha
Sultan, Tusmo Abrar, Laqanyo Cabdillahi, Mako Ismail, Casha Haji, and
Khadija Hashi Booni. The group had limited resources, no more than a few
hundred shillings (about US$200) they had scavenged from their paltry sav-
ings. The mosque’s construction was a painstakingly slow process, given
the women’s lack of financial resources and the townsmen’s unwillingness
to contribute. The men’s attitudes contrasted sharply with the generosity of
poor rural women in the surrounding villages and settlements. Each rural
woman contributed a penny or two from her daily milk sales in town.
Some who did not donate cash gifts enthusiastically contributed their labor
to the effort. Other women from as far away as Djibouti sent their contri-
butions. Despite these donations, the Sitaad group and other women in
Gabileh had to provide most of the resources to sustain the project.
A committee managed the building process. They hired local masons,
carpenters, and some laborers. In addition, many women worked as mortar
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 239

and cement mixers. They built the mosque with locally quarried, flat, clay
stone instead of the more expensive and attractive block-like sandstone or
concrete block. The main mosque was built with sandstone blocks. The
women used mud, a standard construction method for houses built since
1970, to cement the stones together. They then plastered the walls with a
mix of fine-grained sand and cement. The roof of the mosque is made from
corrugated iron. Buildings constructed this way are prone to termite infes-
tation. Termites usually destroy all wooden building parts. Although the
construction cost of the women’s mosque was relatively low compared to
that of the adjacent main mosque, its maintenance cost is high.
The women completed the mosque in 1972. Islamic and secular local
authorities never recognized or celebrated this national accomplishment.
Although District Gabileh won a national medal for its civic and develop-
ment undertakings in 1973, the women’s mosque was not even mentioned.
The absence of official recognition was even more obvious given the gov-
ernment’s concerted and highly publicized efforts to encourage community-
wide projects.25 Today, the mosque’s founders insist that they did not estab-
lish the mosque to receive recognition from the authorities. They say,
“Hooshayedu meeaheyiin in la nasheego,” which means “Our project was
not about getting credit.” These women noted that the mosque is not a
women’s place, but a “Bayt Allah” (House of Allah). They hasten to add
that all the women who selflessly contributed their efforts, not just the
Sitaad group, felt proud of serving Allah’s will.
The women’s mosque is about half the size of the main mosque and
can accommodate 300 women at full capacity. This many women may
come to the mosque to pray on major Islamic occasions. The women’s
mosque shares a wall with the men’s mosque and its height is several feet
shorter than the adjacent male mosque. In some minds the difference in the
heights of the two mosques signifies the lower status of the women’s
mosque.
From the start Sheikh Marian could lead prayers in the new mosque;
however, the group wanted to share the leadership of the main mosque’s
imam.26 The trouble was that they could hear the call to prayers, but not
hear the imam’s voice once prayers started, because of the wall separating
the two mosques. They asked the men if a door could be built into the di-
viding wall. The men denied the women’s request and told them to pray in
the main mosque’s verandah. This suggestion offended the women. They
decided that Sheikh Marian would lead their prayers until the men agreed
to install the door. Sheikh Marian made sure that her physical location
when she led prayers was slightly behind the male imam’s. This gesture re-
assured male leaders that the women were not intent on running a separate,
parallel, and equal operation in “their” mosque.27
The women persevered in their request for the door. Sheikh Marian’s
husband, Sheikh Ismail, finally and openly came to their assistance and per-
240 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

suaded the men to build the door. He advised them that by letting the
women follow their call they would be reaffirming men’s leadership of
prayers. The implicit idea in Sheikh Ismail’s plea was that if the men did not
concede to the women’s request, the women might have no choice but to
call and lead their prayers independently. He also reminded them that Islam
prefers a united community of prayers. Finally the men agreed and fitted
the door into the wall in 1973. A curtain was hung over the opening of the
door to prevent the women and men from seeing each other. This link has
worked flawlessly ever since.
Not only is the mosque a holy place where women can come to pray,
but it is also a place where they can learn the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the
Tafsiir.28 Old Sitaad functions are conducted in the small Sitaad center. Ten
women were studying advanced Tafsiir in 1998–1999. The religious train-
ing and expertise of four of these women, Shukri Osman, Zahra Abdi,
Amina Aden, and Safia Aw Aden, is almost equal to that of the late sheikh
Marian. The mosque also took on the function of providing temporary ref-
uge for homeless or destitute women.29 This function gained greater impor-
tance as a result of the destruction and chaos produced by the 1988–1994
Somali civil war.
The civil war destroyed civilized life. The state collapsed and the coun-
try disintegrated into warlord fiefdoms (Samatar, 1992). Although the war
only moderately affected Gabiley, many public and private buildings and
homes were destroyed. Some destruction resulted from indiscriminate use
of military firepower. Marauding thieves who looted everything that could
be removed, including corrugated iron roofing and window frames, caused
the majority of the damage. The two mosques sustained damage from the
firepower, but fortunately the looters spared these structures. The roofs of
the two mosques were badly damaged. The main mosque was closed in
1993 for repair. The townsmen mobilized support for its rehabilitation. A
wealthy businessman, a relative newcomer, financed the entire operation.
The repairs were completed in the same year.
The men who rehabilitated the main mosque did not consider the
needs of the adjacent women’s mosque. Initially, the main mosque’s wealthy
benefactor thought about paying for repairing the women’s mosque, but he
later changed his mind. The structure of the women’s mosque deteriorated
significantly as water leaked through the holes in the roof and into the mud
cement holding the flat stones together. The women pleaded with the men
to give them the main mosque’s undamaged corrugated sheets of old roof-
ing and the ceiling beams. The men denied the women’s request and sold
these items. When asked why they denied the women’s request, the men
said that there was no need for a separate women’s mosque. In fact, some
younger and more militant men threatened to dismantle the women’s
mosque.30 The women said they were prepared to defend Allah’s House
from misguided zealots and refused to succumb to these threats and pres-
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 241

sures. The women selectively replaced the damaged sheets of metal and re-
stored areas needing immediate attention. Despite their effort, the mosque’s
structure continues to deteriorate, and the women lack the resources to pay
for necessary repairs.
The women who founded the mosque are now too old to manage its
daily affairs. Sheikh Marian remained the mosque-based community’s
leader until her death in 1987. Sahra Abdi, a younger, self-educated, local
government employee who was trained by Sheikh Marian, then assumed
the responsibility of managing the mosque. Currently, Safia Aw Aden, a
small merchant, oversees the mosque’s daily affairs. A committee consisting
of Safia Aw Aden, Amina Aden, Zahra Abdi, and Shukri Osman is respon-
sible for general management of the mosque.
Five mosques currently exist in Gabiley. A more modern one was built
at the southern end of town in the late 1980s with a grant from a Middle
Eastern religious foundation. This male mosque is the center for young rad-
ical Islamists. They have attracted a contingent of young women to their
fold. These women are trained in Islamic affairs along purist lines that
sanction women’s traditional roles. These women pray in the back of this
mosque. Women followers of this purist but traditional interpretation of Is-
lam and those of the women’s mosque disagree on many issues. The two
groups of women regularly debate about the appropriate role of women in
Islam.
Deqa Jama, an old matriarch, singlehandedly financed the fifth mosque.
Deqa used remittance money sent by her sons and daughters who work in
the Middle East, Europe, and the United States and some of the wealth she
inherited from her late husband. The mosque is affectionately called
“Deqa’s mosque.” This is a conventional male mosque where women can
pray in the back. Deqa’s mosque is located in the northern perimeter of
town in an area that was farmland. It is about the same size as the women’s
mosque, but it is well kept and maintained.

CONCLUSION

Somali society went through fundamental changes since its contacts with
the outside world intensified through colonization and the establishment of
the postcolonial state. Major areas of change include women’s role in the
economy and the family and their access to Islamic and secular education.
Women lost and gained from these changes. Women’s foremost loss, partic-
ularly prior to the 1980s, was their reduced role in the cash economy. The
old pastoral world in which the division of labor between women and men
was complementary and premised on use-value production gave way to a
two-tier economy in which men controlled access to the market. The men
also determined what pastoral household resources were to be marketed
242 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

and how most cash earnings were to be used. Second, denying women ac-
cess to opportunities, such as secular education, reinforced their marginal-
ity in this sphere. Third, colonial education reinforced the idea that Islamic
education was under men’s purview. Fourth, social transformations under
colonialism generated a new form of servitude for middle-class women.
Housewivization increasingly became the norm. Finally, middle-class women
lost much of their independence as Islamic practice was reinterpreted to
sanction greater restrictions on their mobility.
Women made several gains as a result of this process. First, most
women were not constrained by the new middle-class morality and entered
the emerging markets, particularly the informal ones. Women, increasingly
since 1980, are becoming significant actors in commercial and formal sec-
tors of the economy. Second, with the close of the colonial era, girls gained
access to secular education and consequently to Qur’anic training. The pro-
portion of girls in school grew substantially until the disintegration of the
Somali state in 1991. The entry of large numbers of girls in to secular
schools meant an even larger number attended Qur’anic schools. Although
gains in women’s education have improved many women’s livelihood
chances, many discriminatory barriers remain in place. These discrimina-
tory practices became more onerous with the disintegration of national
state institutions in 1991.
The notion that Islamic revival is reactionary in nature appears to be a
misrepresentation. The establishment of the world’s first women’s mosque
in the traditionally religious town of Gabiley, Somalia, proves the open-
ended nature of Islamic reinvention. The women pioneers who planned and
built the mosque were neither informed by Western feminist ideology nor
by anti-Islamic sentiments. Instead, they felt that Islamic practice in this so-
ciety unduly restricted women’s opportunities to learn and interpret Islamic
texts and traditions. Establishing a holy place of their own where they
could learn and ultimately interpret Islam without a male filter was a radi-
cal social and religious project. This was an important departure from the
practice of having a women’s prayer room or even a chamber adjacent to
the men’s mosque. What made this project radical is that it questioned the
peripheralization of women in prayers and Islamic learning and leadership.
The establishment of the women’s mosque challenged prevailing Islamic
practice. It sought to highlight the “female” question within Islamic tradi-
tion. It also raised another question: If Islam is meant for a community of
people (not men only), and since Allah did not ordain that only males learn
and interpret the meaning of the Qur’an, then how can Islamic practice ex-
clude women from these enterprises?
Despite its radical intent, the women’s mosque has had a limited posi-
tive impact on Islamic practice in Gabiley and the country. First, the
mosque’s existence is accepted as a normal part of Islamic reality in
Gabiley. Only a few misguided individuals still feel that it should not exist.
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 243

Second, the mosque is a legitimate and autonomous public space where

large numbers of women can meet, discuss religious affairs, study Islam
and the Tafsiir of the Qur’an, and say their prayers. Third, more women,
young and old, have become more informed about Islam. Although more
women are better educated in Islamic matters, only a handful have gained
advanced knowledge of Islam, and none has earned the title of sheikh. This
is largely due to the fact that Sheikh Marian was not able, due to the de-
mands of her family and her job in the secular school, to devote sufficient
time to training women and girls. Moreover, the 1988–1993 civil war dis-
rupted all forms of educational activities, including Islamic training. Male
religious leaders, who do not see the need to train young women to become
religious leaders, have compounded the issue. Another obstacle to women
becoming sheikhs is the expectation that once married a woman will devote
her energies to her husband and children. The end result of all of this is that
insufficient numbers of women are trained to challenge the male interpreta-
tion of Islam and its practice. To realize this progressive Islamic project’s
potential will require significantly expanded Islamic and secular educa-
tional opportunities for a large number of women. Fourth, regular debates
take place in Gabiley between women from the women’s mosque and youn-
ger women who follow a more conventional interpretation of the woman’s
role in Islam. These debates between learned women with differing rendi-
tions of Islam could not have happened without the establishment of the
women’s mosque. Fifth, the mosque and its associated women’s community
is an alternative resource for younger women who want to learn about Is-
lam without fully falling victim to some of the reactionary interpretations
of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition peddled by some religious men and
most laymen. Currently, a group of 10 women study the Tafsiir in the
mosque under the tutelage of a male sheikh. Some sheikhs are not hostile to
women’s training in Islamic affairs, but nearly all of them will have diffi-
culty accepting the leadership of a female sheikh. Finally, the limited impact
of the women’s historic mosque on Islamic practice in Gabiley and the
country is in part due to the stagnation and ultimately the collapse of the
modernity project, including secular education, professionally managed
public institutions, and economic development (Pasha & Samatar, 1996).31
This points to the important, but not linear, relationship between the inter-
pretation of religious doctrine and the quality of life in general (Bernal,
1994).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is adapted from an article published in The Arab World Geographer,
Vol. 3, No. 1 (2000), pp. 22–39. Reproduced by permission of AWG—The Arab
World Geographer, Toronto, Canada.
244 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

NOTES

1. In earlier times royal and other wealthy women built mosques in South Asia
and the Middle East, but these were not intended for women’s use. See the list
of eight mosques built by various women from Morocco, Turkey, and India in
Qureshi (1989, p. 97).
2. For the restrictiveness of spaces in “male” mosques allocated for women, see
Holod and Khan (1997). According to this authoritative text, most modern
mosques have a relatively small area in the mosque for women prayers. There
are rarely any mosques that allocate equal space for both sexes. One of the rare
exceptions is Bail-ul-Islam in Toronto, Canada:
The men’s prayer hall, measuring 80 X 60 ft . . . can accommodate up to 720
worshippers. . . . A separate well-defined entrance leads to a women’s prayer
hall of equal size on the level below. This is a rare instances in which the
women’s prayer hall is the same size as the men’s. (Holod & Khan, 1997, p. 223)
3. Although all northern Somalis were Muslims, the manner in which Islam was
practiced in this society was very different from those of Arabian countries.
Here, there was no seclusion of women, and no hijab. All women wore the one-
piece wrap (qayd) and headscarf. Married women wore black scarves while un-
married women used multicolor scarves. The arms, face, and neck were not
covered. For one interpretation of women’s history, see Kapteijns (1999).
4. Group interview, Gabiley, July 18, 1997.
5. For comparative work in other Muslim societies, see Sabbazah (1994). Al-hibri
(1982), Kandiyoti (1991), and Afkhami (1995).
6. For a discussion of how male interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith rein-
forced patriarchy in other Islamic societies, see Khan (1988), Qureshi (1989,
pp. 95–97), Barazangi, Zaman, and Afzal (1996), and Ong (1990). Barazangi et
al. illustrate the male interpretation of the centrality of Friday prayers and its
injustice to women:
Thus, a dual injustice has been committed against women: they are prevented
from attending a mosque, and their Wajib to attend Friday prayers has been re-
voked. Hence, Friday prayer is now considered a Wajib for mature, sane, free
males only. Women are classified with . . . boys, and the insane (p. 83).

7. A broader application of this framework in explicating transformation in So-

mali society is found in Samatar (1997).
8. For a similar discussion of the changes, such as the domestication of women
and the emergence of a new morality induced by the integration of rural life
into the world system, see Bernal (1994).
9. On the issue of class and the status of women, see Baffoun (1982).
10. For a discussion of the relationship between dress codes and class in some Is-
lamic societies, see Ramazani (1983). Also see MacLeod (1992).
11. Whatever image the hijab conjures in the Western world, many women and
men in the towns in northwest Somalia noted that this new dress code enables
women to freely move around even in places where they could not go in the
The Women’s Mosque in Gabiley 245

past. The advantage of the new dress is that no one can determine the identity
of women under cover.
12. Farah Omaar, a well-known Somalia activist, articulated these concerns.
13. This assistant was Mr. Mohamoud Ahmed Ali, who was later recognized as the
father of modern Somali education.
14. The man’s name was Ismail Samatar Mohamed. He volunteered to send his un-
derage child to school as a test. In a year’s time others joined the pro-school
agenda. Haji Asker Cabdillahi, Interview, Gabiley, July 10, 1986.
15. The Qur’an is divided into 30 Giz. Each Giz consists of a number of chapters.
16. I observed this process at work when I was a national service schoolteacher in
Gabiley in the early 1970s.
17. For a discussion of the relationships between Islamic learning and its relation-
ship to Western education in Africa, see Reichmuth (1993).
18. Note that her father’s name was the same as that of her husband. In Somali cul-
ture, women retain their family surname after marriage.
19. This discussion of the Sitaad center is based on a conversion I had with some of
the founding mothers of the women’s mosque. For a discussion of the Sitaat in
general, see Kapteijns and Ali (1996).
20. Interview, Laqanyo Cabdillahi and Halimo Cabdillahi, Gabiley, July 18, 1997.
For a general account of the struggle of Muslim women, see Mernissi (1996).
21. The government designated Gabileh as the capital of a new administrative dis-
trict in 1963 after an intense lobbying effort by local residents. The district in-
stantly became a viable unit and one of only a few districts that contributed
more to central government revenues than it received from the treasury.
22. The women’s strategy was not to alienate anyone and to make their demands
on the basis of their need for a holy place of worship in which women had some
privacy. This strategy paid off, as noted in the discussion below. I should also
mention that such a strategy has its limitation as it constrained the long-term
development of the women’s Islamic agenda. For a treatment of the importance
of social context in strategy development, see Kandiyoti (1988).
23. The women who took part in these discussions do not remember whose idea it
was to build the mosque. They feel that this was an idea they all shared as a
group.
24. In Africa, from east to west and from north to south, the women’s prayer room
is usually a small room attached to the main mosque. Although the Qur’an em-
phasizes the importance of collective prayers and communal gatherings, in
practice women are excluded from these due to patriarchal interpretations of Is-
lamic edict. For an earlier discussion of this, see Bevan-Jones and Bevan-Jones
(1941, pp. 258–259).
25. The military regime that came to power in October 1969 formally ushered in a
new era for Somali women. The regime enacted progressive laws that embodied
women’s equality with men and the right of married women to divorce their
husbands if they were so inclined. Some religious leaders contested these laws in
Mogadishu, but there was little organized resistance to it in the Gabileh Dis-
trict. These laws, in principle, meant that the district government leaders should
have supported women’s activities, such as building the mosque. However, in
246 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

practice, it made no difference to the women’s effort. The effort to build the
mosque was the only organized women’s movement not inspired, controlled, or
manipulated by the regime. Most women in this movement, nonetheless, con-
tributed substantially to most government organized civic efforts to establish
and improve public facilities. Many informers note that women were the back-
bone of these projects.
26. Although women play critical roles in many facets of Muslim life, we know
very little about imam women. For a discussion of related issues, see Walther
(1981). One of the earliest women imams lived at the time of the prophet.
The early historians mention only one woman, Umm Waraqa Bin Abdallah,
who acted as the prayer leader of a mixed community [male and female], that of
her clan, so numerous that it had its own muezzin. Prophet Mohamed himself is
said to have instructed her to serve as prayer leader. She was also one of few
women who handed down the [Q]oran before it was put in final written form.
(Walther, 1981, p. 111)

27. Shaaban (1995), using the work of Lebanese Islamic analyst Nazira Zin al-Din,
exposes that much of what constrains Muslim women’s freedom is fundamen-
tally due to male interpretation of the holy texts. The issue that most concerned
builders of the women’s mosque was finding space where women could fulfill
their religious duties and deepen their knowledge of Islam.
28. Tafsiir means interpretation of the Qur’an by a learned Muslim.
29. The number of such women (and men) have increased significantly since the
mid-1980s although the Somali extended family system still cares for lots of in-
dividuals who are unable to care for themselves. The civil war in the late 1980s
and 1990s, and associated disruptions of all livelihoods, added large numbers
of people to these rolls.
30. Interview, Sahra Abdi, Gabiley, July 20, 1997.
31. For an examination of the relationship between religious interpretation and
modernity, see Pasha and Samatar (1996).

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in northern Somali culture c. 1880–1998. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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believers.” Kenneth Harrow (Ed.), In the marabout and the muse, (pp. 124–
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Discourse,Discourse
Gendered Representation,
Amongand
Lebanese
the Contestation
Women of Space

10 Contesting Space
Gendered Discourse and Labor
among Lebanese Women

MALEK ABISAAB

Every year when we finished sorting and baling raw tobacco

we would send it from the Ghaziyya to other branches of the
Regie, mainly Beirut. We would then clean the warehouse and
the stacks. The Regie’s supervisor (male) overlooked and
checked our activities. We would split up into groups, some
carrying brooms, others standing on the tables to wash
windows. During one of these cleaning episodes, the
supervisor turned to a male employee saying aloud: “Don’t
they all look like cows?” Afterwards, whenever we cleaned the
building after the end of the tobacco season, we would angrily
remind each other of the supervisor’s demeaning statement.1

A
pproximately 144 Lebanese tobacco workingwomen and 33
men employed as temporary tobacco workers went on strike in the south at
the Ghaziyya branch of the Regie (the French Lebanese Tobacco Monop-
oly) on June 23, 1970.2 Their major demands were job permanency and
better working conditions. Since the establishment of that branch in 1964,
the Regie had been violating Lebanese labor law by employing these work-
ers only as seasonal laborers. In addition to their being deprived of the ba-
sic job benefits, female workers in particular faced denigration and humili-
ation through the verbal expressions and physical manners of their male
superiors. They hoped that the strike would achieve not only their demands
but also bring a recovery of respect, and dignity. The women’s refusal to be
“cowed” became a rallying point for their protest. They objected to being

249
250 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

associated with the barn and the rural household. The women were being
told by the male employees that their labor was essential, yet devalued, and
that their presence at the Regie was “temporary,” because the factory re-
mained the “male” world of paid work. By striking, the women contested
ownership over the factory space and its interpretation. At the same time,
they drew meaning from the personal and social spaces of the farm and the
home.
From the beginning of the strike, both the Regie and the government
continued to deny Ghaziyya workers job permanency. Moreover, during
the strike rumors spread that the Regie was planning to close the factory,
which exacerbated the tense situation and prompted the workers to occupy
the factory. The police force suppressed them, but a few weeks later the
workers resorted to another type of protest. For hours, they disrupted the
traffic on a major highway in south Lebanon. These and other similar con-
frontations with the Regie and the police resulted in a number of casualties;
many women were seriously injured and others were arrested. Throughout
the strike the female Ghaziyya workers strove against both family resis-
tance and social condemnation that at times threatened to overwhelm
them. As they sharpened their methods of collective bargaining and radical-
ized their form of confrontation with the Regie, they pushed their way
through social spaces largely claimed by men. For them, “permanency”
meant their “permanent” right to the space of the factory. Once achieved,
this permanency also would prove to men, to the Regie, and to society at
large that they were not “cows” who belonged on the farm or in the home,
but workers who “belonged on the factory floor, and the latter to them. As
I show below, the strike gradually turned into an event that involved the ex-
ploration and expansion of distinctly new spatial claims for Lebanese
women tobacco workers.
It is problematic to select and artificially separate “public” from “pri-
vate” with the rich and complex history of women’s labor culture, social
experiences, and personal lives. Private and public sources of women’s la-
bor, social experiences, and self-image shift and evolve under distinct his-
torical conditions, which make it difficult to generalize about them across
class, culture, or geography.3 In the last few decades, a number of scholars,
particularly anthropologists and geographers, have studied gender and
identity production in public space, thus providing new insights into the
complex relation of gender and public space and challenging the private–
public dichotomy. Caroline Nagel (2001) noted that Muslim women’s liter-
ature reflects how space is regulated in ways that challenge gender roles.4
Peter Gran argues that the state and the various ideologies of the family
have a stake in maintaining the separate domains of spaces.5 Most of the
existing and evolving scholarship on public space in Arab Middle Eastern
and North African societies focuses on cultural and patriarchal mappings
of the home as women’s space, and explores the sacred geography, includ-
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 251

ing mosque, shrine, and pilgrimage in Islamic societies.6 Still, there is no

comprehensive study to date that examines the social arrangement of pub-
lic space and the interconnected and shifting constructs of “public” and
“private” in the lives of protesting and militant workingwomen in diverse
Arab/Islamic societies.
The evidence used in this chapter suggests that women resisted this
public–private dichotomizing, demanding that both farm, home, or factory
are spaces where they belong. In other words, women tobacco workers re-
fused the public–private split that some scholars assume is generally operat-
ing in the Arab/Muslim world. This chapter explores labor strikes as public
sites of feminine radicalism that shape and are shaped by a range of
private–public arrangements of social and economic activities for women
outside the industrial workplace. I take as a case study the women tobacco
workers of Ghaziyya, a rural town in south Lebanon, who went on strike
in 1970 against the Regie in pursuit of job permanency. For months the
Ghaziyya workingwomen campaigned to raise awareness about their labor
grievances among government officials, union members, national, religious
figures, and even university students in the capital city, Beirut. When they
failed to change their labor conditions through peaceful mediation with
community leaders or by resorting to legal means, they escalated the strike
and turned to organized radical confrontations with the Regie and the Leb-
anese government. As young, determined women who moved to occupy
and claim public spaces dominated by men, they stirred up in both the on-
lookers and the media reactions and images ranging from feminine empow-
erment and heroism, to moral laxity.7 State officials, like several male fam-
ily members of the strikers’, associated these acts of striking and militancy
with “masculinity.” By doing so they were rejecting political public roles
for women, and depicting them as “abnormal,” that is, as an aberration to
femaleness. Diverse newspaper accounts both supporting and opposing the
strike, supplemented by the oral accounts of Ghaziyya workingwomen
themselves, reflect a gendered struggle over the manipulation and political
appropriation of public space. For the duration of the strike, Ghaziyya
women challenged the state’s gendered hierarchies of power that positioned
female citizens, especially workingwomen, in subordination to men and
treated their factory work as marginal and appropriate to their gender role
and the patriarchal expectations of their society. Indeed, the state had the
ability to promote certain public roles for women in the line with its eco-
nomic interests while suppressing others.8 While the state sought female la-
bor, it also had to negotiate physical and social limits for women, who no
longer directed their productivity within the household alone.9 Despite the
tensions between familial and state control over female labor, they both
converged on the importance of weakening women’s ability to challenge
men’s political and economic prerogatives.
Several facets of the Ghaziyya workingwomen’s backgrounds and ex-
252 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

periences reveal the complex ways in which private and public roles were
intertwined.10 For one, the Regie, rather consciously, harnessed the skills
rural women developed in the household and through cottage industries
and invested them in wage labor. Women, for instance, figured prominently
and at times almost exclusively in the department of sorting (al-farz), where
their “delicate hands,” accustomed to special forms of rural labor, sorted
and packed tobacco leaves.11 Second, even though Ghaziyya lies in the Leb-
anese countryside, women’s trips from home to work were too short to
truly separate the two worlds. Third, most of the workingwomen who led
the strike were Shi’i Muslims who actively participated in a range of public
religious events that contributed to their skills in labor activism and strik-
ing.12 Women found new meanings in factory labor but these did not re-
place meanings derived from the domestic sphere or from village social and
religious engagements.13 Rather, women’s roles were rearranged and nego-
tiated in relationship to each other. Curiously, none of the Ghaziyya women
who went on strike in 1970 were affiliated with leftist political parties, par-
ticularly the Communist Party, which supported their strike. Neither the
Communist Party nor the labor union emerged as an attractive public fo-
rum for the majority of workingwomen or a platform for developing their
new public roles. Nevertheless, the Ghaziyya women drew upon a fluid net-
work of informal relations, personal ties, and friendships with Communist
male colleagues at the factory. Outside the formal circles of the party and
the union, women succeeded in communicating, planning, organizing, and
radicalizing protest against the Regie. Overall, Ghaziyya militant women
sought their own styles of leadership and accessed the types of public
spheres they found most congenial to their experiences and self-identity.

RURAL DISPLACEMENT
AND SECT AT THE WORKPLACE

From the mid-1950s to 1969 a decline in the agricultural revenues of the

Lebanese countryside, a lack of government-initiated reforms, land short-
ages, overpopulation, and dramatic urban prosperity led to rural–urban
migrations from the areas of ’Akkar in the north, the Biqa’ in the east, and
the south to Beirut.14 From 1969 onward, political instability and civil vio-
lence contributed to a new wave of migration from the south and the Biqa’
to Beirut.15 The biased development policies of the Lebanese state also
proved to be a potent factor in transforming the regional and sectarian
character of the Regie tobacco workers, both women and men. The Shi’ite
population, concentrated in the “peripheral” rural regions of the country,
such as the south where the Ghaziyya branch lies, seemed to have borne the
brunt of underdevelopment and government mismanagement, thus driving
hundreds of thousands of them to the city.
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 253

The major rural regions of Lebanon, namely, the Biqa’, the north (par-
ticularly ’Akkar), and the south, exhibited common features of underdevel-
opment, population growth, unemployment, and high rates of illiteracy
from the mid-1950s until the early 1970s. These conditions were accompa-
nied by a conscious governmental policy of marginalizing the countryside
and strangling opportunities for social development and economic growth
there, which, in turn, accounted for the expansion of the rural lower class.
Subsequently, there were large waves of migration to the urban centers,
particularly Beirut, beginning in the late 1960s and intensifying after
1970.16 The south, unlike other regions, also became the stage for an addi-
tional social process, namely, political instability and radicalization after
the eruption of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
Various Lebanese regions also reflected particular sectarian configura-
tions. The Biqa’ had large Christian communities—both Maronite, Catho-
lic, and Greek Orthodox—but even a larger Shi’i one. The south was pre-
dominantly Shi’i but had a significant Sunni community and a smaller
Maronite one. The north had a mixed Muslim–Christian population of var-
ious denominations. A major wave of migration from these rural regions to
the coastal cities, particularly Beirut, began in the mid 1950s in reaction to
interdependent processes of population growth, land shortage and official
policy.17 In rural Lebanon, the natural rate of increase of Muslim popula-
tions seemed more rapid than that of Christians.18 It is possible that, by the
mid-1950s, Shi’i Muslims had already become the largest sectarian group
in Lebanon.19 This put greater pressure on the Shi’i regions in the south
and the Biqa’ than on their Christian counterparts.
Erosion and the decreasing return on agricultural land pushed many
peasants to sell their lands and to take work as agricultural laborers or to
move to the city. In 1961, approximately 92% of peasants owned 5 or fewer
hectares while less than half of 0.5% owned from 50 to 100 hectares.20 The
breakup of land ownership due to inheritance and sale created many tiny
lots that were insufficient to support a rural household (typically a family
of five).21 By 1965 rural–urban migration accounted for 65% of Lebanese
urban growth, which was the second highest level of urban growth in the
Middle East, surpassed only by that of the Yemen Arab Republic.22
Infrastructure, health, and educational facilities in rural districts were
generally underdeveloped. The south, much like the north (especially the
’Akkar region), and the Biqa’ had for decades formed a human reservoir for
most industrial work, particularly at the Regie.23 Meanwhile, from 1969
onward, a Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance to Israel emerged in
the south. The south gradually became a staging area for Israel’s systematic
military attacks, causing the dislocation of thousands of southerners and
triggering waves of migration to Beirut. The rise in the number of Shi’i la-
borers, both male and female, at the industrial sites of Beirut from 1969
onward reflected these dislocations. A number of industries, including car-
254 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

pentry, mechanics, printing presses, construction, and shoemaking, claimed

they needed to maintain their profits by laying off workers. They asked for
government permission to dispense with half of their workforce or to re-
duce workers’ salaries by half.24 At the same time, Shi’i youth in the south
were embracing the Palestinian cause. Many Maronite political leaders in
the south, however, felt that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
and the leftist Lebanese National Movement offered Israel a reason to
transform the south into a war zone.
The full ramifications of the demographic transformation in different
Lebanese regions cannot be understood without taking into account of
state ideology and policy. The economic policies of Bishara al-Khuri (1946–
1952) and Camille Chamoun (1952–1958) had far-reaching effects on the
social composition of the industrial workers in major cities, including those
at the Regie. One consequence of these policies was the deterioration of
Muslim rural regions, which pushed its inhabitants to join the industries of
the cities. Muslim workingmen and workingwomen at the Regie as a whole
were most numerous between 1954 and 1969 (see Table 10.1).
Al-Khuri’s and Chamoun’s governments promoted Lebanon as a lib-

TABLE 10.1. The Sectarian Background of the Regie Female Workers,

1954–1969
1954 1969
N % N %
Christian Maronite 350 44 424 32
Muslim Sunni 18 2 79 6
Muslim Shi’i 168 21 554 42
Christian Catholic 50 6 64 5
Christian Orthodox 105 13 129 10
Muslim Druze 3 0 6 1
Armenian 86 11 53 4
Syriac 5 1 7 1
Christian Protestant — — — —
Latin 3 0 4 0
Chaldean — — — —
Muslim ’Alawite — — 1 0
Jews — — — —
Total 788 100 1,321 100
Missing 153 16 105 7
Note. Rounded to the nearest whole number.
Source: Union of the Regie Workers and Employees, Union Membership Dues (1954), and
Personnel Department of the Regie, Liste Nominative du Personnel (January 11, 1969).
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 255

eral, pro-Western, service-based polity in which the Maronite elite and a

few Muslim allies enjoyed political and economic dominance. They focused
their efforts on developing Beirut and Mount Lebanon, where Maronite
Christians were concentrated. Little attention, if any, was devoted to the
south, the Biqa’, or ’Akkar because they seemed irrelevant to tourism, com-
mercial planning, or banking and financial development. Only the indus-
trial regions closest to the capital city received government support and
protection in the hope that this would strengthen the transportation and
banking sectors.25
Due to reinvestments in the service sector rather than in the productive
sectors, industrial undertakings did not become a major part of the econ-
omy.26 President Fuad Shihab (1958–1964) and his successor, Charles
Helou (1964–1970), hoped to restore economic growth in peripheral re-
gions outside Beirut and respond to the needs of their Muslim populations.27
During Shihab’s presidency, the Regie planned to open new branches in
these peripheral districts, including Nabatiyya and Ghaziyya in the south.
But in the long run, none of these branches matched Hadath in Beirut in the
scope and size of tobacco production.
These socioeconomic and demographic changes have had a significant
impact on the structure of the migrant families and the role of women
within them, yet this does not mean that the new and old worlds of women
had strictly been separated. It is true that coming to the city had opened
new social avenues for women, but their association with rural life had not
been severed. The interplay between public and private spaces is evident in
the case of Zaynab Zu’aytir, a female Regie worker. “I was born to a peas-
ant family,” Zaynab told me,

“that lived from farming. We used to work on a land that was owned by
relatives. I was 10 years old when we left for Beirut. Then, at 21, I joined
the Regie. Every summer my family and I would go back to Ba’labak to
cultivate the land and prepare the food provisions for the winter. We, the
people of Ba’labak, don’t like to see our men doing household work. I
managed to save some money from my work at the Regie and was able to
buy a land up in our village. One day, a man offered to buy it from me,
but I refused. I told him that I wanted to preserve my ties to my village.
When I die I would like to be buried here.”28

WOMEN’S TASKS AND WORK ENVIRONMENTS

Between 1954 and 1969, more than 40% of Regie workers were women
(see Table 10.2). The company’s administrators were almost exclusively
men drawn from wealthy and educated Lebanese families, mostly Sunnite
Muslims and Maronite Christians.29 Women were hired as workers. Since
256 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

TABLE 10.2. The Gender Distribution of the Regie Working Force,

1954–1969
1954 1969
n % n %
Female 941 46 1,426 43
Male 1,121 54 1,855 57
Total 2,062 100 3,281 100
Missing 2 0.1 — —
Note. Rounded to the nearest whole number.
Sources: Union of the Regie Workers and Employees, Union Membership Dues (1954), and
Personnel Department of the Regie, Liste Nominative du Personnel (August 11, 1969).

its founding in 1964, the Ghaziyya branch of the Regie hired, for the most
part, laborers for a 6-month period, then laid them off for the rest of the
year. A major station in south Lebanon for sorting out the Regie’s raw to-
bacco harvest, Ghaziyya processed 800,000 kilograms of the 1,800,000 ki-
lograms that passed through the Regie’s central plant in Hadath, a suburb
of Beirut. Two hundred laborers worked at that branch, the majority of
whom were women. These were mostly young, single, Shi’ite Muslims who
worked for a little less than $3 per day.30 Only 33 workers, mostly men,
were permanent.
The raw tobacco at Ghaziyya was classified into three grades: “clean,”
which was ready for exportation; “medium,” which was mixed with for-
eign tobacco to produce the most popular Lebanese cigarettes (Bafra,
Okay, and Cedars); and “Inferior,” which was used for low-quality local
cigarettes. Two male supervisors, one tobacco expert, and a manager
formed the administrative body of the Ghaziyya plant that overlooked the
production process.
The process of production itself was divided into several components.
Eighty-four women stripped off the leaves, another 50 sorted out the de-
cayed leaves, and a group of 15 women processed the sorted leaves and ar-
ranged them into bales. A group of 35 men then lifted the bales and stored
them in a warehouse. At work, four women would sit around one table and
sort out the leaves to produce 20 bales of the medium and 13 bales of the
clean grades daily. Then another group of six women would sift the de-
cayed and low-quality leaves and arrange them into 10 bales daily. When
asked why sorting (al-farz) was an “unskilled” labor task relegated to
women, Regie male managers and workers alike noted that it needed “deli-
cate hands” and “a lot of patience.” In other words, the skills that men ig-
nored but that women developed in the private domestic circles were put to
use in the public workplace of waged labor. Management thus emphasized
the continuity between domestic and factory labor for women.31
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 257

Ghaziyya temporary tobacco workingwomen, along with their female

and male allies, fought ardently for the implementation of a labor law that
was promulgated in 1946. They hoped, unfortunately to no avail, that legal
channels would improve their labor conditions.32 The government dis-
missed the women’s demands, claiming that the limited quantity of raw to-
bacco annually stored at Ghaziyya would not provide them with work be-
yond 6 months.33 The workers challenged this ruling by pointing out that
more than 50% of the Regie’s annual production came from south Leba-
non, the region of Ghaziyya.34 They also argued that many of their col-
leagues in other branches that sorted and stored much less tobacco than
Ghaziyya did had acquired permanent employment.35 Moreover, they em-
phasized that Lebanese labor law itself stipulated that seasonal laborers
had the right to become permanent after 3 months of uninterrupted
work.36 The Regie and the government alike turned deaf ears to such de-
mands and continued to find them unworthy of serious consideration, let
alone implementation.37
State legislation pertaining to women’s waged work, whether during
the period of French colonial rule (1920–1946) or in independent Lebanon,
reflected patriarchal tensions, gender biases, and a spirit of paternalism.
The French colonial government issued its first legal document on labor re-
lations in 1935; 2 years later it promulgated a new law regulating the em-
ployment of women and children in industrial plants.38 On the one hand,
the state removed some areas of control over women away from the family,
but, on the other hand, it introduced new forms of restraint. For instance, it
prohibited women from driving “machines with big engines” or engaging
in alcohol production.39 In 1948, the state issued new laws prohibiting
women from working in the evening or at night, except in a family business
or in food-handling jobs where products could decay quickly.40 “I was
probably the first female adolescent,” Hannih Dib, a principal female activ-
ist in the strike, says,

“to take up a man’s work at a gas station. It was shameful for a girl to take
up men’s trades, especially in an open setting like a gas station, where I
was continuously exposed to men. For this reason, my family opposed
the job but I defended it and insisted I could protect myself and protect
the family’s honor because it was my honor. But I suffered greatly from
confrontations with my brothers in connection with my job. In the end,
my brothers accepted my decision. When I think about it, I have no
doubt that the goal of the owners of that gas station behind hiring a
woman was to attract the male drivers who like to see a girl work at a gas
station.”41

Hannih rejected preindustrial notions of male protection, and instead saw

her waged work as a route to self-empowerment. But the picture is complex
258 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

and, at times, contradictory. She was appropriating, quite consciously, a

male-associated space and questioning sexual boundaries, yet she was also
putting herself in a position of being sexually exploited. She was trading
this exploitation for a new spatial arrangement as both the contractor and
the object of spatial empowerment.
Laws prohibited women from working in factories that manufactured
explosives, molten iron, chemicals, and dyed textiles. Officials pointed to
the legitimate hazards such jobs might pose to women’s reproductive
health. But the government offered no clear rationale for prohibiting other
types of work.
Women professionals in the fields of music, theater, and the arts, how-
ever, were exempt from such laws. This gender–class bias was mixed with
patriarchal protection. The state emphasized in 1946 the centrality of the
mother–child relationship and its contribution to familial and national co-
hesion, thus decreeing that women receive a 40-day maternity leave with
full pay and preventing employers from allowing them to return to work
for 30 days after giving birth. The laws also preserved men’s dominance in
waged work and emphasized women’s domestic roles. In 1951 state laws
gave women—but not men—the right to end a labor contract instantly
upon marriage, but not in cases of illness or childbirth. Women received
less recognition at the workplace and fewer vacations and promotions.42 In
retrospect, the state’s project of turning colonial subjects into national citi-
zens, manifested in the body of labor laws, was challenged by gendered
lower class models of nationalism deemed “unorthodox” by the bourgeoi-
sie and the state. In the process of citizen-subject formation, the state pro-
moted gendered constructions of the public and the private that had direct
implications for women and gender relations.
A close analysis of the attitudes of the government and the Regie of-
ficials shows that they both ignored and violated labor laws more easily
when it came to southern Shi’i women like those of Ghaziyya than when
it came to Beiruti workingmen of diverse sectarian backgrounds, namely,
Christian and Sunni Muslim. Ghaziyya women responded to this gendered
and regional discrimination with defiance. They tried to obtain the sup-
port of a public network of national and communal associations through
collective organization. The strike gradually turned into a place for the
exploration and expansion of distinct public roles for Lebanese women
tobacco workers. Several Ghaziyya parents threatened their own daugh-
ters with death were they to strike.43 These threats disclosed the weak-
ness rather than the stability or potency of patriarchal and familial con-
trol. In Lebanese rural and urban households alike, men were slowly but
surely losing to women some control to women over the gender politics
of public spaces. The women’s act of striking was at once a statement
about private sources of identity and about public experiences at the in-
dustrial workplace.
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 259

GHAZIYYA WOMEN IN A SIT-IN

(I’TISAM) AT THE SUPREME SHI’I COUNCIL

Lebanese tobacco women have a long history of labor activism and struggle
against the French colonial authorities, and the Lebanese state.44 This tradi-
tion of resistance was also a feature of the relationship between women
workers and the Regie since its inception in 1935. Thus, the Ghaziyya
strike should be viewed as a continuation of that tradition.
The temporary workers of Ghaziyya, mostly women, started their
strike on June 23, 1970.45 Prior to the strike in May 1970, the Ghaziyya
workingwomen decided first to seek the support of Imam Musa al-Sadr, a
prominent national religious leader and the head of the Supreme Shi’i
Council.46 At this time, they staged an i’tisam at the council to express in-
dignation and to attempt to win public support using at this point
nonmilitant confrontation. Al-Sadr gained popularity among southern Shi’i
families with his support of social justice and economic stability for Shi’i
Muslims against their marginalization by the Lebanese government and
powerful sectarian organizations. The women’s decision to have al-Sadr pe-
tition the government on their behalf was significant. On the one hand, it
showed that, at this early stage of the strike, the women decided to work
through paternalism and male religious authority in order to win sympathy
from their communities and government officials. They emphasized their
subservience in the patriarchal hierarchy in order to force the male elite
into fulfilling their paternalist obligations to protect women from harm.
“Two or three busses,” ’Itaf Tutanji remembers,

“full of workingwomen went to see the Imam. That was our first visit. We
entered the garden outside the building, but the Imam did not want to
meet with us. He told his assistants, ‘I don’t want to see them.’ We did not
dress up formally and had no scarves to cover our heads. We remained in
the front yard until dusk, for he prevented us from entering the building.
Eventually, the council employees asked us to leave. During our second
visit we dressed up in an acceptable way [she meant formally], but still
we did not cover our heads. The council employees, however, gave us
scarves because the Imam would not allow us to enter the building with-
out head covers. Then he came out from his office and met with us. We
explained our grievances and demands to him and he promised to
help.”47

The choice of al-Sadr was meant to embarrass a government that Lebanese

Shi’is, including al-Sadr, criticized as discriminating against them in terms
of employment, development, promotions, and wages. Furthermore, women
leaders of the strike noted that their turning to al-Sadr was a tactical move
to gain the support of some of the female workers who were confused or
260 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

hesitant about the strike and whose families viewed “protesting in the
streets” as a threat to the “morality and honor of their daughters.”48
Al-i’tisam at the council failed to achieve the most urgent and immedi-
ate goal of job permanency for Ghaziyya women. The women, however,
gained social and political visibility early on through this strategy. After
several meetings and lengthy dealings with high-ranking government offi-
cials, al-Sadr also came back empty-handed.49 Shortly after, he became am-
bivalent about his support for the Ghaziyya women and indirectly tried to
end al-i’tisam at the council. His assistants asked the women strikers to
take their protest to the headquarters of the General Federation of Workers
(GFW), signaling that al-Sadr no longer wanted to be involved with the
protesters. The Ghaziyya women had appealed to al-Sadr as a fellow Shi’i
and as a paternal figure. Al-Sadr in turn tried to extricate himself from the
relationship with the protesters by voicing his concerns about the women’s
moral “safety” and “decency” if they continued to congregate at the coun-
cil.50 The state police guarded the council, so there were no immediate dan-
gers. A few female tobacco workers noted in interviews with me that al-
Sadr may have been using a strategy of wanting to keep the council pre-
cincts “pure,” that is, properly accessible to male personnel and visitors.
The council stood for the Islamic Shi’i community in Lebanon at large, and,
as such, it was an extension of its public welfare and collective religious
concerns and social affairs. Al-Sadr was in part implying that the presence
of women would “contaminate” such an edifice, that is, make it physically
and spiritually najis (impure) due to the association of women with men-
strual blood.51 By referring to women’s sexuality and safety, al-Sadr implied
as well a concern with men’ s spiritual “safety” by emphasizing the council
as the site of male—not female—public activity. He was also asserting that
the council, as an extension of a holy place of worship, like a mosque,
which should not be “overtaken” physically or politically by women.
This was a turning point in the women’s struggle against the Regie.
They then decided to turn to the Union of the Regie Workers and Em-
ployees (URWE), the only official union at the Regie.52 It is important to
note, however, that the women did not have great confidence in the URWE,
as it was a company union that discriminated against temporary workers
and women. The URWE gave exclusive rights of membership to permanent
workers and aimed to organize labor for the benefit of capital and the male
working elite.53 Moreover, since the URWE’s inception, its leadership had
been drawn from high-ranking male directors and supervisors of the Re-
gie.54 Only one post on the executive council was reserved for a woman,
even though women comprised more than 40% of the total labor force.55
The URWE used this “women’s” post to communicate the union’s decisions
and instructions to women workers.56
The URWE showed little interest in espousing the cause of Ghaziyya
women who moved in their strike (idrab) from the phase of al-i’tisam to
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 261

street demonstrations (muzaharat). Behind closed doors, the URWE’s exec-

utive board reiterated the government’s argument against the workers,
namely that the Ghaziyya plant lacked the quantities of raw tobacco neces-
sary for permanently hiring more than the existing 33 full-time (mostly
male) workers.57 Because the URWE denied daily workers membership in
its ranks, Ghaziyya workingwomen had no legal space, so to speak, from
which to force the URWE and the Regie to enter into a discussion about
their status and fate. Nonetheless, the women struggled to end this legal
vacuum by obtaining some formal acknowledgment of their position. Curi-
ously, Hannih Hakim, the only female tobacco worker on the URWE’s ex-
ecutive council, played a marginal role in the URWE’s deliberations and did
not even question its opposition to the strike. Only Hasan Hamid, a Com-
munist worker, upheld (if only for a while) the demands of Ghaziyya strik-
ers. He questioned the Regie’s anticipated action, supported by the govern-
ment, to close down the Ghaziyya branch and keep the two factories in
Bikfayya (in Mount Lebanon) and Tripoli (in the north) open.58 Hamid ex-
plained that all these factories were built at the same time and occupied a
similar position in the production process of the Regie. Why, then, did only
Ghaziyya utilize temporary workers and why was only it to be closed
down? Bikfaya and Tripoli, unlike Ghaziyya, Hamid explained, had a
mixed-gender Christian–Muslim workforce. Ghaziyya, on the other hand,
had an overwhelmingly female Shi’i workforce.59 In essence, Hamid was
accusing the government and the Regie of sectarian discrimination, that is,
of preferring to give permanency to men with urban, mostly Christian and
Sunni Muslim, backgrounds, rather than to women with rural Shi’i back-
grounds. He did not, however, point to the gendered discrimination at the
heart of this conflict. Female leaders of the strike also did not express their
radicalism in terms of a self-conscious or crystallized feminism. They
stressed class and sectarian discrimination on the part of the government
and the Regie more than gender discrimination per se.60
It is important to pause here and examine the nature of the women’s
approach to party affiliation, particularly the Communist Party and the Or-
ganization of Communist Action (OCA), which upheld their goals and de-
mands. Among the more militant Regie women, only two were active in the
unions and were indirectly influenced by socialist views or methods of la-
bor organization.61 Many women expressed feelings of confusion and un-
certainty about joining labor unions, stating that they were “uneducated”
and “illiterate” and would not be able to “live up” to union standards and
goals. Most of them knew only indirectly—and usually through a man—
about the long-term objectives of the union and the Communist Party. Oth-
ers seemed overburdened with domestic chores in addition to their Regie
job that left them little time for other activities.62 A few also pointed to the
aversion of their fathers or husbands to women’s involvement in any activ-
ity of a political nature that seemed “unladylike.” For their part, unionists
262 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

and Communists seemed uninterested in recruiting women into their ranks

or making their meetings and circles more friendly and sensitive to
women’s domestic and family commitments. Several Communist leaders
found it divisive to address gender issues and rarely distinguished between
male and female working-class cultures.63 The Communist Party addressed
their audience in the plural masculine as “our male comrades” and “the
workingmen of the countryside”—only rarely were women singled out as a
group of their own in that audience.64
The influence of leftist ideology, particularly that of the Communist
Party, found its way into female workers circles after the 1963 strike at
Hadath and reached its peak of influence by 1965.65 Communist influence
among Regie workers and involvement in the strike of 1965 in Hadath re-
peatedly was emphasized in the police reports and official declarations.66
“One cannot deny the active and important role of leftist parties in sup-
porting the workers,” Dib would note and then went to say:

“Early on at the Regie, I met several workers who belonged to the OCA. I
believe that these organizations were created to help the workers become
aware of their rights. One day a lady from a leftist background from out-
side the Regie came and said that we should get organized.”67

During the 1965 strike of the Regie workers, among similar claims pro-
government newspapers ran headlines such as “Men and Women are Sacri-
ficed for Leftist Extremists,” “The Communists Exploit the Strike of the
Regie Workingmen and Women,” and “Communist Agitators Placed Women
at the Forefront of the [Strike] Lines.”68 Women’s militancy, however, was
shaped outside the public space of the party and its formal structure in the
complex contexts of professional, social, and personal experiences unique
to the tobacco workingwomen in south Lebanon—contexts well described
by Hannih. Overall, it seems that neither a conscious, well-articulated femi-
nism nor formal socialist or unionist ideals constituted significant sources
of public militancy. “I admire the ideas of the parties [mainly socialist and
communist],” Dib told me in her statement to me in 1997,

“that support the workers’ rights and strive for their sake. Jesus Christ
was also a worker before there were any communists. I did not belong to
any Communist organization but I supported them and voted for their
candidates during the various parliamentary elections. We did not have
any experience in politics or trade unionism, which these people [the left-
ists] knew well.”69

On one hand, Dib stresses that women expressed great commitment to the
strike, yet, on the other hand, she complained about the obstacles they
faced, for they were “more ignorant about their rights and labor organiza-
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 263

tion than the men” and were negatively influenced by “their families, soci-
eties, and religions.” According to Dib, the women were sheltered and self-
absorbed.70
Leftist parties supported the activities of workers in general. Nonethe-
less, women tobacco workers seem to have developed their own experi-
ences and political awareness from a mix of informal, social, and personal
endeavors associated with private space and a continuous tradition of resis-
tance that the Regie workforce had built up over the years. This again
shows the interweaving of private and public spaces.

WOMEN IN PUBLICLY CHARGED SPACES:

FACTORY, HIGHWAY, UNIVERSITY, AND STREET

On June 25, 1970, the URWE, possibly under the pressure from the strikers
and their supporters and sympathizers, was forced to take a slightly more
active role in the conflict.71 The workers on strike elected two of their col-
leagues, namely, Hannih Dib and Muhammad Husayn Kharrubi, a male
temporary worker, to represent them, and urged the URWE to adopt their
demands. Their requests split the URWE into two factions for and against
adopting the demands of the Ghaziyya strike.72 Hamid, who insisted on
embracing the Ghaziyya strikers’ request for permanency, expected the
strike to take on more militant forms if the URWE denied its support. He
noted that the Ghaziyya workers had struck previously when Jean Tu-
wayni, the former president of the URWE, whom they expected to support
them, told them instead that the Regie would fire them if they insisted on
asking for job permanency. Most of the URWE executive board, however,
rejected any attempts to adopt or acknowledge the aims of the Ghaziyya
strikers. Curiously, the URWE simply agreed to offer “humanitarian” sup-
port for the workers exemplified by a small amount of money to help them
pay for some logistical expenses. In my opinion, this was an example of the
indecisive policies of the URWE and its inclination toward the administra-
tion of the Regie. 73 Meanwhile, the government took precautionary steps
against the strikers at Ghaziyya by tightening surveillance and security
measures. The governor of south Lebanon expected the Ghaziyya working-
women to intensify their struggle and escalate the strike. Around the end of
July, the governor declared that he had taken extraordinary “security mea-
sures” to protect the properties of the Regie against the strikers and to
maintain “order” in the region.74 Indirectly, he hoped to intimidate the
women and push them to give up their struggle. Al-Sadr entered the scene
again, this time promising to address the grievances of the workers with the
government and encouraging them to end their strike.75 Despite the fact
that the strikers finally voted to end the strike, the Regie moved on to dis-
charge both female and male strikers from their jobs on August 28, 1970.
264 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

Immediately, the workers went back on strike with renewed commitment

and fervor.76
Weeks went by and discussions reached a stalemate. The Ghaziyya
strikers started to hear rumors that the Regie planned to close the plant
permanently.77 A few days later, in a show of defiance to the government,
the workingwomen and men entered the factory by force and organized a
sit-in on its premises. Several women, with their male colleagues, pressed
their bodies against the main gate of the factory to break it open. The po-
licemen guarding the gate pushed back, but the workers outnumbered
them. The strikers poured through the gate and many managed to climb
over the wall of the building to occupy the first floor.78 The Ghaziyya
women described these moments with great enthusiasm, recalling their
fearless confrontation with the Regie and the government alike and describ-
ing an undeniable sense of validation and empowerment that had issued
from their action.79 “We engaged in a kind of fist fighting,” said Da’d
Ghandur, recalling these moments.

“The policemen beat me up and I hit back. I saw the officer in charge of the
police force flogging a woman colleague. I was outraged and swift. I
caught his hand, took the whip, and whipped him back. I gave several
lashes until his assistants pointed their weapons at me and ordered me to
stop. I was scared then and they arrested me.”80

The workers’ success was short-lived. The policemen crushed their strike by
force, attacking them with machine guns and clubs to force them out of the
factory. When the police clamped down on them, three leading women in
the strike were seriously injured. Different sources depicted differently
women’s public acts of defiance and militancy. Through their newspapers
and reports, unionists and socialists emphasized the heroism of the strikers
and the rationality of their cause, at times giving special emphasis to the fe-
male character and leadership of the strike.81 The government and a num-
ber of social institutions seemed more conscious of the gender character of
the strike, but dismissed its importance or legitimacy on that very basis.
Still others condemned the policemen’s “cowardly” attack on a “defense-
less” group of women.82
The Regie proceeded to fire all the strikers. The latter decided a month
later, on October 12, 1970, to galvanize the people of south Lebanon to
their cause and agitate against the government. They carried their protest
to a public site of logistical and geographical significance, namely, a major
highway connecting Sidon and Tyre, two central cities in south Lebanon.
They blocked the highway with barriers and by burning car tires. The po-
lice rushed to quell what was depicted as a shaghab (riot), thus treating this
outburst of frustration as an isolated act of civil disobedience, rather than
as a sustained form of struggle against the government to achieve clear
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 265

goals. The strikers decided to end the roadblock when the minister of the
interior promised to take up their demands with the president and prime
minister.83
The GFW did not formally grant its support to the strike, claiming in-
stead that the Ghaziyya workers were not registered members of the
URWE. The women complained about the GFW’s complacency, which
weakened their bargaining position and helped the Regie deny them their
rights.84 Consonant with the complacency of the GFW, the prime minister
Sa’ib Salam ruled out the possibility of permanency for the Ghaziyya work-
ers. Shrewdly, he proposed to change their status from “temporary” to
“seasonal” workers. This shift would have no fundamental bearing on their
labor status, salaries, or rank. The workers knew well Salam’s history of
coercion and aggression against the labor movement in general, and against
the activism of tobacco women in particular. Most importantly, they re-
called his use of armed force to crush an earlier strike held in 1946 that had
infamously led to the death of a female worker named Warda Butrus
Ibrahim. With this history in mind, workers rejected Salam’s offer, turned
away from the URWE, and appealed to all labor unions, community associ-
ations, and political parties to support them.85 This move was noteworthy,
for it signaled a new phase in the collective labor organization of the
Ghaziyya workingwomen. Soon after, the women began a sit-in at the center
of the GFW. “Southern women joined us in the sit-in,” Hannih Dib asserts,

“regardless of the fact that they had big families to take care of. The aver-
age size of their families was between five and six, yet whenever they had
any free time they joined us in the sit-ins and never wavered in their sup-
port. There were around 40 or 50 women who were constantly present.
Their shoes became their pillows and the newspapers were their blan-
kets. They would sleep for 2 hours and then others would come and take
their place.”86

The sit-in at the GFW induced the latter to mediate between the strikers
and the government. In response, the minister of finance proposed to rehire
the workers at the Regie for a little longer than 6 months and to double the
quantity of raw tobacco allotted to Ghaziyya.87 The workers rejected the
offer, recognizing that the Regie’s intention was to permit them to work
overtime for only 8 months (rather than an entire year) and thus to deny
them permanency once again.88 Dib noted that when she complained to the
minister of finance about such grievances, he responded, “You should be
grateful to God because you are working for 6 months. Other women do
not have a job at all.”89 In this and other statements, government officials
and Regie male administrators treated women’s waged labor as unworthy
of serious regulation and as a privilege rather than a right.
The strikers’ efforts brought them limited short-term gains. The prime
266 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

minister and his cabinet, along with the Regie, were forced to abandon any
attempts to shut down the Ghaziyya plant, or to hire new workers in place
of those fired. The strikers now hoped to achieve their most urgent aim of
permanency. The workingwomen mobilized critical links to nationally visi-
ble public institutions such as the central plant of the Regie, in Hadath, and
the Lebanese University in Beirut. They visited the Hadath plant and called
upon their co-workers and the students of the university to support them.
Women strikers were empowered by appropriation of masculine spaces
that were revered as public realms. At times, the very sanctity of these
spaces worked to their advantage. “We knew,” explains Hannih Dib,

“that the major police battalion known as ‘The Group of 16’ would not
violate the sanctity of an educational institution by using violence
against us. We wanted to take advantage of every second of that freedom
afforded to us at the university campus to organize an important rally in
favor of our cause. We anticipated this would also get the attention of the
media and consequently pressure the government to renegotiate with
us.”90

A wide range of private–public social and religious experiences and eco-

nomic activities seemed to have shaped the women’s public role in the
strike. Among those discussed by the strikers was the economic deteriora-
tion of their region, south Lebanon, perceived as the outcome of discrimi-
natory governmental policies against Shi’ite Muslims. Also implicated were
a resulting mixed home–farm work pattern and a new overlapping of per-
sonal and social ties forged among home, village, and factory. Each of these
new circumstances involved distinct changes in private and public roles and
self-images for the women of Ghaziyya.
The Regie staff tried unsuccessfully to prevent the Ghaziyya women
and men from meeting with their colleagues at Hadath.91 At this point, the
strikers were not merely concerned with achieving permanency but also
with returning to their jobs and ensuring that the Ghaziyya plant would not
shut down. On January 17, the URWE president told the strikers they
could start work in February of the same year, but under the old work con-
ditions. The Ghaziyya strikers refused this offer and threatened to embark
on a new i’tisam at the office of the URWE. They stood up on the front
stairwell of the Hadath plant shouting boldly, “There can be no Regie with-
out the south,” or as one woman expressed it to me, “There is no Regie
without the labor of our hands at Ghaziyya.” The women then entered into
the factory building and mixed with their colleagues, singing of their hopes
and struggles and shouting labor slogans against exploitation and poverty.
When the workday ended, the women and men of Ghaziyya and Hadath
marched to the campus of the Lebanese University a few miles away. There,
students received them warmly and set up a forum in which the workers
discussed issues related to their plight for hours.92
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 267

The government and the Regie remained intransigent. In January 1971

the government proposed to allow the Ghaziyya workers to resume their
jobs immediately and even implied a willingness to discuss compensation
for the strike days. But the government was completely silent on the perma-
nency demand.93 Most labor unions and federations advised Ghaziyya
workers to accept these conditions in order to regain their jobs and prevent
the Regie from closing the plant.94 After examining the situation with their
colleagues, the Ghaziyya workers decided on January 7, 1971, to accept
this proposal and end the strike. This decision can be seen either as a strate-
gic move to gain short-term goals or as an act of resignation.
However compromised by this resolution to the conflict, the workers
kept the cause alive through continuous reiteration of the events of the
strike. In the years following the strike, many female laborers left the Regie
for better paying jobs. Others married and left work altogether. Those who
remained at the Regie continued the struggle. Their persistence paid off in
1980, when a group of them met with the then-minister of finance, Ali
Khalil, who was from the south and had close ties to the AMAL movement.
He was persuaded by workers to sign a decree granting all temporary Regie
workers (850) permanent status. The decree reflected both a long difficult
workers’ struggle as well as new demographic and political realities accom-
panying the first phase of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1982). These reali-
ties ushered in a reconfiguration of the political power in Lebanon in which
the Muslim Shi’ites gained more influence in the power structure of the
state. However, as much as a changing political context created new oppor-
tunities for workers to press their demands, it must also be acknowledged
that such opportunities could only be grasped by workers who came to see
themselves as actors and by women workers, in particular, who had be-
come accustomed to thinking of the workplace as part of a sphere to which
they rightfully belonged. A recent history of organized struggle left the
women and men of Ghaziyya well positioned to reap the advantage of the
weaknesses and contradictions at times in the relationship between the
state and the Regie. The cracks in this relationship revealed themselves. A
change had come, but it had come from within as well as from without to
alter the way that women and work intersected in Lebanon in the 1970s.
In conclusion, the militant tobacco workingwomen drew upon multi-
ple private and public social and economic experiences, forging at will dy-
namic connections among the spaces of home, village, and factory and even
protesting in spaces lying outside them. Clearly, it is difficult, if not impos-
sible, to locate identity and self-image in one productive or social sphere ex-
clusively or to talk about set boundaries between public and private. The
case of women tobacco workers proves the inadequacy of much of the
scholarship on Arab women that first continues to see and locate women
almost exclusively within “traditional,” “domestic” circles, and second
considers the domestic as merely private. One recent example of this schol-
arship is provided in the work of geographers Leila Ayari and Marc
268 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

Brosseau (1995), who argued that Tunisian novelists, writing in French,

show male and female characters bridging “tradition” and “forbidden
spaces.”95 Ayari and Brosseau stated that there is “little overlap between
the two” in the Arab/Muslim context.96 As this study has shown, it is prob-
lematic to view the public and private spheres as static and sharply
dichotomized. Protesting women pursued relentlessly communal, sectarian,
and domestic support for goals associated with their industrial work.
Meanwhile, female radicalism evolved not out of formal professional or
political vehicles like the trade union and the party. The women expanded
their public world, and experimented with novel public spaces, which be-
came the sites of their particular style of militancy and social identity.

NOTES

1. ’ItafTutanji, interview.
2. Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (June 24, 1970, p. 5).
3. Afsaruddin (1999, pp. 10–11).
4. Nagel (2001, pp. 69–70). See also Bourdieu (1977). Bourdieu shows how con-
notations of male/female are shaped by changing contexts, and by what is pub-
lic and what is private. Geographers Arnesen and Laegran (2003), suggested
that male and female youths in Norway “coproduce” places as gendered in dis-
tinct ways. At the same place, young men and women do gender “similarly as
well as differently.” This fluid and multifaceted disposition of gendered public
space was useful in looking at Lebanese women and men’s differing modes
ofusing and projecting their identity at the factory and during protest. See also
Annstrong and Squires (2002); Mazumdar and Mazumdar (2002); Slyomovics
(1996); and Ask and Tjomsland (1988). Ask and Tjomsland state that even
though public–private and male–female spatial categories seem dichotomized in
a rigid way in Islamist movements, there are many contraventions to this spatial
arrangement. See also El Guindi (1999); Freidl (1991); and Hegland (1991, pp.
215–230).
5. Peter Gran (1996, p. 65).
6. I cite here representative works of this scholarship, namely, Schimmel (1991)
and Fischer (1991). See also Salvatore and Eickelman (2003). The authors
noted that several contemporary scholars across disciplines exploring the public
sphere and public Islam have suggested that the former is constantly changing
and that its boundaries continue to be contested by a range of social actors.
Scholars of public Islam, however, view social practices and collective ritual as
decisive and, at times, primary forces in shaping the politics and economics of
Islamic societies. They focus predominantly on religious experiences, identity
production, and management of sacred life.
7. Al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (September 25,
1970, pp. 21–23); Al-Huriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 21, 1970,
p. 7); and Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (July 3, 1970, p. 4).
8. Afsaruddin (1999, pp. 10–11).
9. See Domosh and Seager (2001, p. 39). Domosh and Seager noted that there
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 269

are gaping contradictions between the ideology [of how women and men are
“supposed” to relate to work and to each other] and the reality. . . . The confine-
ment of women in households dominated by men, removed from wage-earning
possibilities, has social, cultural, financial and emotional limits for both men
and women.
10. Domosh and Seager (2001, p. 33).
11. Jacques Daghir, interview.
12. The relationship between the militancy of Shi’i women workers and the practice
of certain religious rituals will be studied in a future research project that I will
undertake jointly with Rula Abisaab.
13. Domosh and Seager (2001, p. 31).
14. See Abisaab (2001, pp. 154–191).
15. Abisaab (2001).
16. In 1950, those engaged in agriculture—estimated at 40–50% of the popula-
tion—earned no more than 19% of the total provisional national income, while
the industrial population (estimated at the time at 8% of the total population)
earned 13% of total income. See Asfour (1955, p. 2).
17. Asfour (1955, p. 1). By 1960 the infant mortality rate in Lebanon was 70 (per
1,000 live births) compared to 130 in Syria. Thus, despite the poor health con-
ditions in rural Lebanon, the national health standards were steadily improv-
ing, which in turn signaled a greater population growth. See Richards and Wa-
terbury (1990, p. 97).
18. Richards and Waterbury (1990, p. 106).
19. There were no official censuses for the Lebanese population from 1932 until
1970, and few scholars have attempted to come up with approximate estimates
of the size of sectarian groups. See Hudson (1985) and Richards and Waterbury
(1990, p. 97).
20. Richards and Waterbury (1997, Table 6.4, p. 150).
21. Al-Qadaiyyah al-Zira’iyyah Lubnan fi Daw’ al-Mariksiyya (1970, p. 72).
22. Richards and Waterbury (1990, Table 10.1, pp. 26–65).
23. Richards and Waterbury (1990, Table 10.1, pp. 264–265). The Biqa’ was more
than 41% of the total size of Lebanon. The Biqa’ Plain alone was 170,000 hect-
ares (1 hectare = 2,471 acres), or approximately 52% of the total agricultural
area in Lebanon. Most of the fertile lands were owned by a handful of families
such as Rizk, Bustrus, Eddi, and Skaf. The agricultural products of al-Biqa’
composed 30% of the total agricultural production in Lebanon. In the 1960s
the Biqa’s total population was 368,000, 65% of whom lived in villages and,
therefore, relied completely on agriculture. Thirty-five percent lived in towns.
See Al-Qadiyyah al-Zira’iyyah fi Lubnan fi Daw’ al-Mariksiyya (1970, pp.
104–105, 166–167, 223).
24. Al-Buwari (1986, pp. 297–298).
25. Persen (1958, pp. 227–278).
26. See also Richards and Waterbury (1990, p. 74). Their Table 3.11 assesses sec-
toral distribution of the labor force in the Middle East (in percentages) from
1950 to 1980. In 1960 the highest percentage of workers could be found in the
services sector (39%). Agricultural and industrial workers formed 38% and
23% of the total workforce, respectively. The table shows a 17% decline in the
agricultural workforce between 1950 and 1960, a 3% increase in the industrial
sector, and a 14% increase in the number of those working in the services sector.
270 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

27. Al-Jisr (1988, pp. 84–85).

28. Zaynab Zu’aytir, interview.
29. By “workers,” I mean the blue-collar workers, and by “employees,” the white-
collar staff.
30. The daily wage for those workers 6.60 Lebanese pounds, that is, a little less
than $3.00. See Al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical)
(September 25, 1970, p. 20).
31. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 7, 1970, p. 9).
32. Abisaab (1999, pp. 55–66).
33. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 7, 1970, p. 9).
34. Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (November 16, 1970, p. 5).
35. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (July 23, 1970, p. 4).
36. Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (November 21, 1970, p. 5).
37. For more on workingwomen’s use of labor laws, see Abisaab (2001, pp. 142–150).
38. Qanun Yakhtas, MAE, Syrie–Liban, April 17, 1935, vol. 2921.
39. Shu’ayb (1980, pp. 15–19).
40. Shu’ayb (1980, pp. 15–19).
41. Hannih Dib, interview.
42. Shu’ayb (1980). See also Ghurayyib (1988, p. 330).
43. Hannih Dib, interview.
44. Abisaab (2004).
45. Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (June 24, 1970, p. 5).
46. Imam Musa al-Sadr started a political movement in 1970, the year of the strike,
to address the deteriorating conditions of Shi’ite Muslims in Lebanon. This led
to the foundation of a number of sociopolitical organizations, the most impor-
tant of which were the Lebanese Resistance Army (AMAL) and the Committee
for the Support of South Lebanon. See Hannih Dib, interview. On al-Sadr’s po-
litical movement and life, see Ajami (1986).
47. Ajami (1986).
48. Hannih Dib, interview and ’Itaf Tutanji, interview.
49. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the conversations he had with these of-
ficials or the arguments used by either side or the language describing their dis-
tinct positions on the matter.
50. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 21, 1970, p. 7).
51. The women workers in question preferred to remain anonymous.
52. Founded on July 19, 1947 a year after a bloody confrontation between the Re-
gie workers and the Lebanese government. For more details on the strike, see
Abisaab (2001, Ch. 3).
53. Rizkallah-Boulad (1972). The executive council of the URWE consisted of two
bodies, the consultative and the executive. The former consisted of five posts
occupied by the workers’ representatives whose roles were confined to delibera-
tion. The executive body was composed of five posts assigned to the Regie’s em-
ployees. Evidently, the policies and resolutions of the URWE remained in the
hands of the active members who cast their votes on whether and when to
strike.
54. Rizkallah-Boulad (1972).
55. Abdul Aziz Harfush, interview and also Tabarani (1974).
56. Iqbal Dughan, interview.
57. Others on the executive board argued that the URWE would lose its bargaining
Gendered Discourse Among Lebanese Women 271

power with the Regie if it were to entertain or adopt the demands of the
Ghaziyya temporary workers. Probably the URWE feared that the government
might decline to give it a promised loan, among other demands, if it backed the
strike. See Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, p. 78).
58. Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, 51–52).
59. Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, 51–52).
60. Oral accounts by several tobacco workingwomen collected between February
and July 1997.
61. Mainly, Wasila Dubuq and Hannih Dib.
62. Hannih Dib, interview.
63. Leftist scholars who discussed Communist activism in Lebanon made no men-
tion of women’s issues or gendered dimensions of class. See Couland (1979)
and Mustafa (1979).
64. Al-Shuyu’iyyun al-Lubnaniyyun wa Muhimmat al-Marhalah al-Muqbilah (no
date, pp. 72–73). The party also discussed the growth of conscious social
awareness in Lebanon at the hands of “male students and teachers, and the
sons of the toiling industrial workingmen.”
65. This was indicated by the growing number of subscriptions to the Communist
daily newspaper Al-Nida’ (The Call) among women and men workers at the
Regie. See also Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (July 16, 1963, p. 6; August
10, 1963, p. 6; October 31, 1963, pp. 5–6); Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper)
(March 7, 1965, p. 7). Ahmad ’Abdallah interview. ’Abdallah, a principal Com-
munist Regie worker confirmed that 75 tobacco workers (a little more than 2%
of the total labor force) subscribed to Al-Nida’ during that year. Rizkallah-
Boulad (1972, p. 6) also asserted the substantial growth in the number of Com-
munist and Phalanges affiliates at the Regie.
66. See Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (March 9, 1965, p. 5; March 14, 1965, p. 3).
67. Hannih Dib, interview.
68. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (March 7, 1965, p. 6; March 13, 1965, p. 3;
March 26, 1965, p. 6).
69. Hannih Dib, interview.
70. Hannih Dib, interview.
71. Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, p. 71).
72. George Abu Sulayman and Butrus Ghusayn, a high-ranking male employee, op-
posed the integration arguing that it would weaken the bargaining position of
the URWE. Ghusayn also insisted that there were insufficient quantities of raw
tobacco at Ghaziyya that would justify extending permanency to the working-
women. See Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, p. 78).
73. Union of the Regie Workers and Employees (1970, p. 78). Eight members out
of ten endorsed the decision to adopt the demands of the strikers. This adoption
was conditioned to remain secretive until such time when the entire board of
the URWE decides to disclose it. In other words, the URWE literally dismissed
the demands of Ghaziyya. Moreover, probably due to internal company and
Communist party politics, which needs further research, Abu Sulayman voted
against the inclusion of Ghaziyya demands and Rizq did not vote at all.
74. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (July 29, 1970, p. 4). The second Arab–Israeli
war in 1967 had a major effect on South Lebanon that hosted thousands of up-
rooted Palestinian refugees and became a hot bed for the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) and liberal nationalist and leftist activists who were sym-
272 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

pathetic to labor and peasant grievances. One could infer, as such, that the gov-
ernor’s “security measures” reflected the fear that the strikers might empower
themselves by drawing on the support of such political activists in the south.
75. Al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (December 5,
1970, p. 9)
76. Al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (December 5,
1970, p. 9)
77. Al-Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (December 5,
1970, p. 21).
78. Al-Hayat (The Life; newspaper) (September 12, 1970, p. 5)
79. Hannih Dib, interview; ’Itaf Tutanji, interview; Da’d Ghandur, interview;
Husayn Khalifa, interview.
80. Da’d Ghandur, interview.
81. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 21, 1970, p. 7) and Al-
Thaqafa al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (September 25, 1970,
p. 19).
82. Hannih Dib, interview; ’Itaf Tutanji, interview; Husayn Khalifa, interview; Al-
Huriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 29, 1970, pp. 7–15).
83. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (October 13, 1970, p. 5).
84. Hannih Dib, interview.
85. Hannih Dib, interview, Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (November 19, 1970,
p. 5), and Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (November 19, 1970, p. 5).
86. Hannih Dib, interview.
87. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (September 21, 1970, p. 7).
88. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (December 14, 1970, p. 15).
89. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (December 7, 1970, p. 10) and Al-Thaqafa
al-Wataniyya (The National Culture; periodical) (December 5, 1970, p. 9).
90. Hannih Dib, interview.
91. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (December 7, 1970, p. 10) and Hannih
Dib, interview.
92. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (January 18, 1971, p. 1).
93. Al-Nahar (The Day; newspaper) (January 10, 1971, p. 7).
94. Al-Hurriyya (The Freedom; magazine) (December 28, 1970, p. 11).
95. Ayari and Brosseau (1998, pp. 105–106).
96. See also Fischer (1991). Similar views are reflected in Brahimi (1991).

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Discourse,
Writing Place
Representation,
and Gender inand
Novels
the Contestation
by Tunisian Women
of Space

11 Writing Place and Gender

in Novels by
Tunisian Women
MARC BROSSEAU
LEILA AYARI

. . . the heart of the house beats in my grandmother’s corset

just as the street pounds in my old man’s hand.
—B‹JI (1993, p. 119)

“L
iterature is a ‘place’ of freedom that condenses and dis-
perses the violence of contemporary history” (Harel, 2002, p. 7). On the
one hand, literature condenses: indeed, it absorbs, re-creates, sorts, con-
structs, reproduces, and distorts various aspects of our experience of the so-
cial world. These variable degrees of mimesis relate to how literature’s
grasp on external reality, however slippery, transforms it into an object of
representation. Yet the idea of condensation points to something other than
mimetic representation. It refers to something more generative than straight-
forward reflection, to literature’s hermeneutical or interpretive dimensions.
Novels, for example, do not simply represent social, cultural, historical, or
geographical realities: in the process of “reducing their volume” and “in-
creasing their density,” novels formulate original interpretations. On the
other hand, literature also disperses, a notion that points to its social and
cultural relevance and significance. Literature communicates meanings of-
ten not expressed in other discursive forms, it shares interpretations of the
world, reveals the beauties and the atrocities of the human condition, cri-
tiques the social and political order, and disseminates alternative under-

275
276 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

standings of what constitutes the “established reality,” all of which are

open to reinterpretation in different cultural contexts. Hence, it takes part
in a wider sociopolitical process. This chapter is an attempt at consider-
ing both these dimensions of literature—artistic condensation and social
dissemination—in the context of a cultural and geographical interpretation
of contemporary novels by Tunisian women writers.
Given the prevalence of the spatial segregation of the genders in the
Muslim world (Mernissi, 1985), it is surprising to see how little geograph-
ical research has focused on the experience of place by men and women as
represented in literature. This type of investigation would not only reveal
various aspects of gender relations, but could also lead to a broader exami-
nation of literature as a cultural production that embodies, reproduces, or
resists cultural and social values. In this interpretation of five novels written
by Tunisian women, the description of women’s experience of place in Tu-
nisia illustrates how literary representations can be viewed both as a de-
scription of various social realities and as a discourse of emancipation that
challenges certain aspects of the hegemonic social order. Although their de-
piction of Tunisian gender relations is far from being radical, these authors
reveal how spatial and social segregation is experienced from a woman’s
point of view. They illustrate how spatiality is not only a useful interpretive
device to highlight aspects of women’s conditions, but also a central object
of their struggle for greater equality. Tradition and “modernity” are not op-
posed in a simple dualistic manner. Instead, the novels we examine often
express an ambivalence between respect for traditional Muslim values and
a legitimate desire to overcome some of the limitations imposed upon
women by this moral and social order. The clear separation of private and
public spaces along gender and age lines is an important aspect of the rep-
resentation of space and place in these novels. It provides an interesting an-
alytical angle from which to examine aspects of women’s experience of
space and place in contemporary Tunisia.
Before embarking on this examination of the representation of gender
and place in contemporary novels by Tunisian women, we provide a brief
overview of the various ways in which geographers have engaged works of
literature to help define the contours of the approach we have privileged in
this chapter. We then introduce the five novels under examination, accom-
panied by a brief discussion about Tunisian literature and the particular
context from which women authors writing in French have evolved. These
works of fiction emanate from a paradoxical geography—culturally and
linguistically—that is described in some detail. The remainder of the chap-
ter focuses on specific geographical and social themes in the novels that
speak to the relevance of a geographically informed analysis of literary
works. We discuss how the boundaries between private and public spaces
and their crucial gender relevance have been represented in the five novels.
In addition, we examine how profound differences that exist between the
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 277

urban and the rural spheres, as far as gender roles and spatial politics are
concerned, have been portrayed. Far from being static or absolute, the
boundaries between private (feminine) and public (masculine) spaces are
being contested or put into question. In this context, we highlight the role
of intermediaries, who, in these novels, create precious links between
women in the private sphere and what occurs in public places. More openly
critical of these spatial boundaries, we also show how the recurring theme
of spatial transgression acts as a ritual of resistance that illustrates how
space is a key element of women’s quest for equality.

LITERARY GEOGRAPHIES OF SPACE AND PLACE

Since the 1970s, geographers and other researchers in the social sciences
and humanities have increasingly turned to literature as a source of inspira-
tion. Thirty years later, literary geography, as some like to label it, has be-
come a recognized subfield of the discipline (Claval, 1995; Crang, 1998;
Shurmer-Smith, 2002). There are many ways in which to consider literary
works from a geographical perspective and reasons for resorting to sources
such as the novel vary. The novel can be seen as a documentary source de-
picting regions and places; as a transcription of the experience of place (in
different geographical and cultural settings); as a critique of mainstream so-
cial reality (a form of counterdiscourse along political, social, ethnic, or
gender lines); or as another representational mode that explores, in a differ-
ent manner, how language can express or communicate various aspects of
geographical reality (Brosseau, 1994, 1996). The first two, regionalist and
humanistic interpretations, respectively, have insisted on literature’s mi-
metic abilities: factual mimetism when the novel is considered as a docu-
mentary source on place (see Gilbert, 1972; Chevalier, 1993), subjective
mimetism when it is seen as an artistic account of the experience of place
(Tuan, 1978; Frémont, 1976; Porteous, 1985). Hence, these interpretations
have focused mainly on the “condensation” abilities of literature. The third
approach, associated with a historicomaterialist epistemology, has been
more sociological in scope and therefore more concerned with literature’s
ideological function or, more generally, its social relevance as a reflection of
unfair social conditions (Cook, 1981; Silk & Silk, 1985). The fourth ap-
proach has engaged in a more open-ended dialogue with literature about its
formal possibilities in expressing meanings about people and place that
usually cannot find satisfactory or transitive forms of expression in geogra-
phy’s traditional discursive practices (Robinson, 1977; Lafaille, 1989;
Brosseau, 1997). In the context of the rejuvenation of cultural geography—
and the emergence of the “new” cultural geography—more recent interpre-
tations of literature have developed diverse analytical strategies that seek to
overcome yesterday’s epistemological incompatibilities (Cosgrove, 1994).
278 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

They have shown the importance of space and spatiality in the understand-
ing of cultural representation and cultural politics (Brosseau, 2003). They
are more likely to consider representations, and literary representations
more specifically, as “a set of practices by which meanings are constituted
and communicated. Such representational practices produce and circulate
meanings among members of social groups and these meaning can be de-
fined as culture. . . . Representations not only reflect reality, but they help
to constitute reality” (Duncan, 2000, p. 703).
In this chapter, the analysis of women’s experiences of place in the nov-
els under consideration leads us to consider them as a form of cultural cri-
tique. The representation of subjective experiences of place is a common fo-
cus for many humanistic geographers attempting to understand sense of
place (Pocock, 1981; Porteous, 1990). Although often considered from an
individualistic standpoint, the experience of place in literature can also be
examined from a social and critical perspective. The spatial distribution of
the characters, who differ in age, gender, class, ethnicity, culture, their
movement, their activities, and their relationships, create specific social to-
pographies in novels (Daniels & Rycroft, 1993; Preston & Simpson-
Housley, 1994; Brosseau, 1995). Research on the representation of cities in
literature has revealed how different groups may experience place (Monk
& Norwood, 1990; Teather, 1991; Deslauriers, 1994). When considering
gender, private and public spaces are a common theme in such analyses, as
illustrated in papers by Gilbert (1994) on Isabel Allende and by Gilbert and
Simpson-Housley (1997) on Margaret Atwood. Issues of class, gender,
race, and ethnicity, considered by themselves or in a combined fashion, are
integrated in the analysis of the representation of social reality in space
(McKittrick, 2000; Carter, 2001).

WOMEN WRITERS AND TUNISIAN LITERATURE

Most Tunisian literature is written in Arabic (Fontaine, 1977, 1990;

Khadhar, 1987; Bekri, 1999). However, the novels examined for our re-
search were written in French. They are a subset of what is often referred to
as the “littérature maghrébine d’expression française” (Dejeux, 1992,
1994). The novels chosen are Cendre à l’aube (Ash at Dawn; 1975), by
Jalila Hafsia; Les jardins du nord (Gardens of the North; 1982), by Souad
Guellouz; L’oeil du jour (The Eye of the Day; 1985), by Hélé Béji;
Chronique frontalière (Border Chronicle; 1991), by Emna Bel Haj Yahia;
and L’immeuble de la rue du Caire (The Apartment Building on la rue du
Caire; 2002), by Noura Bensaad.1 Tunisian women did not write any nov-
els in French until 1975, at which time three were published.
Tunisia became independent in 1956. The “new” Tunisian state set
many fundamental transformations in motion in Tunisian society: modern-
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 279

ization of the economy, growing urbanization and a widening of the gap

between the city and the country, and significant increases in life expec-
tancy and literacy rates, for instance (Camau, 1989). The same year, it im-
plemented the Code du statut personnel (Personal status code). According
to some observers, this code sets Tunisia apart in the Arab/Muslim world
for promoting women’s rights and greater gender equality (Charrad, 1998).
Along with other social policies, it is responsible for many positive effects:
ensuring basic rights for women, abolishing polygamy, outlawing repudia-
tion, promoting education for women, and so on. Since independence, edu-
cation rates, contraception use, and women’s participation in the paid labor
force, for example, have been accompanied by a significant drop in birth-
rates not often observed in the Arab/Muslim world. However, women’s so-
cial mobility, especially in rural areas, is still slow and incomplete. The
quest for full equality in waged work and in public space more generally is,
to this day, the object of social tensions. In particular, the growing equality
and autonomy of women is nonetheless viewed as a threat to men (Camau,
1989, pp. 102–103).
The novels under consideration provide interpretations of social life in
the context of the modernization of social relations in Tunisia from the
1950s to the present. The general process of modernization and the pro-
gressive transformation of the traditional extended family into a nuclear
one serve as the backdrop for these novels, which often represent social re-
ality at an intimate family scale.
Cendre à l’aube, by Jalila Hafsia, is set between the 1950s and the
1970s and tells the story of a young, upper-middle-class Tunisian girl. In
this novel, there is a clear contrast between city and country and between
the domestic and public spheres. Transgressing from the woman’s (private)
sphere to the man’s (public) sphere is portrayed as a crucial step toward
emancipation.
Souad Guellouz’s Les jardins du nord has a much lighter and rural fla-
vor. This historical interpretation of Tunisian culture and family life takes
the form of a collage that intertwines family memories with the author’s
personal reflections. Apart from emphasizing the severe restrictions faced
by women, the tone of the novel is characterized by a hint of nostalgia for a
past era and way of life. It is a novel “about memories and therefore about
returning to one’s roots” (Déjeux, 1994, p. 125).
L’oeil du jour, by Hélé Béji, presents the author’s personal observations
on Tunis after she returns on a holiday from her new adopted home, Paris.
She finds that the efforts to modernize the city have spoiled its charm. Her
grandmother’s house is the only place where she feels truly at home. It has
been argued that Béji is Tunisia’s first French-language woman novelist
worth calling a novelist (Déjeux, 1994, p. 53).
Chronique frontalière, by Emna Bel Haj Yahia, is a chronicle of the
struggle of two Tunisian women in their quest for equality in a male-
280 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

dominated society. More openly feminist in its stance, it portrays women

on both sides of the Mediterranean, Paris and Tunis, who are disillusioned
by tradition and the so-called progress of modernity.
Noura Bensaad’s L’immeuble de la rue du Caire is the most recent of
our novels. Comprising a series of portraits of daily life centered around a
single apartment building in Tunis, it captures the diversity of contempo-
rary Tunisian culture. From the street to the roof terrace, from the various
apartments to the courtyard, the short novel explores a wide range of char-
acters and relationships.
These five novels are different in many ways. Yet they clearly share a
common view about a woman’s place in society. They were all written by
well-educated Tunisian women from a middle-class background, a fact that
clearly shapes their representations of social relations. They challenge
mainstream Tunisian culture because their authors wrote and published
them in an environment where writing is not considered as an “acceptable”
endeavor for women. Until very recently, the novel was a “male” genre and
so these novels constitute relative acts of resistance, “an arena for struggles
over spatial, social and cultural meanings,” as was proposed for other liter-
ary works (Gilbert & Simpson-Housley, 1997, p. 245).

East and West: A Paradoxical Geography

While the fact that these women chose to write in French may seem unim-
portant, it is, in fact, of great cultural relevance. Indeed, many critics have
discussed the cultural politics and the existential ambivalence associated
with the use of French by authors of the Maghreb (Bekri, 1999). For Tuni-
sians (and all peoples of the Maghreb) who lived through the French occu-
pation, and especially those who attended school during that time, French
has long been the language of the colonizer. One needed to master French
to work in administrative positions and many thought it would help pave
the way to modernization (Déjeux, 1992, p. 52). However, people contin-
ued to associate French with the Western world. A Tunisian dialect of
Arabic was spoken, but classical written Arabic—the variety shared by the
entire Arab world—was not taught in schools. It was up to parents, if they
had the desire and the means to do so, to have an instructor come to the
house and teach their children the language of the Qur’an. The main char-
acters in the novels by Guellouz and Hafsia often allude to a certain void, a
deep regret, and even a sense of shame stemming from the fact that they did
not learn classical Arabic. Because language is a social barrier, not knowing
“their language” distances them from their history, their ancestors, and
even their religion. Guellouz tells of the main character’s (young Sophia
Chebil) lack of interest in private Arabic lessons. Since Arabic was not a re-
quirement in school, Sofia saw no point in putting effort into learning com-
plex Arabic grammar. At the time, she thought only of the importance of
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 281

French, “this French which will help us fight against the French” (Guellouz,
1982, p. 128). Only when she reaches adulthood does Sofia regret her lazi-
ness and feel the shame of not knowing “her language.” With this passage,
it is clear that Guellouz tries to justify and defend her use of French, while
still claiming her Arab and Muslim identity. In the household featured in
Cendre à l’aube, it is the grandfather who tries to teach the children Arabic
through history and music.
While some authors reject French because it is the colonizer’s lan-
guage, one viewpoint suggests that some women authors reject Arabic, per-
haps subconsciously, because it is the language of patriarchal power and of
the Qur’an. The idea that a woman should express herself openly is seen
not only as a transgression but also as a fitna, a threat to the structure of
moral values and religious beliefs that underlie traditional society (Segarra,
1997, p. 17). Some North African feminists advocating emancipation
within existing traditional structures see the use of the French language as
moving away from this ideal because it brings them closer to Western social
and ideological structures (Segarra, 1997, p. 20).
The use of French does provide a “place” of freedom that is quite dif-
ferent from that provided by Arabic. The distance it creates allows the au-
thor to cross the barriers of prohibition and social taboos (Déjeux, 1994, p.
130). Since French has no religious significance for Muslims, it acts as a
“veil,” allowing the writer to express herself more freely without having to
reveal the most intimate part of her life: her relationship with God. In fact,
Fawzia Zouari, who recently published the novel La retournée, which ad-
dresses identity issues related to belonging to two very different cultures,
directly expresses the freedom associated with the use of French: “In this
foreign language, French, I now have the impression of running freely on a
field unlimited by borders, of conquering a real independence” (Zouari,
1996, p. 131). She goes on to say that preventing her from writing in
French would constitute a condemnation to silence. Hélé Béji, herself at the
crossroads of both cultures, puts it in very geographical terms: “The land
where I contemplate myself is the Orient, the place where I express myself
is the West. The oddness of this position does not escape me, for I experi-
ence myself primarily as a form of paradoxical geography in which nothing
corresponds but everything is communicated” (Béji, 1997, p. 13).

PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC SPACE

Traditionally, private space, especially domestic space, is associated with

women, whereas the public domain is a more masculine space. This type of
spatial segregation is especially prevalent in the Arab/Muslim context
where public and private spheres are well defined with little overlap be-
tween the two (e.g., Fisher, 1991). Although it is not applied as stringently
282 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

to younger generations, and even though its intensity varies with one’s age,
family environment, and socioeconomic class, spatial segregation of the
genders is fundamental in shaping the female characters’ experience of
space and place in the novels under consideration. For women, home is
central to every aspect of their lives and is often the only place where they
truly belong. They are confined to the home first by their parents, then,
once married, by their husbands. The home, over which the woman has al-
most complete control—at the cost of turning her back on the outside
world—and whose every little nook and cranny she knows, becomes her
universe (Segarra, 1997, p. 117).
This intimate knowledge of their space gives some women a sense of
security inside their homes. This is especially true of elderly women. For
them, home is a peaceful haven in a city and a country undergoing rapid
changes and which they no longer recognize. Routine housework also
brings with it a sense of security that provides the kind of serenity that
comes from living comfortably and having absolute control (Brahimi,
1995, p. 29). Every morning, the narrator’s mother in L’oeil du jour de-
votes herself to her housework, always following “her favorite itinerary,
unaltered by time” (Béji, 1993, p. 12). Referring to the numerous hand-
kerchiefs that the elderly keep in their pockets and elsewhere in their gar-
ments, the narrator describes her grandmother’s control over the spatial
occupation in her home, while also comparing the intimacy of the home
to that of her own body, where she keeps the keys to all the parts of her
home.

My grandmother always keeps many of them on her, hidden deep in her

corset, where you think she’ll never find them again, considering she puts so
many sets, wallets, rosaries, keys, and who-knows-what-else in there: all
the tools needed to run the household smoothly, tools without which no
one can have access neither to the pantry, nor the kitchen, nor the closets,
nor the washrooms, nor the stairs on the first floor, nor the “commodino”
in the bedroom. The entire house is inside my grandmother’s corset, held to-
gether by a strong elastic which forms a large fold on top of her waist; the
heart of the house beats in my grandmother’s corset just as the street pounds
in my old man’s hand. (Béji, 1993, p. 119)

In this house, every single object has its place and “only during thorough
housecleaning are they moved, for a few hours, from their peaceful throne”
(Béji, 1993, p. 86).
This widowed grandmother and the elderly women in Les jardins du
nord control their domestic space and only rarely leave it. They choose to
stay in their homes and have maids, children, a neighbor, or some other in-
termediary run errands for them. Not only have these women created a
peaceful haven for themselves and their families, but they clearly state their
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 283

intention of not seeing this order disturbed by the French occupation and
Western influence in general. The mother in Les jardins du nord (Ella
Yamina) notices the influence of Christian culture on her daughters, who
have befriended a young Italian girl, when one of these daughters imitates a
funeral scene to mark the end of her affection for her doll:

“Fatma, Sofia, Maria, come, women do not attend funerals!”

“But this is a Christian funeral,” answered Fatma. [ . . . ]
Ella Yamina let out a sigh but Sophia saw that she was also smiling.
“There you are,” she said, “even our funerals are going to resemble
Christian funerals!” (Guellouz, 1982, p. 172)

Later, the same idea is expressed again, but in a more serious tone:

For her [Ella Yamina, Sophia’s and Fatma’s mother], it was already sad
enough that the country was colonized. But she was determined that colo-
nization would at least stop at her doorstep and, if possible, fall flat on its
face there. “They” had taken the land and its fruits, “they” would not take
the fruit of her womb. . . . (Guellouz, 1982, p. 175)

Again, parallels are drawn between the home, dominated by the woman,
and her body or her children’s bodies, which are to be protected to the
same extent. This certainly would explain, in part, why many female char-
acters remember their childhood homes with so much tenderness, nostal-
gia, and respect for tradition. The home is an important part of childhood;
it is where girls and women spend most of their time.
This nostalgia and attachment to the grandmother’s home is an under-
lying theme in L’oeil du jour. When she arrives in Tunis from Paris, where
she now lives, the narrator only feels comfortable in her grandmother’s
home and thus refuses to venture outside. “Moving about inside apartment
spaces leading to the main patio is a pleasure of which she never tires”
(Brahimi, 1991, p. 77). Hence her confinement to the domestic sphere has
not been imposed on her; it is her choice. In Les jardins du nord, the ten-
derness with which the home is described is even more innocent. There is a
metonymical process whereby the house expresses both childhood and the
narrator’s relationship to her mother:

. . . for Sophia, that house in Metline is still The House, even though she
was not born there. In fact, none of the children were born there. Sofia only
lived there during vacations, and even then she rarely stayed more than two
months at a time. Furthermore, it was neither luxurious nor even comfort-
able. They had spent many years in that house without running water and
electricity. But Sofia loved it. She still loves it today as a witness to her happy
childhood, as the last relic of what they were taught to call, “Mama’s days.”
(Guellouz, 1982, p. 66)
284 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

Some characters long for the past, a time when they might have been frus-
trated by the segregation and yet felt safe knowing that they were not
alone. Today, with all the upheaval in traditional society and European-
style housing, especially the impersonal apartment buildings, segregation is
much harder to bear.
This isolation is even more frustrating and restricting for young edu-
cated women who wish to live a lifestyle unlike what their mothers and
other women from previous generations knew. A woman becomes aware of
a perceived inferiority at adolescence, a time in a young woman’s life when
the family makes decisions about her engagement (Déjeux, 1994, p. 129).
The young woman goes from being controlled by her parents to being con-
trolled by her husband. In Les jardins du nord, this spousal control is ex-
treme in the relationship between Sophia’s grandfather and his first wife:
“Fatma saw her parents, who lived five hundred meters away, once a year”
(Guellouz, 1982, p. 32). This makes a strong statement about the extent to
which a man can control a woman’s movements.
In Cendre à l’aube, Nabila’s “imprisonment” by her first two hus-
bands is less harsh yet more frustrating because Nabila is convinced that
she is entitled to a happier life. Consequently, she withdraws into her own
shell and tries to lose herself in books, much to the pleasure of her second
husband, Hatem’s: “Reading prevented Nabila from going out and that re-
assured Hatem” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 167). Later, she regrets having tolerated
her husband’s hold on her occupation of space: “In all the years we lived
together, he didn’t stop controlling her friendships, watching her comings
and goings, imposing set itineraries, and frequently checking up on her”
(Hafsia, 1975, p. 198). In the more recent novel by Bensaad (2002), how-
ever, we see a wider range of gender relations: traditional couples with
stricter gender spatial segregation, more modern couples whose use of
space is less clearly demarcated, a young woman living alone and feeling
relatively free.
Physical isolation in the domestic sphere, linked to a woman’s status,
often creates some sort of bond between women. Hafsia describes bonds
that develop, sometimes unbeknownst to the women themselves, between
women in the same building. Space thus becomes a mediator of social rela-
tionships, creating a kinship between individuals who would otherwise be
isolated:

Men were rarely seen during the day. They left early in the morning and re-
turned from work at a set time. [ . . . ] The building looked like it only had
women as occupants. [ . . . ] In that building, the women felt at ease. [ . . . ]
What created a familiarity between them was this intimate and mutual un-
derstanding of the stresses in their lives, of their habits, of their problems, of
what they had given up. Unbeknownst to them, an affectionate indulgence
connected them to one another. Shielded from the eyes of men, they re-
vealed their true selves, without feeling forced to painfully pretend. All of
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 285

them accepted their burden with resignation. Knowing that on the floor be-
low another woman, also wearing a faded blousa [traditional blouse] and
fouta [traditional skirt], was going through the same motions and experi-
encing the same sorrow filled them with serenity. What a comfort! (Hafsia,
1975, p. 35)

The female characters often try to forget their loneliness by visiting a neigh-
bor, sister, cousin, or friend:

Not a day went by without one of the sisters visiting a sister, a brother, or a
cousin. they never tired of it. These visits were part of life. No one could
stand loneliness. One had to see somebody, anybody. one was never to stay
alone! This was the case for all members of society. (Hafsia, 1975, p. 145)

These meetings allow women to distract themselves from the monotony of

housework while providing an opportunity for sharing common experi-
ences: “Freed from their chores for an entire afternoon, women, young and
old, felt united by a silent contempt for men and their tyrannical organiza-
tion” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 29). Assisting a family member, friend, or neighbor
is frequently used as an excuse to leave the house:

To hell with husbands and children! This week, the excuse to go-to-
Yamina’s-house-to-help-her-make-couscous proved to be a nice long break.
It was always better than the monotony of other days, than the big or small
tasks that enslaved their lives, all women’s lives. They shared news, laughed
like little girls, exchanged recipes for happiness:
“You want your husband to be blinded with love for you? Blind
him!”
Sofia listened more carefully.
Then came the details:
“Give him compliments. Tell him: ‘You are the most handsome, the
most majestic . . . Even if he is a hunchbacked monkey!’ ” (Guellouz,
1982, p. 96)

In the L’immeuble de la rue du Caire, women meet on the roof terrace with
their children, hanging clothes and sometimes hot peppers to dry, exchang-
ing news and gossip:

She saw other women who just like her were busy washing or hanging
clothes to dry. There were dozens and dozens of red peppers drying on the
ground or hanging on strings. Farida thought to herself the roofs were the
housewifes’ kingdom. Just like her, nearly all women must have felt a sense
of freedom on the roof terrace of their building. (Bensaad, 2002, p. 47)

Women’s meetings always take place when “the man of the house” is away,
but always in a home, never in a café or a restaurant. The boundaries of the
private and the public spheres are generally respected. Ella Yamina is
286 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

shocked when, in accordance with tradition, she visits a new bride and
hears someone breathing behind her: “Well, she says to herself, this is in-
credible. The husband in his room [ . . . ], I warned them of my visit. I
know he is uneducated but I can’t believe that he would stay hidden to hear
a conversation between women. . . . ” (Guellouz, 1982, p. 223). One ex-
ception to this general rule is the apartment courtyard of the colonial city,
where men and women, still “protected” from the very public gaze of the
street, can actually meet and talk more or less freely, as described by
Bensaad (2002) in the L’immeuble de la rue du Caire.
In more formal gatherings, such as weddings, where both genders find
themselves under the same roof, boundaries exist inside the domestic space:
“All of the family, or rather the women, surrounded her. The men were in
another room with Youssef. The separation of the genders was automatic”
(Hafsia, 1975, p. 61).2 Segarra (1997, p. 118) notes that inside the houses
there is also a division of spaces: women’s spaces are usually more humid,
darker, and have lower ceilings, whereas men’s spaces are generally dry,
better lit, with higher ceilings.
The presence of men in the private feminine sphere does seem to
change the character, the dynamic, and the freedom of movement in that
space. In this sense, some women who are unhappy about their situation
dread the time of day when their husband returns from work—as if, upon
his return, the woman suddenly loses the power over the space which is
normally hers (see Bensaad, 2002, p. 24, for an example). It is unacceptable
to do or say certain things in the presence of men, even in the private
sphere. In Les jardins du nord, little Sophia, who was barely 11 years old at
the time, learned this truth and brought shame on her mother in the pro-
cess:

“She was combing her hair in front of her grandfather and I was overcome
with shame. . . . Ah! It is right to say that any small part of a woman’s body
is indecent.”
[ . . . ] Yet Sophia knew that if one of her brothers had combed his
three centimeters of hair in front of his grandfather, her mother would
not have felt dishonored. At best, she would have very politely told him
to comb his hair elsewhere. But in Sophia’s case, because of her long hair,
a symbol of femininity, she was pushed over into another world, one of
mystery (to be maintained), of shame (that was not to be analyzed to
avoid making any troubling discoveries), of taboos (sometimes very use-
ful, even necessary, as barriers, in a patriarchal and chauvinistic society).
(Guellouz, 1982, p. 109)

The purpose of spatial segregation of the sexes is therefore to hide the

woman’s body from the eyes of men. It is a question of honor for the men
responsible for protecting the integrity of girls and women (Mernissi,
1985).
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 287

To those visiting Tunisia for the first time, the French influence on the
lifestyle and the built environment is evident. However, after the initial im-
pression, “one realizes that the French element is more of a veneer, and that
underneath things are fundamentally different. One important factor which
creates this difference is Islam” (Beaujot, 1985, p. 5). Although Tunisia and
France are two opposing worlds, with two very distinct value systems
(Segarra, 1997, p. 111), many elements of the French system crossed over
to Tunisia during the colonial period. One element that has had major re-
percussions on the way people occupy space is city planning.
In cities developed with a European lifestyle in mind, there isn’t the sa-
cred physical space needed to protect women from male onlookers, and so
this space must somehow be created. In Les jardins du nord, Sophia’s father
did just that when the family moved to Tindja:

In Tindja, a village next to Ferryville, you might get the impression that you
were in Europe, or more precisely in France.
All the houses had roofs covered with red tiles and a small garden.
They were all fenced in by low hedges, so low in fact that when the
Chebils left the Buonanottes and bought their own house, it was a prob-
lem for Ella Yamina, who wore a veil. Also, before they moved into the
house, Si Abdelkrim had a two-meter-high wall built around the house to
hide Ella Yamina from the eyes of passers-by when she went into the gar-
den. (Guellouz, 1982, p. 133)

The critical boundary is drawn here between the house (feminine) and the
street (masculine). Les jardins du nord is set in the first half of the century,
a time when wearing the veil was a way to extend a woman’s private sphere
into the streets. In the other novels, there is little mention of veils because
very few women in Tunisian urban centers wear them. (In fact, it has been
banned in Tunisia’s schools, universities, and public administrations since
1990. For a general discussion, see Charrad, 1998.)
The street is much more than a mere space for getting around in Mus-
lim cities. Women who find themselves in streets have to endure aggressive
looks and comments from men. They are only there out of necessity, to go
from one home to another, to get to school, or to run errands and quickly
return home. Men will often accompany women who need to go outside
the home in order to protect “their honor.” In Cendre à l’aube, Nabila’s
best friend’s boyfriend is one of these men who feels he has something to
protect:

When they [Nabila and Monia] stepped outside, they never saw Ahmed.
But they promptly found him on their path. He waited on the sidewalk,
smoking and watching them walk by with long indifferent glances. [ . . . ]
He accompanied them to the school’s door and walked away with
the same discretion that he had used to wait for them. (Hafsia, 1975, p. 62)
288 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

A young woman’s experience of the street is overseen and controlled by

men. Beaujot’s viewpoint adds an interesting dimension to this idea.

In the towns it is the men who are in the cafes. At first, one finds it surprising
to see only men in these places of leisure. You realize that you have internal-
ized the local norm when you react with shock to see a woman walking in
the street as if she belonged there. The fact is that the public domain is a
man’s domain. A woman who is being harassed on the street or in a
crowded bus has no recourse, because, in effect, she does not belong there.
This is not to say that there are no women on the streets, but they must have
a definite purpose justifying their intrusion into a domain that is not really
theirs. (Beaujot, 1985, p. 9)

His remarks explain the feelings and impressions expressed by the women
authors of these novels with regard to a woman’s place in Tunisia’s public
spaces. These feelings are clearly expressed in Bel Haj Yahia’s Chronique
frontalière:

. . . but the exaggerated stare that she senses behind the dark glasses of the
young man with the mustache stops her, follows her, and she understands
everything about it: curiosity, arrogance, hate, envy, desire. . . . Indiffer-
ence, however, is a precious and impossible thing to find in the streets that
separate her from Tarek. This is the refuge that she yearns for in vain. (Bel
Haj Yahia, 1991, p. 53)

One place that is alluded to only in Cendre à l’aube, but which deserves to
be mentioned, is the brothel. When her son announces that he is in love
with a woman factory worker, the mother, who is from a wealthy family, is
driven to despair:

“I don’t want to see you with that worker. . . . Have fun if you like. There
are places for that . . . plenty of places . . . there are girls who are made for
that. . . . But to be enamoured of a factory worker!” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 76)

This passage suggests that the frequenting of such establishments by men,

albeit in secret, is a recognized and accepted practice. Although it is a pri-
vate space where women are confined, the brothel can be described as a
masculine space since the women who find themselves there are “made for
that,” an outlet for men’s frustrations or a simple commodity for their en-
joyment. These women do not need to be hidden because they have already
lost their virginity, the most important part of “nice girls” that needs pro-
tecting.
Our reading of the spaces occupied by women has yet to address class
and age more specifically. The women subjected to segregation in our nov-
els are all young women from well-to-do families. Girls under the age of
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 289

puberty as well as elderly women are not subjected to such strict segrega-
tion. In the L’immeuble de la rue du Caire, for example, women meet and
socialize in their homes or on the roof terraces. Men, on the other hand, en-
counter each other casually on the street. An older woman, returning home
after having run errands, would still observe unwritten rules such as avoid-
ing eye contact with men in public spheres:

At the other end of the street, they saw Fatma walking hastily and laden
with parcels. Despite her old age she was walking very upright. She greeted
both men without looking at them and disappeared into the shadow of the
doorway. (Bensaad, 2002, p. 120)

This somewhat greater spatial freedom also applies to maids and young
women from very poor homes. Segarra (1997, p. 79) explains that excessive
exposure to the eyes of others cancels its negative effects, it takes away the re-
strictions placed on the object and causes the observer to lose all interest in it.
Although gender comes first in defining who belongs where, age and class
provide some exceptions to the general rule. These exceptions become conve-
nient as they create ways of getting around the rules, as we will see later.

CITY VERSUS COUNTRY

Urban and rural spaces have almost opposite connotations for women and
men in the novels of Béji, Guellouz, and Hasfia. Bel Haj Yahia and Bensaad
barely mention the latter. In the city, spaces occupied by women are gener-
ally limited to the home, whereas in rural environments women have much
more freedom of movement, even outside the domestic sphere. Women’s
experiences of spaces and places are therefore more abundant and varied in
the countryside than they are in cities. The greater freedom enjoyed by
women in rural areas has to do with very practical circumstances. Houses
in these regions are not equipped with all the amenities found in urban set-
tings. In many cases, water must be brought from the village spring and
firewood must be gathered in the forest. These chores are invariably
women’s work. Women also participate in farming tasks, which cause them
to rub shoulders with men: “meetings were organized during the olive har-
vest” (Guellouz, 1982, p. 156). Still, too much familiarity between men and
women is not acceptable:

In the city, seclusion was expected in almost all circles, whereas in the vil-
lages, where most women had to work outside, seclusion was reserved for
those from the wealthiest families. Therefore, in novels written by women,
the city is often compressed into a much reduced space, the home. (Segarra,
1997, p. 113)
290 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

These necessary outings away from the domestic space lead to meetings
and human relationships inaccessible to isolated women in the cities. Con-
tact between women occurs inside and outside the domestic realm. During
one of Nabila’s stays in the countryside, Hafsia notes that “all the women
come to collect water or chop firewood. But it is also a way to meet, talk
and hear the latest news of the village” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 103).
In Cendre à l’aube, getting away from the city is the reason for this va-
cation in the countryside. Nabila travels to the mountains during her first
divorce and returns to Tunis only several months later, after the spiteful
gossip has died down: “She went far away from Tunis, waiting for the di-
vorce to be granted. It was the first time she had suffered public reproba-
tion” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 83). In that environment, Nabila discovered the
kind of freedom and serenity that she had never experienced in Tunis:
“Wherever she went in the village, she was in her rightful place; whatever
she did, no one bothered her. If she wanted to walk, she walked. If she
wanted to disguise herself behind a tree, no one would move her” (Hafsia,
1975, p. 91). The natural space is not exclusive to men or to women: “They
[Nabila and her sisters] often went for walks. They walked in the hills, in
that oak forest through which stretched beautiful paths full of ferns. They
quenched their thirst at the spring” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 97).
In coastal rural regions, the beaches replace the forests as the place of
choice for outdoor leisure. At the beach, as in all public places, many
women are dressed in such a manner as to shield their body from the eyes
of men: “They entered the water with a shirt and a long serouel [pants] and
even though they could enjoy swimming, sunbathing was prohibited”
(Guellouz, 1982, p. 83).

MOVEMENT, PROCESSES, AND TRANSGRESSIONS

“In trying to determine the frequency, the rhythm, the order and, most of
all, the reasons behind the changes in setting in a novel, we discover just
how important they are in creating the novel’s unity and movement, and
how much space supports all of its other components” (Bourneuf, 1972, p.
100). We have identified two important vectors that help to create bonds
between characters belonging to different types of space, private and pub-
lic. The first vector, intermediaries, allows women in the private sphere to
have some understanding of life in the public space. The second vector,
transgression, implies the crossing over from the private space into the pub-
lic domain in an act of defiance relative to the context.

Intermediaries
Women confined to their homes often resort to intermediaries, either out of
necessity or to satisfy their curiosity about the outside world. The first case
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 291

is generally that of elderly women who do not want to leave the house or
who are unable to do so because their frail health does not allow them
enough freedom of movement. As we already mentioned, many of these
women seem quite content with their confinement to the domestic space;
their house is their universe. The grandmother in L’oeil du jour is one such
woman. She has two regular intermediaries to run her errands: the maid
and her neighbor, Slaymane, with whom she shares a close friendship:

Slaymane only agrees to leave the deck chair in front of his house for the
small favors he does for my grandmother, an errand at the market, small re-
pairs, an invitation for coffee, teatime, an announcement, a joke that she
has for him. (Béji, 1993, p. 30)

Consequently, the household “receives only a few indirect, carefully filtered

pieces of information from the outside” (Brahimi, 1995, p. 30).
Béji describes entire evenings spent watching television. First comes the
soap opera, then the weather report, and finally the political news (Béji,
1993, p. 144). In this house, television is presented as a secondary interme-
diary. Although it does not provide information on the immediate outside
environment, it does present information about a male-dominated sphere:
politics. It also enables the viewer to have a “virtual” experience of spaces
and places by transmitting images and re-creating scenery.
The most common intermediary is without a doubt the accomplice
who facilitates a female character’s tricks. This go-between works for men
as well as for women. His or her mission is usually to forward letters or
messages between men and women who, according to societal norms (in
the name of religion), are not allowed to communicate. At an early age,
Nabila, from Cendre à l’aube, eavesdrops on a discussion between her
mother and a neighbor and is shocked by the woman’s accounts of her se-
cret relationship with a lover: “There she is describing her outings. They
were about lovers meeting and letters delivered to her, in secret, thanks to
the young maid” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 32). Intermediaries bridge the gap be-
tween women’s private space and men’s public space, thus enabling couples
to maintain these types of relationships.
At times, intermediaries are sent by a woman or a teenage girl to
gather information about something or someone mentioned in the home. In
this case, the scheme facilitated by an intermediary becomes some sort of
indirect transgression where imagination and knowledge of the outside
world are nourished by the intermediary’s descriptions. Our novels include
many examples of this. In Les jardins du nord, Sophia and her sister want
to know about a new neighbor in Metline, a village where tradition and
segregation of the sexes are closely observed:

She never forgot that Metline-was-Metline-and-that-there-were-things-

you-did-not-joke-about. Yet they knew everything about their young new
292 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

neighbor, who had a beard like Si Haj Ali’s, thanks to their brothers, their
cousins, and even their young uncles—their lifelong “buddies” whom they
questioned skillfully. (Guellouz, 1982, p. 205)

The intermediary is inevitably an individual who easily has access to the

public as well as the private spheres. It is easy to see why men, maids, and
young children would be the most obvious intermediaries. Several years
ago, women who did not wear a veil because they did not fear a man’s gaze
could also serve as intermediaries: “ . . . she sent a Jewish woman who did
not wear a veil to Metline, to speak with your grandfather . . .” (Guellouz,
1982, p. 218).

Transgression
The second interesting phenomenon is the transgression from the private
sphere to the public sphere and vice versa. The transgression from feminine
and masculine spaces is contrary to social expectations because “the
woman is like the seat of disorder, of repression, which will dangerously
overflow into the male public space and therefore eroticize it . . . and in so
doing drastically disrupt the order designed by God in the Creation and
leave society in a chaotic state” (Déjeux, 1994, p. 69). Spatial transgression
is nonetheless a goal for many female characters and a recurring theme in
all five novels. In many respects, it is a ritual of resistance toward the struc-
ture imposed by conventional patriarchal authority. It is a way for women
to thwart conventions and impose themselves in an environment that is not
theirs.
Spatial transgression is not exclusive to women. In a particularly per-
ceptive scene, Bensaad describes a peculiar form of male transgression into
the female domestic sphere. Ever since Mohamed and Habiba’s daughter,
Rafika, married a French man against her father’s best advice, Mohamed
refuses to see her or even talk about her with his wife. Still eager to hear
about Rafika, but unwilling to admit it, he spies on his wife’s conversation
with her maid in the kitchen about her weekly visit at her daughter’s. The
women knew about this indiscretion and made a conscious effort to discuss
Rafika’s family life. This example shows how the domestic spatial segrega-
tion of the genders can be used to the mother’s advantage, allowing her to
share her daughter’s news with her husband while observing the patriarchal
moral order that requires her to protect his paternalistic pride.

When they heard him approach and sit in the room contiguous to the
kitchen, Habiba and Myriam, who were busy preparing the meal, seemed
to react to a signal. The maid winked at her boss and asked:
“Lalla Habiba, how is Rafika? You went to see her yesterday after-
noon?”
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 293

[ . . . ] every Saturday, the day following Habiba’s visit to their

daughter, he came searching for news by sitting on the other side of the
kitchen wall. (Bensaad, 2002, pp. 106, 108)

There are different types of transgressions, and they vary with the intensity
and the intentions of the “transgressor.” The transgression may be moti-
vated by innocent curiosity and can be achieved visually. At the other end
of the spectrum, the transgression can lead to a woman taking over part of
a public space.
In the first section of this chapter, we discussed the looks that women
endure from men in the public sphere. For women, watching the outside
from the inside is also a part of their experience of space and place. The
novels include numerous references to women who observe men’s public
space from a window or a balcony, without being seen. The narrator in
L’oeil du jour describes the joy of watching without being seen, even
though, unlike most Tunisian women, she is an atheist and therefore has no
reason to conceal herself: “Near the window, I can watch everything that
goes on without being seen” (Béji, 1993, p. 39).
During the colonial era, female characters wanted to observe not only
the male universe but also the foreigners who walked the streets. One often
had to be quite clever to achieve this:

At that time, Bizerte was crowded with not only French, of course, but also
with Senegalese soldiers and German prisoners. The ways of the French, in
particular those of French women, greatly amused Ella Yamina. Since she
wore a veil, she could not stand directly on the balcony, which was also
fenced in by a wire net. But she found a way to see some of what went on in
the street without being seen. She positioned herself two or three meters be-
hind the balcony, seated on the floor with her legs crossed. That way, she
could see everything that happened on the sidewalk out front. As for them,
they could not see her or at least not see her properly. (Guellouz, 1982,
p. 38)

Like her mother, the daughter is fascinated by the street and the people in
it. Whereas her mother focused on French women, Sophia preferred to ob-
serve the Senegalese soldiers:

She always had her observation post, the balcony, and the Senegalese fasci-
nated her even more now that she knew they could scare her. From the bal-
cony, she savored the safety she felt just as one savors ice cream in a movie
theater while on the screen characters are killing each other and setting
fires. (Guellouz, 1982, p. 40)

This childlike, often feminine, curiosity is also alluded to in Cendre à l’aube

when it is said of young Nabila that “she spent a lot of her time watching
294 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

the street. In those days, few women left the house” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 23).
Here, gazing outside is a substitute for physical transgression of spaces.
These two short sentences also hint at the fact that women “today” (when
the novel was written) go out more than they did when Nabila was a child.
Later, Nabila observes a 14-year-old boy. This type of observation is per-
ceived as a danger when there is a risk of being seen from the outside:

She stood, as usual, at the window, her observation post. The blinds were
shut; it was hot. The boy was watching the street, sitting idle on the armrest
of a bench. His skin was brown. So were his thighs, which stuck out of his
cotton shorts. Nabila was fascinated. Being that she loved danger, she ap-
proached cautiously and excitedly. She put her face directly on the window.
She gazed as much as she wanted to. This interest lasted only ten minutes. It
was violent. It was the first. (Hafsia, 1975, p. 51)

In the days when young women only met their husbands on their wedding
day, they were able to get to know their fiancé by stealing glances at them.
Ella Yamina explains this to her daughters in Les jardins du nord:

“I knew that he looked like his father and that his father would pass in front
of our house to get to his law office. So one day, when the whole family was
taking a nap, I went into a barn filled with bags of barley and where I could
see the street from a small window. I waited for him to return from the of-
fice. He passed by. I found him as handsome as people said but he also had a
rare elegance. I told myself that his son must be like him, handsome, ele-
gant, and I was very happy.” (Guellouz, 1982, p. 219)

Women are not the only ones who wish to see their fiancés; men also try to
see a fiancée or any beautiful woman through a window or a doorway. Vi-
sual transgression can be described as “soft” since it does not require a
physical movement from one type of space to the other, yet it remains pro-
hibited.
Grandmothers who are content with their place in the home are illiter-
ate. Schooling does seem to act as a springboard for women’s spatial trans-
gression. The fact that women have to travel to school makes them more
aware of the city, or at least parts of it. Also, daily contact with others, both
girls and boys, leads to a level of socialization that is impossible to attain
inside the home. Finally, schooling exposes young women to career options
that are usually incompatible with the values taught by the family circle.
Hence, for many of the more educated women, transgression into the spa-
tial sphere traditionally reserved for men becomes a pressing need with age.
When outings in the city are not permitted, a woman will sometimes
decide to go out even when her family or husband forbid her from doing
so. “The statement ‘I’m going out’ was said defiantly” (Hafsia, 1975,
p. 31). A woman may also choose to invent an excuse in order to leave:
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 295

One morning, she and Monia went together to see a fortuneteller. For this
expedition she had to ask Youssef for a few hours of freedom, inventing
some pretext. This subterfuge, and more so, this unusual freedom so early
in the morning, rejoiced her. [ . . . ] Nabila became one of the many women
who no longer felt confident and were reduced to depending on magic
spells to overcome this. (Hafsia, 1975, p. 81)

Nabila finds it difficult to tell the difference between rebellion and free-
dom until the last pages of the novel. She is the only character, in all five
novels, for whom the partial appropriation of the public space is re-
traced. For Nabila, physical transgression of spaces allows her to explore
a new identity. After having been confined to the domestic realm by her
parents and later by her husbands, she rebels because she is “convinced
that she is entitled to happiness” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 179). She no longer
resigns herself to her lot in life as a woman. Nabila needs to be con-
vinced of her decision because she knows that she will face a wall of op-
position; the boundary between both worlds is well guarded. The first
step she takes is that of finding a job outside her home: “She was noth-
ing like a rebellious woman. She only wanted to work and do something
with her life. She felt she had the right to do away with customs and tra-
ditions. But instead of being encouraged, she was banned” (Hafsia, 1975,
p. 215). Once she starts working and enjoying it, the physical transgres-
sion of space leads to a change in her disposition and in her perception
of herself: “She went out. For the first time in her life, she was a free
woman” (Hafsia, 1975, p. 217). Even her thoughts and her words are
not as restrained as before. She discovers a freedom that makes her
happy. In the novel’s final scenes, Nabila’s emancipation is clearly ex-
pressed in terms of spatial experience:

Nabila is sitting under the vault of a small café in the souk. In the shadow of
the Zitouna mosque, she seems calm and healed from her wounds, or,
rather, in recovery. She wonders what her husband, or husbands (there is no
difference anymore) would think to see her like this, in the little café, her
legs stretched out, sipping mint tea. None of them would believe their eyes!
[ . . . ] Not one woman in the café. [ . . . ] But she felt perfectly happy and
drank her tea in public. (Hafsia, 1975, p. 265)

Nabila’s emancipation, of which the ultimate accomplishment is her

appropriation of her share of the space traditionally reserved for men, is
the result of a long process of questioning and protest. It is therefore
not something that is accessible to all women. Simply moving from the
private to the public sphere, or from the home to the street, does not
represent true freedom because women still feel unwelcome in men’s
spaces. Thus, this emancipation remains elusive until mentalities begin
to change.
296 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

IN SEARCH OF THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACE

It would be hard to claim that these five novels, written by authors belong-
ing to the first generation of Tunisian women novelists, provide an interpre-
tation of the typical experiences of women of that country. Because of their
education and professional backgrounds, these authors are among the
intellectual elite who write in the language of the colonizer (French), and
often while in self-imposed exile. Yet this cultural distance gives them a
freedom—writing—and enables them to take a stand—exposing injustice
and segregation—both of which would hardly be conceivable in a tradi-
tional context. These authors have found in literature a forum for their crit-
ical voices to be heard (or read) both in Tunisia and abroad.
The paradoxical geography in which these novels were written—
between Tunisia and France, between Arabic and French, between East and
West—has important implications in terms of reception and interpretation:
with greater cultural hybridity in origin, there exist a greater potential for
multiple interpretations. It would be difficult, without engaging in a differ-
ent type of analysis, to speculate whether or not their authors intended to
send different messages to different audiences. But they were certainly
aware of the differentiated horizon of reception of their writings. Female
and male readers in Tunisia, in other Arab/Muslim countries where French
is commonly used, in France, among people of Arabic descent or not, or
elsewhere in the world are likely to interpret the cultural and political con-
notations of these literary works quite differently. Their appreciation of the
cultural politics will vary in intensity, in depth, and in substance. What
would constitute an obvious cultural critique for a woman reading these
novels in Tunisia (e.g., spatial transgression) may very well be overlooked
as a detail of limited importance by an outside reader.
The novels offer insights, sometimes intimate, into the female charac-
ters’ experiences of space and place. We have tried not only to sketch the
outlines of an interpretation of spatialized gender relations in Tunisia, but
also to see the extent to which space informs the daily practices of women
and to which it functions as a major issue in their quest for emancipation.
Places are mostly important inasmuch as they dictate the limits imposed on
the movements of male and female individuals of different age groups. Fur-
thermore, “Space is not described in and of itself but as it relates to the
characters, and especially their inner lives, that is, their state of mind, pas-
sions and search for identity”(Segarra, 1997, p. 111).
Bekri maintains that most novels written in French by Tunisian
women, apart from those of Bel Haj Yahia and maybe Zouari, are not char-
acterized by a clear feminist stance. Arguably, Bekri writes that emancipa-
tion for these women authors is already a given, hence the themes they de-
velop are more or less universal (Bekri, 1999, pp. 38–39). Indeed, it may be
presumptuous to read these novels as militant feminist works. Yet, in our
Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women 297

view, their tone and subject matter clearly challenge traditional cultural and
patriarchal values. On the other hand, these novels express the need to find
a “middle ground” that accommodates respect for tradition as well as a
woman’s need for empowerment and equality. In this sense, the words of
these women illustrate how literature is a “place of freedom” that “con-
denses and disperses” the violence but also the challenges of contemporary
life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is an expanded version of a previously published paper in The Arab

World Geographer, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1998), pp. 103–116. We would like to thank the
editor for permission to publish this new version.
We would like to express our warmest thanks to David Tavares of the Depart-
ment of Geography, University of Ottawa, for his background research and proof-
reading of the final draft.

NOTES

1. These novels were written in French and have not been translated into English.
The translations provided are those of the authors of this chapter.
2. We could infer from this assertion that the implied reader is not Tunisian but
more likely European. This statement would be considered superfluous by a Tu-
nisian reader.

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Hafsia, J. (1975). Cendre à l’aube. Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l’Édition.
Discourse,
Visual Representation
Representation,
of Muslim/Arab
and the Contestation
Women inofDaily
SpaceNewspapers

12 The Visual Representation

of Muslim/Arab Women
in Daily Newspapers
in the United States
GHAZI-WALID FALAH

T
his chapter examines the ways in which Muslim women and
their roles in society have been narrowly construed and projected though
the print media in the United States. This analysis connects with and builds
upon recent scholarship on the stereotyping of Muslim women in the main-
stream press. Zurbrigg (1995), for instance, has found that Saudi women
tend to be portrayed as an exotic, erotic, and oppressed “other” in both ac-
ademic and popular literature. Wilkins (1997) similarly shows in her analy-
sis of 230 press photos that mainstream reportage is rife with orientalized
stereotypes of Muslim women as the passive emblems of “collectivistic”
traditional society, and hence as the antithesis of Western individualism.
Finally, Bullock (1999) challenges the tendency in the popular press to treat
the headscarf (or hijab) as a symbol of oppression, arguing that journalistic
analysis ignores the diversity of reasons why Muslim women cover them-
selves.
The analysis in this chapter focuses on press reports dealing with the
Muslim world published in U.S. newspapers between the tragic events of
September 11, 2001, and the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. I
focus specifically on four key areas of reportage: the aftermath of 9/11, U.S.
military intervention in Afghanistan, the lead-up to the war on Iraq, and

300
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 301

the ongoing Palestinian Intifada. I am especially interested in the visual rep-

resentation of women in this reportage and how this representation relates
to wider geopolitical discourses. Following Wilkins (1997), I argue that the
use of particular images of women reflects the operational practices of edi-
tors, who assign “news value” to photographs based on ideological mean-
ings associated with certain images, thereby reinforcing these meanings. I
argue that in the period covered by my study, pictures of Muslim and Arab
women were selected for print with the aim of supplementing and aug-
menting the persuasive power of the written text. The practice of injecting
political viewpoints into supposedly “objective” reportage through the use
of images, also known as editorial offerings, is named as one of the five
sources of political power of the media by Arthur Siegel (1983, pp. 14–15).
The visual representations of Muslim/Arab women, in conjunction with
captions, I wish to suggest, typically have served to reinforce images of
Muslim society as the cultural, political, and moral “other” of the West. In
this way, however consciously or unconsciously, newspaper editors have
served the interests of the U.S. government by justifying U.S. involvement
(or, in some cases, lack of involvement) in the Muslim world.

DATA COLLECTION AND METHODOLOGY

This analysis is based on a body of over 500 pieces of newspaper material,

including reports, editorials, commentaries, and cartoons, that appeared in
four American daily newspapers: the Columbus Dispatch (Columbus,
Ohio), the Chicago Tribune, the Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), and the
Los Angles Times. The study also includes other relevant material from ma-
jor “national” newspapers, such as the Washington Post, the New York
Times, and USA Today. It should be noted that this survey was not meant
to serve as the basis for quantitative “content analysis.” Nor was it in-
tended to prove something that already has been well established, namely,
that images of Arabs and Islam in the Western media are overwhelmingly
negative (see Damon & Michalak, 1983; Jafri, 1998; Stockton, 1994). In-
stead, my objective has been to understand how negative meanings are at-
tached to images of Muslims and Arabs and how such meanings are pro-
duced and reproduced. Again, this analysis is concerned with the ways in
which editorial decisions regarding the arrangement and presentation of
images and other materials relating to Muslims and Arabs impart certain
meanings to newspaper readers and, by doing so, lend support to specific
geopolitical discourses. The frequency or the number of articles or pieces
printed in a newspaper during the period under investigation, in this re-
gard, is not as important as the placement of the article, say, on the front
page, or the selection of “attractive” headlines and large photographs to
accompany the reportage.
302 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

In my examination of reportage on Arab/Muslim topics, I looked at

headlines, photos, and captions, all of which directly reflect editorial deci-
sions. Headlines do much more than summarize the story. According to
Russell (1994 p. 160), “they . . . dress up a page visually . . . ; they titillate
readers, to encourage them to try this particular item; and they help guide
readers round the page, showing the comparative importance of each
story.” In a similar vein, van Dijk (1991, p. 51) notes that “headlines often
have ideological implications. Since they express the most important infor-
mation about a news event, they may bias the understanding process: they
summarize what, according to the journalist, is the most important aspect,
and such a summary necessarily implies an opinion or a specific perspective
on the event.” Such decisions, of course, are not always consciously made,
and an editor’s sense of what jibes with his or her paper’s policy may be
more implicit than explicit. This is why understanding the tacit message
conveyed by visuals—uncovered through the systematic analysis of the
ways particular types of images are used—is especially important.
Photographs attached to reportage play a significant role in enhancing
the report and capturing the attention of the reader’s eye. Readers may for-
get much of the content of an article shortly after reading it, but pictures
can be recalled sometimes for years. Visuals are, in a sense, part of what
Edward Hall (1990) has called the “hidden dimension” of culture, forming
part of the powerful contextualization for the verbal message conveyed by
newspaper text. The use of visual imagery, in this respect, can be problem-
atic. As Russell (1996, p. 37) indicates, “Photographers have known for
years that the camera can lie and have been perfectly comfortable with such
image-altering techniques as ‘pushing’ film, using telescopic lenses, ‘dodg-
ing’ prints in the darkroom, retouching, masking and cropping.” Another
risk involved with the use of photography relates to what Mignault (1996,
p. 134) calls a “melt-down” technique: “Under specific agreements, media
are allowed to use each other’s material—whether they be pictures, inter-
view clips or news report—and to ‘melt them down’ into one single report
narrated by their own reporter.” In this process, editors of newspapers may
take full liberty in selecting a single paid-for photograph that is in keeping
with the editor’s policy or simply his or her “gut feeling” about the appro-
priateness of a photo. So pictures linked to reportages function in diverse
and subtle ways, far more than just “break[ing] up the monotony of grey
type” (Russell, 1994, p. 159).
The caption is another area where the value judgment of a newspaper’s
editor can be easily transmitted. The words selected for captions are not
simply descriptions of pictures, but instead are specific interpretations of vi-
sual representations. A given image can be interpreted in any number of
ways (see Tomlinson, 1991, p. 1), so the particular caption assigned to a
picture exerts a great deal of power in influencing our understanding, or
“reading,” of that picture.
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 303

These insights into editorial decisions, as I will show in the remainder

of this chapter, are especially relevant to our understandings of newspaper
reportage between September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

STEREOTYPING ISLAM
AND THE ROLE OF “ELITE RACISM”

This section explores the production and reproduction of stereotypes of Is-

lam and seeks to explain how these stereotypes play into editorial decision
making. I draw on van Dijk’s (1991) concept of “elite racism” to explain
the pervasiveness of certain racial stereotypes in key societal institutions,
including the press and the government.
In Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine How We
See the Rest of the World, Edward Said (1981) argued that “the canonical,
orthodox coverage of Islam that we find in the academy, in the govern-
ment, and in the media is all interrelated and has been more diffused, has
seemed more persuasive and influential, in the West than any other ‘cover-
age’ or interpretation” (p. 169). Said’s main point was that this coverage is
rarely interested in “truth” or accuracy, and that it has served purposes
“only tangentially related to actual knowledge of Islam itself” (p. 169).
What has emerged from this coverage is a particular interpretation of Islam
and a particular way of knowing the Islamic world.
In the decades since the publication of Covering Islam, several authors
have examined the relentless demonization of Islam in the U.S. media. Jack
Shaheen (2001), for instance, has documented thousands of examples of
stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims in films and television, noting that
Arabs and Muslims today are portrayed much in the same way that Jews
were portrayed by the Nazis in the pre-World War II period (see also Afridi,
2001). Karen Armstrong (2000, pp. 179–180) traces the roots of this nega-
tive imagery to the time of the medieval Christian Crusades, when Islam
was depicted as “the enemy of civilization.” Ghareeb (1983, p. 5) has ar-
gued that the prevalence of hostile and distorted imagery, both historically
and in the present day, means that “most Americans have had only the
most fleeting and superficial exposure to Middle East history and culture in
their educational experience. And too often this brief glimpse is distorted
and confirms inaccurate stereotypes of the Arabs.” Chami (2003, p. 1) sim-
ilarly argues that “the average American knows very little about Islam and
this is due to the selective information the American media feeds the gen-
eral public.”
Van Dijk’s (1991) concept of “elite racism” sheds some light on the
persistence of negative stereotypes concerning Muslims and Arabs. Van
Dijk (1991, p. 48) argues that “the role of the Press as a corporate, social,
and cultural institution needs to be analysed in relation to other institu-
304 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

tions, such as those of the polity or the economy,” and he suggests that
there is a direct link between societal racism, elite ideology, and the produc-
tion of news by journalists. In other words, the microlevel process of pro-
ducing news is informed by, and, to a certain extent, is the manifestation of
racism at the macrolevel of society and the state. “Structures of headlines,
leads, thematic organization, the presence of explanatory background in-
formation, style, and especially the overall selection of newsworthy topics,”
van Dijk argues, are “indirectly controlled by the societal context of power
relations” (p. 41). He points to powerful elite groups and institutions, espe-
cially in the corporate and political domains, who are able partially to con-
trol access to the media, and hence the portrayal of themselves and others
in the media. Consequently, according to van Dijk, the “elite versions of the
‘facts,’ their definitions of reality, will tend to prevail over those of other,
non-dominant groups” (p. 41).
Van Dijk’s (1991) study, which focuses on ethnic relations and media
at the state level, can be applied to the international arena, where the
power exercised by corporations based in the United States over an increas-
ingly globalized media industry becomes relevant. As A. S. Ahmed (1992,
p. 241) notes, “It is the American mass media that have achieved what
American political might could not: the attainment for America of world
domination.” The scope of this study does not allow detailed discussion of
how media corporations control the news, but Lee and Soloman’s (1992,
p. 92) arguments are instructive:

As with any profit-making enterprise, the media industry’s chain of com-

mand runs from top down, with beat reports on the bottom of the pecking
order. At the apex of the media pyramid are the owners who wield author-
ity by assuming top executive posts or by hiring and firing those who hold
these positions. Their power to replace management if it does not perform
as they wish gives them control over policy and editorial direction. Ulti-
mately, it is the media owners and managers who determine which ideas
and which version of the facts shall reach the public. They have virtually
unlimited power to suggest or veto stories.

Following both van Dijk (1991) and Lee and Soloman (1992), it becomes
important to understand how powerful actors in the United States define
America’s “national interest” and foreign policy in the Middle East (or the
Muslim world at large), and how the objectives of governing elites are sup-
ported, projected, and elaborated, however indirectly, by the corporate me-
dia. Up until the early 1990s, as described by Haddad (1991, pp. 223–
224), “American strategic goals in the Middle East [were] generally listed
as maintaining access to Middle East oil, preserving the state of Israel, per-
petuating good relations with pro-Western Arab nations, maintaining peace
and stability, and preventing Communist penetration of the area.” After the
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 305

Cold War, of course, communism no longer was regarded as playing any

role in U.S. foreign policy in the region. Consequently, many Muslims (and
others) have come to feel that with communism gone, Western govern-
ments and the Western media have increasingly targeted Islam and what
many commentators and government officials refer to vaguely as “Islam-
ism.” In A. S. Ahmed’s (1992, p. 223) words,

Nothing in history has threatened Muslims like the Western media; neither
gunpowder in the Middle Ages, . . . nor trains and the telephone, which
helped colonize them in the last century, nor even planes which they mas-
tered for their national airlines earlier this century. The Western media are
ever present and ubiquitous; never resting and never allowing respite. They
probe and attack ceaselessly, showing no mercy for weakness or frailty.

THE MUSLIN/ARAB WOMEN

IN AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS

Western discourse about Muslim/Arab societies, as Leila Ahmed (1992)

notes, is highly gendered, and images of Muslim/Arab women and girls fea-
ture prominently in media reports about events in the Middle East. My sur-
vey of reportage on current events in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
other Muslim countries reveals the ubiquity of female images in the U.S.
press. Significantly, the survey also reveals that pictures of Muslim women
rarely relate directly to the subject matter in the text, suggesting that the
images serve some other purpose than elucidating Muslim women’s experi-
ences to a Western audience. I wish to suggest that these images are insinu-
ated into the text, where they serve to project cultural judgments about Is-
lam and Muslim societies and to convey the political viewpoints of editors.
The images of Muslim women found in U.S. newspapers are quite var-
ied, but two dominant and seemingly contradictory themes or motifs
emerge: first, women as passive victims, and second, women as active polit-
ical agents. Within each theme there are numerous subtexts which, rather
than evoking the empathy or sympathy of the viewer, call forth feelings of
self-righteousness and/or moral revulsion. For instance, where women are
shown as passive victims, as has often been the case with pictures from Af-
ghanistan and Iraq, the underlying message (typically conveyed in the cap-
tion) is that their victimization is being alleviated by Western intervention
and “liberation.” Palestinian women are also depicted as victims, though
captions and text (often using the passive voice to describe the killings of
family members) tend to suggest that their own people are to blame for
their victimization.
Where women are shown as active political agents, photographs are
intended to be jarring and to shatter stereotypes about secluded, subordi-
306 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

nate Muslim women. Yet the subtexts of these images project meanings
that reinforce rather than challenge such stereotypes. Pictures of women
wielding guns during demonstrations and preparing themselves for suicide
bombing missions, for instance, do not speak to Muslim women’s political
consciousness and agency as much as they point to the alleged irrationality
of Muslim societies and to Muslims’ presumed penchant for violence. The
remainder of this section explains the subtexts of these images in greater
detail.

Women as Passive Victims

Arab and Muslim women are rarely portrayed as having “normal” lives by
U.S. standards—that is, as simply going to work or to school, having fun or
enjoying their lives and their families. Instead, images of Muslim women
are used almost exclusively to communicate the abnormality of life in Mus-
lim societies marked by violence, religious fanaticism, and political turmoil.
Thus, Muslim women are often depicted as situated in landscapes of agony
and despair, and the pictures of Arab and Muslim women selected by edi-
tors show sad, crying faces full of anguish. In some instances, these photo-
graphs are intended to elicit the reader’s sympathy for the horrors that

FIGURE 12.1. Bosnian Muslim women mourn and place flowers at Muslim men and
boys’ graveyard in Srebrenica. From The Plain Dealer, July 12, 2002. Reproduced with
permission of the Associated Press/Wide World Photos.
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 307

many Muslim women have endured. Figure 12.1, for instance, is taken
from Bosnia. The headline of the picture is “Tears for Srebrenica” and its
caption text reads “Bosnian Muslim women mourn anew and place flowers
at a memorial yesterday during a ceremony for the 8,000 Muslim men and
boys killed in the town of Srebrenica seven years ago by Bosnian Serb sol-
diers. It was the worst civilian massacre in Europe since the Nazi atrocities
of World War II” (Plain Dealer, July 12, 2002). Other photographs seem to
be intended to humanize Muslim women and Arab women who might oth-
erwise be viewed as “foreign” and “different.” Several U.S. newspapers, for
instance, have shown faces of American Arab and Muslim women who
have been saddened by the events of September 11, 2001, and who have
paid respect to the victims’ families and the American people (see Chicago
Tribune, September 11, 2002, and September 12, 2002; Los Angeles Times,
September 10, 2002, and September 27, 2002; New York Times, September
30, 2002; Miami Herald, September 12, 2002).
Yet photographs of despairing, anguished Muslim women are, in many
ways, problematic. The fact that Western audiences so infrequently see
Muslim women doing anything other than crying passively as they are vic-
timized denies Muslim women as a group any kind of normal existence,
and the image of the veiled woman beating her breast after the loss of a
child or husband becomes almost a stylization (see, e.g., Chicago Tribune,
December 4, 2002, and February 4, 2003; Plain Dealer, October 18, 2002;
Columbus Dispatch, March 7, 2003; Akron Beacon Journal, October 8,
2002; Washington Post, October 14, 2002, and October 19, 2002).
Even more problematic than the narrow conception of Muslim women’s
lives that these photographs convey is the way in which they are used to
support mainstream political positions that are only tangentially concerned
with women’s suffering and oppression. During the recent military action
in Iraq, for instance, photographs of female Kurdish refugees were often
used to highlight the evils of Saddam’s (Arab) Baathist regime. Illustrating
this is a report in the Los Angeles Times (December 3, 2002) with a large
headline stating “ ‘Arabization’ Forces Iraqi Kurds into Camps.” Two color
photos accompany the report. One shows two women and a little girl with
a caption reading “Displaced: Iraqi Kurd women stand by their hut in a
camp about 20 miles east of Kirkuk province in northern Iraq.” The other
photo has a caption that says: “Refugees: A women holds her child while
walking in Iraq’s north, where Kurds have fled in massive ethnic up-
heaval.” Other photos show the miserable shelters that Kurdish refugee
women and children have been forced to use as dwelling places since the re-
newal of open conflict in Iraq. Likewise, a New York Times photo pub-
lished on December 11, 2002, shows a Kurdish woman lying on a hospital
bed, with the caption “Hamida Hassan, 32, in a hospital bed, is still suffer-
ing from burns and disfigurement she incurred when struck during the at-
tack by what was believed to be mustard gas.”
308 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

I do not wish to dispute the reality that Kurdish women (and men) suf-
fered heavily under Baathist rule in Iraq. Instead, I am emphasizing that the
prevalence of such pictures before and during U.S. military intervention in
the region have served to support and to justify this intervention. The pho-
tos, in a sense, reinforce the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration,
which has consistently asserted that U.S. actions are not, as some critics
claim, “anti-Muslim,” because they are being undertaken to liberate vul-
nerable Muslim peoples—and especially Muslim women—from their op-
pression.
The same can be said for images of Afghan women under the Taliban.
As the “Other of the Others,” they, like Kurdish women, were portrayed in
a sympathetic light, and their images were used to provide moral justifica-
tion for military involvement in Afghanistan. Pictures from Afghanistan
following the “overthrow” of the Taliban (which has proven to be, at best,
a partial success) commonly make reference to the liberation of women and
to the expansion of women’s opportunities to learn and to work. A syndi-
cated article entitled “Afghan Women Hope to Erase Illiteracy” that ap-
peared in the Columbus Dispatch (September 22, 2002), for instance, is ac-
companied by a photo of a group of women, beneath which is the caption
“An older women seeks help from a classmate as they practice writing dur-
ing an adult literacy course offered in a home in northern Afghanistan’s
Mazar-e-Sharif. An estimated 85 percent of Afghan women are illiterate.”
This same article appeared in the Plain Dealer on the same day with a dif-
ferent headline: “Afghan Women Hunger for Literacy.” In this newspaper,
the article was shown with a picture of a young woman in a university lec-
ture room freely speaking with her male professor. The caption reads
“Nasreen Ahmad Zai asks Aziz Ahmed Rahmand, a history professor, for
clarification on a question in the entrance exam at Kabul University.”
Newspaper photographs have made much of Afghan women’s ability
to show their faces and to mix with men following the overthrow of the
Taliban. The Plain Dealer (August 17, 2002), to illustrate, published a pho-
tograph of a young Afghan female refugee with her face and ears exposed
and sitting among men of various ages. According to the caption, the peo-
ple in the photograph are listening to a lecture on mine safety, reinforcing
the message that the outcome of military action has been largely positive.
The Los Angeles Times (September 12, 2002) published a photograph of an
attractive Afghan journalist with a caption reading “The Taliban’s ouster
has meant the freedom to walk the streets of Kabul without having to don a
burka.” The Plain Dealer (August 20, 2002) used a photograph depicting
the joyous celebration of women’s new freedoms in Afghanistan. The cap-
tion reads: “Uniformed girls marched alongside male classmates as hun-
dreds of spectators—men in turbans and women with their burqas thrown
back—cheered them on yesterday.” Finally, a photo of a group of Afghan
women (one of them pregnant) undergoing training in health education
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 309

was published in the Chicago Tribune (October 14, 2002). The photo cap-
tion states: “In a sign of Afghanistan’s evolution, female medical personnel
discuss a pregnancy case at a women’s hospital in Kabul. Under the Taliban
regime, women’s health was neglected.” It should be noted that the article
itself, entitled “Afghan Rebuilding Plan Earns Donors’ Respect,” does not
directly touch on any issue related to women. Instead, images of women are
used to symbolize a return to a relatively “normal” existence in Afghani-
stan following U.S. military intervention.
Photographs published in newspapers, then, serve as photographic
“evidence” of the “victory” of Western liberal values over Islamic extrem-
ism. The Taliban, to be sure, do represent an extreme interpretation of Is-
lam that has created many hardships for women. This is not being denied.
But I do wish to suggest that images of Afghan women (as with images of
Kurdish women) have been used to provide unequivocal affirmation of U.S.
intervention in the region. Such images continuously reproduce facile equa-
tions between U.S. involvement and liberation, when, historically, U.S. in-
volvement in the region has not been undertaken with the well-being of
“ordinary people”—much less ordinary women—as a primary aim. To
equate the Taliban or Saddam Hussein exclusively with tyranny and op-
pression belies the complex social, political, and economic forces shaping
men’s and women’s lives, while denying the extent to which the exercise of
Western power has acted to the detriment of those living in Muslim re-
gions.
The more positive, sympathetic depictions of Afghan and Kurdish
women and girls can be contrasted with images of Iraqi Arab women and
children. Iraqi Arab women are depicted as victims, though differently than
Afghan and Kurdish women. While in some instances portrayed in agony
and anguish, Iraqi Arab women and children have also been commonly
portrayed as brainwashed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, and images of
women and schoolgirls going about their daily lives in the shadow of
Saddam Hussein’s ubiquitous image has brought a sense of urgency to U.S.
intervention in the country.
In the Los Angeles Times (October 28, 2002), for instance, a full-page
article about schools in Baghdad includes a picture of three girls standing
under a picture of Saddam Hussein. The caption reads: “State of education:
The image of President Saddam Hussein hangs in a fourth-grade classroom
where students are learning math. Iraq’s school system has collapsed.”
Another article appearing in the Los Angeles Times (November 11, 2002)
includes a photo of a group of Iraqi girls in uniform performing, again, un-
der the image of Saddam Hussein (see Figure 12.2). The caption reads
simply: “Conspicuous effort: Traditional dancers at opening of Baghdad
International Fair . . . ,” but the imposing picture of Saddam Hussein quite
obviously detracts from the innocence of the scene. In a similar vein, a com-
mentary by Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune (October 3, 2002), en-
310 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

FIGURE 12.2. Iraqi girls perform a traditional dance at the opening of Baghdad Inter-
national Fair held in November 2002. From The Los Angeles Times, November 11,
2002. Reproduced with permission of the Associated Press/Wide World Photos.

titled “Is Hussein Too Crazy for Us to Control?” includes a photo of a

dozen Iraqi children in school uniforms holding pictures of Saddam
Hussein, suggesting that his “craziness” has been imparted on the Iraqi
people as well. Shortly after this article was published, the Chicago Tribune
(October 14, 2002) ran a picture of children (girls and boys) yet again un-
der the image of the Iraqi president. The caption reads: “Baghdad children
mark Iraqi Child Day on Sunday with pictures of Saddam Hussein. Televi-
sion clips and posters of the Iraqi leader can be seen nationwide.” Again,
the main message is not that children are celebrating a day set aside for
them, but that their lives are being monitored and controlled by Saddam
Hussein.
For U.S. viewers, the ever-present image of Saddam Hussein undoubt-
edly is menacing and symbolic of his iron grip over Iraqi society, though the
display of pictures of the president in public places is a phenomenon com-
mon in many countries around the world. That his picture is repeatedly
juxtaposed with images of children, and especially young girls, speaks very
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 311

directly to U.S. rhetoric about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein. So evil is

his regime that it is willing to manipulate young boys and girls and to use
children as puppets. Such photographs thus act to persuade readers that
military action is justified and that it will liberate the Iraqi people from ty-
rannical rule, seemingly in spite of themselves.
The photographs discussed thus far indicate that while such images ap-
pear, at one level, to be objective accounts of people’s lives in Afghanistan
and Iraq, at another level they serve a broader geopolitical agenda sanc-
tioned by the Bush administration. The role of journalistic images in af-
firming particular political interests is further highlighted in the subtle mes-
sages conveyed by photographs of Muslim women in Palestine, where the
Bush administration has chosen not to intervene. Palestinian women, like
Kurdish and Bosnian women, are often portrayed as enduring great hard-
ships, including the violent deaths of family members. But the captions and
text that accompany such images rarely attribute blame for these women’s
suffering to the Israeli leadership. Consider the picture appearing in the Los
Angeles Times (December 10, 2002) of a Palestinian girl (see Figure 12.3)
whose mother was killed in the Gaza Strip. The caption for this picture
reads: “Mother killed: A daughter of Palestinian Nahla Aqel stands before
a bullet-scarred wall where her mother was killed in the Gaza Strip. Three

FIGURE 12.3. A crying Palestinian girl stands before a bullet-scarred wall, where Israeli
soldiers in the Gaza Strip killed her mother. From The Los Angeles Times, December 10,
2002. Reproduced with permission of Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images.
312 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

of Aqel’s children were wounded in the incident.” The scene is certainly a

tragic one—with the tragedy amplified by the victim’s femininity and the
fact that she was a little girl—but nowhere does the text make specific men-
tion of who killed the mother, and the headline for story, which reads: “Is-
raeli Advice to Arafat Sparks Ire,” seems to suggest that Yassir Arafat and
the Palestinians bear responsibility for this and other tragedies (though the
Washington Post’s [December 10, 2002] report on this incident does attrib-
ute Aqel’s death directly to Israeli machine-gun fire). Indeed, the text of this
article mentions the killing of another Palestinian woman when an Israeli
tank crew opened fire on a taxi. But the report also defuses blame on the Is-
raeli army with the qualifying statement, “A military official said the inci-
dent was under investigation.” In a final example, the Chicago Tribune
(December 6, 2002) used a photograph of two women and a man standing
next to a grave. The caption reads: “Family members in Gaza Strip visit the
grave Thursday of a Palestinian who was killed in a clash with Israeli
troops.” This quote is not an inaccurate description, but the use of the pas-
sive voice to describe the killing, common in articles about killings of Pales-
tinians, needs to be questioned.
For Palestinians, tragedy appears to be a chronic condition, but who is
responsible for the killing of Palestinians is seldom made explicit in news-
paper reportage. The impression given by these and other photographs, re-
ports, and captions is that the killing might have happened as an inevitable
result of crossfire between two hostile parties. Such reportage does not ex-
actly exonerate the Israeli army, but it spreads the blame for the killing of
Palestinians to Palestinians themselves. Such is not the case when Israelis
are victimized by Palestinians (see, e.g. Plain Dealer, October 22, 2002; Co-
lumbus Dispatch, October 11, 2002, October 22, 2002, and January 7,
2003; Chicago Tribune, November 7, 2002, and November 12, 2002; see
also Falah, 2004). So while pictures such as the one appearing in the Co-
lumbus Dispatch on January 9, 2003, depicting three adult women and a
young girl in tears upon learning of the shooting of a Palestinian man who
had been watching Israeli tanks move into the Gaza Strip (again, the iden-
tity of the shooter is not given), elicit feelings of sympathy, they do not rally
U.S. public sentiment behind Palestinians or serve to encourage U.S. inter-
vention in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

Muslim/Arab Women as Misguided Political Actors

The previous examples show Muslim women as passive victims of religious
extremism and dictatorship, and deserving to a greater or lesser degree of
Western liberation. But not all Muslim women are portrayed as trapped in
tragic circumstances. Some are shown to be politically active and to be in-
volved in political causes and political violence. Such images shatter stereo-
types of Muslim women as cloistered passive beings, and present to the
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 313

West an alternative understanding of these women as having political con-

sciousness and voice. But in other respects, the images of politically active
Muslim women and the text accompanying these images simultaneously re-
inforce notions of Muslims as politically misguided and as prone to extrem-
ism and fanaticism.
One photograph, for instance, published in the Los Angles Times near
the anniversary of the September 11 attacks (September 1, 2002), depicts a
group of Jordanian women at the U.S. embassy in Amman. The beginning
of the caption states: “Women in Amman, Jordan, make contributions to a
book of condolences outside the U.S. Embassy shortly after the Sept. 11 at-
tacks.” The photograph, along with the first sentence of the caption, pres-
ents a positive image of Muslim women expressing solidarity with Ameri-
cans. But this positive image is then compromised by the remainder of the
caption, which reads: “Though many Arabs were upset by the number of
civilian casualties, there is a widespread belief that the United States had it
coming.” This statement, at the very least, suggests that their views are
marginal to Arab/Muslim societies, and at worst, casts doubt on these
women’s sincerity. In either case, the U.S. reader is undoubtedly left with
feelings of outrage and disgust at the insensitivity of Arabs to U.S. suffer-
ing—exactly the opposite reaction that the women in the photograph are
presumably trying to elicit.
The political consciousness of Muslim women has been especially
scrutinized in the case of Palestinian female suicide bombers. Suicide mis-
sions carried about by Palestinian women have been given a great deal of
coverage, presumably because such actions defy Western preconceptions
about Muslim and Arab women (though it should be noted that many sui-
cide bombers in Chechnya are women, as are many soldiers involved in
antigovernment action by Muslims in the Philippines). Photos of Wafa
Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, and of Darin Abu Eisheh
were published in the New York Times (January 31, 2002, and March 1,
2002, respectively). Seemingly not content to accept that a Muslim woman’s
political convictions might lead her to a suicide mission, reporters have
probed family members in an attempt to understand these women’s motiva-
tion for committing, what is by U.S. standards, an act of complete irratio-
nality. A full report on female suicide bombers that appeared in the Plain
Dealer (July 14, 2002) includes a picture of an attractive woman with a
sorrowful face, under which is the caption: “Amal Siyam, research director
at the Palestinian Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza, listens to participants in
a discussion on female suicide bombers. Women at her workshop seemed to
support the action.” Suicide missions carried out by two Iraqi women dur-
ing the recent war have also been covered by the U.S. press (Chicago Tri-
bune, April 5, 2003).
That young women seem to be supporting female suicide bombers is
something that many U.S. readers undoubtedly find incomprehensible and
314 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

troubling—indeed, this is why the item is newsworthy. Such stories, while

appealing to Western audiences because of the exotic quality of female
“terrorists,” also reinforce the incomprehensibility of Muslim societies,
and, more specifically, the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. The phenomenon of
female suicide bombers becomes part what McClure (1994, p. 121) calls a

resurgent Orientalist narrative [that] casts Muslims in general and Arabs of

all persuasions as the Others to democratic, open, and peace-loving West-
erners. It defines a zone which runs from North Africa across the Middle
East into Asia as an Elsewhere inhabited by dangerous barbarians commit-
ted to a fanatical faith.

Other depictions of politically active Muslim women reinforce the idea of

Muslim societies as fanatical and irredeemably foreign. Photographs of
women involved in mass demonstrations are especially powerful in convey-
ing a geopolitical image of the Muslim world as diametrically opposed to
U.S. interests and well-being. An image of four Pakistani women holding
toy guns (Figure 12.4), for instance, was used in a Los Angeles Times re-
port (December 5, 2002) that was headlined “U.S. Losing Popularity in
World.” The caption of the photo reads: “In Pakistan: Women in Karachi
hold toy guns and shout slogans against the U.S. and Israel at a demonstra-

FIGURE 12.4. Pakistani women hold toy guns and shout at a demonstration in
Karachi. From The Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2002. Reproduced with permission
of AFP/Getty Images.
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 315

tion during Ramadan.” The Chicago Tribune published a similar report on

the same day (December 5, 2002) with the headline: “U.S. Image Waning
Despite 9/11 Sympathies, Poll Finds,” and the subheadline: “Views Fall in
West and Muslim Nations.” Here again a photo of Muslim women in
Egypt (in this case unarmed) highlights the report. The caption beneath the
photo says: “Anti-U.S. slogans fill a recent demonstration at Cairo’s Al-
Azhar mosque. In Egypt, 69 percent of respondents to a Pew Global Atti-
tudes Project study viewed the U.S. unfavorably.” And a report on United
States–Egypt relations published by the Los Angeles Times (October 29,
2002), under the headline, “Anti-U.S. Feelings Bubble Up in Egypt,” con-
tains a photograph of a group of young women (one of them fully veiled)
shouting and holding a large poster with the words, “HEY AMERICANS,
YOUR GOVT. SELLS WEAPONS TO ISRAEL TO KILL OUR CHILDREN.” These re-
ports are undoubtedly accurate, in that there is a great deal of hostility to-
ward U.S. foreign policy in Arab and Muslim countries. But I wish to
suggest that the particular gendered images selected to accompany these
reports, more than simply capturing popular sentiment, convey a view that
Muslim societies are adversarial to their very core and that their anti-
Americanism is somehow irrational and unjustified.
Photographs of Iraqi and Palestinian women participating in marches
and demonstrations, more than others, seem to communicate a sense of the
political abnormality of Muslim societies, and women (yet again) appear to
be brainwashed to support evil regimes. Armed Iraqi women, marching and
shouting, feature in the reports of at least three newspapers surveyed for
this study. In the Plain Dealer (August 9, 2002) a photograph appears with
the caption: “Women militia members parade through Baghdad yesterday
as part of a celebration of the 14th anniversary of the end of the 1980–88
Iraq–Iran war.” A photograph published by the Chicago Tribune (January
23, 2003) shows an Iraqi woman holding a gun, with the caption: “A gun-
toting Iraqi woman takes part in an anti-United States demonstration in
Baghdad on Wednesday”—the expression “gun-toting” here adding a
touch of disparagement to this woman’s militarized demeanor. In another
Chicago Tribune report (February 5, 2003), a photo of a group of armed
women appears with the caption: “Iraqi women participate in a civilian
military parade Tuesday in Mosul, where thousands marched in support of
the regime.”
Palestinian women are also depicted as misguided political actors, un-
swervingly supporting their widely discredited leader, Yasser Arafat. USA
Today (April 5, 2002), for instance, published a photograph of an armed
woman standing next to a photo of Arafat and two other fully veiled
women in black. The caption beneath the photo reads: “Perpetual hostilities:
Assault rifle in hand, a Palestinian woman participates in a demonstration
Thursday in support of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Rafah refu-
gee camp in southern part of Gaza.” The Plain Dealer (October 15, 2002)
316 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

shows another view of Palestinian women demonstrating in support of

Arafat. The caption of the photo reads: “A Palestinian woman carries an
automatic weapon during a demonstration yesterday in Gaza City, where
thousands of supporters of Yasser Arafat gathered for a rally.” The same
pattern of representation of armed Palestinian women demonstrating in
support of Arafat appears in the Israeli press (see International Jerusalem
Post, October 11, 2002). In all of these instances, the image of women,
some of them veiled and/or carrying guns, projects a sense of the deep dys-
function of these societies. These women are misguided because they are
demonstrating for the wrong cause (e.g., anti-United States and anti-Israel),
and for the wrong leaders (e.g., pro-Saddam or pro-Arafat). Their very
presence—highly unexpected from a Western perspective, which tends to
view Muslim women as silent and oppressed—suggests that states like the
United States (as well as Israel) face a great, but in the case of Iraq, worth-
while, challenge in addressing the hostility against them.
A final set of notable images of Muslim women’s politicization relates
to the Iraqi referendum for the reelection of Saddam Hussein for president
held in October 2002 (e.g., Washington Post, October 16, 2002 and Octo-
ber 17, 2002). All reports justifiably painted this as a sham event, and the
absurdity of the event was captured with headlines such as “Iraqi Voters’
Choice: Yes or Yes” (Chicago Tribune, October 14, 2002). But the use of
pictures of Iraqi women demonstrating in support of Saddam Hussein to il-
lustrate these stories suggests, yet again, that Iraqis have been brainwashed
and that they are in need of deprogramming, presumably by Americans
who are “in the know” (the dubious circumstances of President Bush’s elec-
tion remaining, of course, unmentioned). The Plain Dealer (October 17,
2002), for instance, published a photo of a group of Iraqi women clapping
hands and smiling. The caption beneath the photo says: “Iraqis, some hold-
ing portraits of Saddam Hussein, celebrate his victory in a referendum on
whether he should continue as president. The official tally was 100 percent
in favor of Saddam.” The Los Angeles Times, likewise, published a photo
of a woman seen kissing her son who was wearing a shirt that has
Saddam’s picture on it (October 15, 2002). Part of the caption beneath the
photo says: “Voters are being asked to demonstrate their support for his
leadership and show that their country is a democracy, not a dictatorship.”
The Miami Herald (October 15, 2002) published a report entitled, “Hussein
Stands Alone on Iraqi Ballot,” to which is attached a photograph of a
group of young women smiling and shouting. The caption of this photo
says, somewhat flippantly, “For Hussein: A cheering section gets busy at a
state-sponsored celebration in Baghdad on Monday, the presidential elec-
tion’s eve.” The Chicago Tribune covered the referendum extensively (Oc-
tober 3, 14, 16, and 17, 2002), and published photos of cheering women
and men. One caption reads: “Iraqis in Baghdad celebrate Saddam Hussein’s
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 317

victory in a referendum extending his rule. Outside Iraq, skepticism ruled.”

Finally, the Columbus Dispatch (October 17, 2002) published a photo of
Saddam’s image in a heart-shaped frame of flowers being carried by a
group of women.
Such photographs, verging on the ludicrous, suggest a population in
the thrall of a cult leader, when, in fact, major segments of the population
opposed, actively and passively, Saddam’s rule. Insofar as some Iraqis did,
in fact, support Saddam Hussein, such support was perhaps not entirely ir-
rational but reflective of the stability Saddam had ensured in the country;
his constant outwitting of Americans, who were widely blamed for inflict-
ing over a decade of misery on the Iraqi people; and his ability to dole out
favors to particular groups—a situation, ironically, that was much abetted
by the U.N. sanctions. Such subtleties, unfortunately, are not easily cap-
tured in photographs or captions.
This discussion has attempted to show some of the ways in which the
use of photographs and captions in newspaper articles, far from enhancing
the supposed “objectivity” of newspaper reportage, communicates specific
political meanings. Editors, by selecting certain images and captions, frame
geopolitical realities in particular ways and guide readers to think about
“the Other” in a rather narrow set of terms. What we see with images of
current events in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan is that the geopolitics of
the Middle East are being viewed and interpreted through a specifically
gendered lens. Images of women abound in this reportage, but seldom are
the accompanying articles about women. Women, in other words, are only
technically and superficially present, and they serve primarily to reinforce
preexisting understandings of Muslim societies as irrational, hostile, and
antithetical to the liberal West. Such images, therefore, become a form of
tacit support for the U.S. government’s policies in the region.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This chapter has attempted to probe the way in which the media, and espe-
cially print journalism, help to produce and to reproduce particular ways of
knowing the Arab and Muslim worlds. My systematic survey of four daily
newspapers (the Columbus Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, the Plain
Dealer, and the Los Angles Times) from September 11, 2001, to the eve of
the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 reveals a number of patterns in the
use of photographic imagery in newspaper reports. The gendered character
of these patterns is unmistakable. Editors have systematically selected im-
ages of women and girls to communicate political turmoil in Muslim soci-
eties and to convey the supposedly liberating impacts of U.S. intervention
in these regions. It should be noted that conservative commentators in the
318 Discourse, Representation, and the Contestation of Space

United States frequently accuse the mainstream media of harboring a “lib-

eral bias” and of being overly critical of Republican foreign policy. Yet the
visual representation of Muslim women, more often than not, has fit quite
neatly into dominant geopolitical discourses. Some newspaper editors may,
in fact, have reservations about U.S. actions in the Middle East and else-
where in the Muslim world, but it seems that editorial decision making and
government policy agendas are equally prone to regard Muslim societies as
politically backward and dysfunctional.
Why have images of women become so important in the minds of
newspaper editors? The figure of the “Muslim woman” harkens to the ex-
oticism of distant cultures and places and suggests an irrationality that can
be contrasted with the supposed order and rationality of Western liberal so-
cieties. Whether veiled or exposed, passive or wielding weapons, Muslim
women are the ultimate “Other,” and they serve as the main repositories of
the West’s sense of fear, fascination, and superiority vis-à-vis the Muslim
world. Newspaper editors seem to be aware, given the actual content of
newspaper reports, that the U.S. public has little interest in learning about
the lives of “ordinary” Muslim women, but that they do have an insatiable
desire to be reminded of the great social and cultural gulf that exists be-
tween themselves and the Muslim world.
It is not the aim of this chapter to refute the validity of the images
published in newspapers. I am not denying, for instance, that many
Kurdish and Afghan refugee women, as depicted in newspaper photo-
graphs, live in miserable conditions or that many Muslims, female or
male, have intensely negative feelings toward the United States. But I do
wish to point out that the kinds of images of Muslim women that one
tends to find in newspapers project very circumscribed understandings of
Muslims. The constant repetition of a limited number of images, often
with little contextualization from the reports they accompany, narrows
understandings of Muslim women’s lives and reduces the experiences and
political sentiments of Muslim women to a few stereotypes. This process
is damaging not only for Muslim women, but also for those who con-
sume these images, as they will eventually suffer the consequences of
their limited geopolitical awareness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The original version of this chapter was presented at the 2nd International Congress
of Geographers of the Islamic World, held in Tehran, Iran, September 16–17, 2003.
I thank Caroline Nagel for her excellent comments and suggestions for revision. I
also thank Bill Templer for feedback and editorial assistance at the early stages of
drafting this chapter. Responsibility for the content of this work, however, is mine
alone.
Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers 319

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Index

Index

Afghanistan, 2, 8. See also Afghan Aga Khan Rural Support Program

women (AKRSP), 38, 40–41n.3
civil laws/legislation, 52 Al-i’tisam, 260
droughts in, 75 Allah, fairness/justice of, 227
education in, 55–60 Al-Sadr, 259–260, 263
female majority population in, 68, Animal health care training, for Koochi
72–73 women, 79–80
gender rights, 52 Antiterrorism, 2
gender segregation in schools, 57 Arafat, Yassir, 312, 316
geopolitics of, 83 Autonomy, 148, 160, 167, 233
life expectancy in, 74
nomads (See Koochi) B
post-Taliban, 8
poverty/development in, 69 Bangladesh, purdah in, 183
schools in, 54–58 Bara kam (big work), 32
social/political status in, 55 Basic Veterinary Worker (BVW)
Taliban regime, 183 program, 16, 75, 78, 81–82, 84,
teacher shortage in, 56 85, 87n.15, 88n.24
value of education in, 56, 57–58 Beards, 215
war in, 74 Béji, Hélé, 279
warlords in, 83 Bel Haj Yahia, Emna, 279–280
Afghan women, 51–53, 69, 151 Beni Guil pastoralists
cultural identification of, 53 dairy cooperatives, 117–119
education and, 52, 54, 55, 56–60 gendered division of labor in, 100–101
employment and, 58 gender ratios of, 103–106
health education training for, 55, gender relations, state politics and,
308–309 106–109
liberation of, 55, 63n.12 irrigated land-use, obstacles to, 109–
life expectancy of, 70 115
literacy and, 56, 70, 308 livestock and, 115–117
livestock, knowledge of, 68 milk exchange systems, 116–117
new freedoms for, 308–309 research methods, 101–103
population demographics, 68, 72–73 sedentarization of, 8
status of, 70 settlement trends of, 98–100
in U.S. newspapers, 308 spaces of production, 100–101,
as victims, 44–45 103–106

321
322 Index

Beni Guil pastoralists (continued) D

subsistence gardens and, 106–109
Dairy cooperatives, 117–119
traditional migration of, 96–98
Dairy production, commercialization of,
Bensaad, Noura, 280
72
Biopower, 204, 218–221
De jure rights of citizenship, 94
Bismillah, 217
Democracy, veiling practices and, 210–
Boredom, of Muslim women, 163, 166
213
Bosnian Muslim women, 306, 307
Democratic Organization of Afghan
Boys. See Males
Women, 52
Brainwashing, 309–310
Democratization, 215
Britain, 181. See also Pakistani Muslims, Development
in Britain gender and, 7, 25, 71
Burqas, 22, 50, 53, 59–60, 64n.20 human, 48–51
Bush administration, 1–2, 45, 308, Western-led projects, 72
311 Discipline, 58–59, 218–221
Discourse, dominant, 10
C Division of labor, gendered, 8, 228–229,
Capabilities model, 48, 49–50, 60–61, 232
62n.5 Divorced women, 110, 165–166
Çarêaf, 207–208, 211, 213, 215 Djellaba, 171n.21
Cash income, need for, 29, 39 Domestic competency, 8
Catholicism, nationalist form of, 178– Domestic skills development, girls and,
179 31
Cendre à l’aube (Hafsia), 279, 284, 287– Dowry, 40n.2
288, 290, 291 Dress, modes of. See also Headscarfs;
Chechnya, female suicide bombers in, Veiling
313 burqas, 22, 50, 53, 59–60, 64n.20
Childcare, daughters and, 30–31 djellaba, 166, 171n.21
Childhood, organization and meanings government regulation of, 213–218
of, 23–24 immodest, 214
Children, Muslim, 23–24, 309–312 Islamic, Afghanistan schools and, 57
Chota kam (small work), 31 moral geography and, 164–165
Christian crosses, 1 rural expectations of, 36–37
Christian culture, influence of, 283 in Somalia, 230–231, 232–233
Christian–Muslim tensions, 141 women’s freedom and, 167–168
Chronique frontalière (Bel Haj Yahia), Dress codes, 217, 233
279–280 Droughts, in Afghanistan, 75
Citizenship
de jure rights of, 94 E
veiling practices and, 218–221 Economic inactivity rates, for working-
Class hierarchies, 50 age persons by ethnic group and
Collectivistic traditional society, Muslim sex, 185, 187
women as stereotypes for, 300 Economic opportunities, for girls, 23
Colonialism, impact on Somalia, 231– Economic theories of migration, 147,
237 148
Communicative action model, 49 Editorial offerings, 301
Communism, 63n.16, 261–263 Education, 7
Community, Muslim sense of, 131, 157 in Afghanistan, 55–60
Control issues, of women, 284 effectiveness of, 58
Covering, 223n.3. See also Veiling of ethnic minorities in Britain, 183–
Critical migration theory, 147 184
Culture, 151, 302 of females, 7–8, 31–36, 50, 51, 188
Index 323

gender norms, 24 Feminist migration, 130, 147

higher, Pakistanis and, 192 Feminist political ecology, 95, 116
human development and, 50–51 Films, Arab/Muslim stereotypes in, 303
Islamic, for women/girls, 226–227 France
obstacles, for Pakistani women in colonization of Morocco, 152
Britain, 188–189 headscarf policy in, 1, 2, 3
opportunities for, 29, 36 immigration restrictions, 153
of parents, 188 Moroccan population in, 153
role of, for boys, 33 uneducated Moroccan women in, 167
secular, in colonial Somalia, 233–237 Freedom, of women, 9–10
socialization in Afghan schools, 57–58 ability to manage, 161
value of, 56, 57–58, 63–64n.17 antiessentialist accounts of, 156
Educational access, for females, 23, 27, of choice, 168
70, 157, 187–189 class-based definitions of, 168
Egypt, Muslim women in, 315 concept of, 151
Elite racism, 303–305 culturally specific notions of, 148,
Emancipation, of women, 149, 151, 169n.1
168–169 divorce and, 165–166
Employment education and, 159
of Afghan women, 58 individual, 47, 147, 148, 149, 152,
capabilities and, 62n.6 210–213
gendered jobs/workplaces, 193–198 with limits, 160–163, 169
off-farm, 29 literature and, 275–276
opportunities for, 7, 157 meaning of, linguistic translations and,
outside access, under Taliban rule, 70 159–160
parental permission for, 194–195 modes of dress and, 167–168
“Enemy of civilization,” 303 Moroccan women’s views on, 148
Engagements, 40n.2, 284 in Morocco, 151–152
Equality, 148 of movement, 167
Erbakan, Necmettin, 204 new, for Afghan women, 308–309
Ethnic minorities in Britain, educational personal, 148–150
attainment, 183–184 political, 152
European women, freedom of, 151 postcolonial discourses on, 150–152
Export, of female domestic laborers, 134 as relational, 157–160, 169
respectability and, 160, 161–162
F in rural communities, 166–167, 168
sexual promiscuity and, 160, 161
Familial networks, mobility and, 158 spatial, 288–289
Family “total,” 160
centrality to collective identity, 188 urban life and, 166, 168
expectations/restrictions, Moroccan veiling practices and, 209–210
women and, 157–158 versus oppression, 151
extending definition of, 158 Western views on, 148
Moroccan women and, 157 French Lebanese Tobacco Monopoly,
Fear, of transgressing boundaries, 161 labor strike against, 249–251,
“February 28th Process, 203–204, 218, 256–268
220 French Muslim women, 3
Female labor force participation, 154,
251–252 G
Female leaders, mythical, 230
Feminine curriculum, 51 Gabiley, Somalia, 11
Feminism, 47–48, 63n.11 GAD (gender and development), 71, 72,
Feminist geography, 92 83
324 Index

Gardens, subsistence, 106–115 in Turkey, 10–11, 210–213

Gaza Strip, 311–312 versus miniskirts, 164–165
Gender Health care access, 23, 27, 50, 70
in Afghanistan, 69–70 Health care training, for Afghan women,
bias, in Pakistan, 26–27 55, 308–309
boundaries, defying, 13 Hijab. See Headscarfs
development and, 71 Hindu nationalism (Hindutva), 179
discrimination, purdah and, 23 Hindu women, 5
distribution, of Lebanese workforce, Honor, female, 158, 164, 204
255–256 Household management
migration and, 130 educational opportunities for girls and,
norms, 24 31–32
politics, of New Order in Indonesia, girls/women and, 28–29
139 male/female ratio, control of space
relations, 7, 95–96 and, 94
rights, 53 male labor force participation and,
roles, changes in, 8, 91, 92 29–30
Gender segregation, 4–5, 37, 285–286, training for girls, 31–34
288–289 Human capital, education as, 51
in Afghanistan schools, 57, 58–59 Human development, 48–51
burqas, 59–60 Human Development Index (HDI), 47–
literature and, 276 49, 50, 61
in Muslim society, 8 Human Development Report (HDR),
Gendered development theories, 45–46 47–48
Gendered division of labor, of Beni Guil Humanity, new biopolitical body of, 205
pastoralists, 100–101 Human right, veiling as, 213–218
General Federation of Workers (GFW), Husbands, 159, 163, 284
260, 265 Hussein, Saddam, 307, 309–311, 316–317
Ghaziyya workingwomen, strike by,
249–251, 256–268 I
Girl Child Project, 25–26
Girls, Muslim. See Women, Muslim Image-altering techniques of
Global capitalism, 150 photographers, 302
God, freedom for education women and, Imam-hatip schools, 203, 212, 220,
159 223n.2
Governmentality, 205 Independence, of women in Moroccan
Guellouz, Souad, 279, 280, 281 society, 160
India, intercontinental travel restrictions,
H 181
Indonesia
Hafsia, Jalila, 279, 280 labor export, 132, 134
Hajj pilgrimage, 137 Muslim population of, 128
Hajj visas, 127 New Order, 129, 138–140
HDI (Human Development Index), 47– Indonesian domestic workers, in Saudi
49, 50, 61 Arabia
Headscarfs, 203 abuses of, 133
ban on wearing, 1, 2, 153 from 1983–2000, 132–134
human rights and, 11, 210–213 media coverage of, 133–134
issue-tization of, 210, 212, 224n.10 migration of, 9, 133
political significance of, 210–213 payment of, 133
regulations, cultural politics of, 217 recruitment of, 9, 134–138
styles of, 207–208 religious moral codes and, 131–132
as tradition, 208–209, 210 workload of, 133
Index 325

Indonesian Muslims, spatial boundaries Landscape change, in Middle East, 93

of, 140 Law, veiling rights and, 213–218
Interconnectedness, Moroccan women Lebanon
and, 157 labor laws in, 249, 257, 258
Intermediaries, 290–292 professional women in, 258
Iranian women, 70 rural–urban migration in, 252–253
Iraqi women, in marches/demonstrations, sectarian configurations in, 253–255
315 Shi’ite population in, 252, 253–254,
Islam, 34 256
in colonial Somalia, 232 socioeconomic/demographic changes
“headscarf issue” and, 203, 208, 209 in, 253–255
regulation of dress, 213–218 tobacco production, 256
traditions, in Pakistan, 26 tobacco workingwomen, strike by,
in Turkey, “February 28th Process” in, 249–251, 256–268
203–204, 218, 220 underdevelopment, rural, 253–254
views of women and women’s role, 70 women’s tasks/work environments in,
Islamic feminists, 3 255–258
Islamicization of governance, 26, 183, workforce, gender distribution of,
207, 210–213, 215, 224n.11 255–256
Ismaili sect, 37 Les Jardins du Nord (Guellouz), 279,
282–283, 284, 286, 287, 291–
J 292, 294–295
Liberal feminism, 50
Jews, 1, 303 Liberation, of women, 168–169
j’illbab (headscarf), 134 in Afghanistan, 55, 63n.12, 170n.3
Jordanian women, 313 consumption as, 163–164
Islam-based, 227–228
K in Moracco, 170n.2
Knowledge transfer, mother–daughter, by United States military intervention,
31, 34 305, 308
Koochi society, 68–69, 88n.29 L’immeuble de la rue du Caire (Bensaad),
Basic Veterinary Worker (BVW) 280, 285–286, 289
program, 16, 75, 78, 81–82, 84, Literature
85, 87n.15, 88n.24 city versus country theme in, 289–290
demographics, 73, 74 geographies of space and place, 277–
developmental alternatives for, 83–84 278
migration of, 73–74 paradoxical geography and, 280–281
number of, 73 as place of freedom, 275–276, 296–
women in, 22, 78–80, 80–85, 87n.21 297
work/knowledge in, 75–78 private versus public spaces in, 281–
Kurdish refugees, 208–210, 307–308 289
Tunisian women writers and, 278–281
L Livestock
Beni Guil pastoralists and, 115–117
Labor market experiences, of second- development, women and, 72
generation women, 9 droughts in Afghanistan and, 75
Labor migration, promotion of, 138 knowledge, of Koochi women, 75–81
Labor recruitment, to Saudi Arabia, management programs, 8
134–138 in pastoral societies, 229
Labor strike, by Lebanese tobacco raising, women’s roles in, 93–94
workingwomen, 249–251, 256– L’oeil du jour (Béji), 279, 282, 283–284,
263 291, 293–294
Laicism, 210, 224n.7 Loneliness, in domestic space, 284–285
326 Index

M geographies of, 8–10

individual freedom and, 160
Maatarka. See Beni Guil pastoralists limitations on, 39
Mahrem, 207, 219 rural expectations of, 36–37
Males sexual morality/purity and, 149–150,
education of, 33–34 183
employment outside home, 33–34 shamefulness of, 158
freedom of, 33 under Taliban rule, 70
gender preference for, 28 Modernization, 150, 206–207
jobs for, 193–198 Moral codes, 155, 160, 161–162
life options for, 7 Moral geography, 147–150, 163, 169.
migrants, 147, 181 See also Spaces
role of education for, 33 capitalist consumer culture and, 163–
superiority of, patriarchial view of, 33 164
workload for, 32 dominant, respect for, 162
Marginalization, 181–184 modes of dress and, 164–165
Marketization, 7 Moroccan women and, 156
Maronite Christians, 253–255 temporal, 167–168
Marriage, 8, 188, 189 transnational, 9, 10
Masculinity, military, 142n.5 Morality, 150, 152
Media. See Newspapers, U.S. Moroccan women, 147
“Melt-down” technique, 302 ambivalent/antiessentialist notions of
Mengoub Gare, Morocco. See Beni Guil freedom, 152
pastoralists changes in lives/spaces of, 153–155
Middle East, American strategic goals in, consumer culture and, 163–164
304–305 domestic workers, 20, 171n.18
Migration, 9, 147 education and, 154
to Britain, “pull” factors for, 181 employment of, 154
family power relations and, 130 freedoms, in future, 168–169
gendered, 130–131 literacy rates, 154
illegal, from Morocco, 170n.7 mobility of, 9, 169
of Indonesian women to Saudi Arabia, moral geographies and, 148
9, 127 narratives of freedom, 156–168
intrahousehold gender dynamics and, postcolonial identity/modernity of,
130–131 155–156
Moroccan political economy and, uneducated, in France, 167, 168
152–153 use/access to place and space, 154
of Moroccans, 152–153 visibility of, 164
for off-farm employment, 29 Morocco. See also Beni Guil pastoralists
push-and-pull factors of, 180–181 constitutional monarchy, 152
reasons for, 147 female political officials in, 154–155
recruitment to Saudi Arabia, 134–138 freedom in, 151–152
sex differences in, 130 French colonization of, 152
status of women and, 95 gendered division of labor in, 100–
traditional seasonal, in Morocco, 96– 101
98 Jewish population in, 171n.13
women’s sexual morality and, 149– migration of population to foreign
150 countries, 170n.8
Milk exchange systems, of Beni Guil political economy, migration and,
pastoralists, 116–117 152–153
Mobility, female, 50, 128, 139–140, 149 traditional nomadic pastoralism in,
burqas and, 50 96–98
familial networks and, 158 women’s legal status, 155
Index 327

Mosque, women’s, 11, 227–228, 238– P

241
Mothers Pakistan
“good,” Muslim view of, 134 children’s rights policies, 24–25
household labor, children and, 30–31, gender bias in, 26–27
33 girls’ geographies in, 27–40
loss of sons’ household labor and, 33 girls in, 25–26
relationship with daughters, 27–28, 33 Islamic traditions in, 26
role of, 183, 188–189 northern, mountain communities in,
visions of children’s futures, 34–35 19–22
Mother/wife ideology, 139 sex ratio in, 27
Movement of women, control of, 151 United Nations Convention on the
Mujahideen, 53, 68, 70, 71, 86n.5 Rights of the Child and, 25
Mukkadems, 1, 101, 120n Pakistani Muslims, in Britain, 10, 180–
Muslims, 2, 19–22, 38–40. See also 184
Women, Muslim class-based divisions, 131
children, ideals for, 34 gendered jobs/workplaces, 193–198
clash with non-Muslims, 3 homeland regional distribution and,
engendering childhood in, 22–24 181–182
in Europe, 2 marginality and, 181–182
in France, 153 push-and-pull factors, 180–181
public–private space, 11 school spaces and, 189–193
sects, conflict/rivalry between, 37–38 socioeconomic profile of, 183–188
study method for, 186–188
unemployment rate, 185, 186
N women, 149, 179–180, 195–196, 314–
Nationalism, 51, 178, 179 315
New Order regime, 141 Palestinian–Israeli conflict, 311–314
Newspapers, U.S. Palestinian women, as political actors,
captions, 302 311–312, 315–316
cultural judgments about Islam in, 305 Paradoxical geography, 276, 280–281, 296
editorial decison-making, 302 Pashto, 73
editors, judgment of, 301, 302, 317– Pashtun, 73
318 Pastoral societies, 93–95. See also Beni
ethnic relations and, 304 Guil pastoralists; Koochi society
headlines, 302, 304 Patriarchy, 147, 251
“objectivity” of reportage, 317 in Afghanistan, 69–70
photographs in, 302 division of labor in pastoral societies,
placement of articles in, 301 228–229
political power of, 301 Lebanese tobacco workingwomen and,
reportage on Muslim/Arab topics, 259
302 personal freedom and, 149
selection of photographs of Muslim in Somalia, colonial transformations
women, 301, 302, 317–318 and, 231–237
stereotyping Islam in, 303–305 superiority of boys and, 33
targeting of Islam, 305 women’s freedom and, 159
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), PDPEO project, 1, 99–100, 120n
36, 70–71, 164 Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga
Norms, gender-appropriate, 157 (PKK), 142n.4
People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan
O (PDPA), 52
Personal desires, tension with family
Oppression, of Muslim women, 151 expectations, 157–158
328 Index

Personal utility, 59 women’s freedom and, 159

Peruvian migrant women, 149 Religious attire, school restrictions on, 1
Pesantren, 135 Religious identity, migrant mobility and,
Photographers, image-altering techniques 131
of, 302 Religious moral codes, Indonesian
Photographs, of Muslim women in U.S. domestic workers in Saudi Arabia
newspapers. See Women, Muslim, and, 131–132
in U.S. print media Representation, dominant, 10
Place Reputation, freedom of women and,
of freedom, in literature, 281 160, 161–162
literary geographies of, 277–278 Respectability for women, freedom and,
rightful, search for, 296–297 160, 161–162
Police surveillance, 220–221 Rural space, versus urban space, 289–
“Political techniques,” 205 290
Politics
female participation, in Morocco, S
154–155
of veiling practices, 208–210 Safety, of women, 158, 164
Power, 61, 94, 204 Saudi Arabia, 9. See also Indonesian
Professional occupations, Pakistani domestic workers, in Saudi
women in Britain and, 185 Arabia
Pull factors of migration, 181 Islamic law in, 138
Punjabi Muslims, 40n.2, 180–181 labor recruitment and, 134–138
Purdah. See Veiling women, portrayal in U.S. print media,
Purity, heterosexual, 149–150, 183, 300
189–191 Schools
in Afghanistan, 58–59
Q discipline in, 58–59
fostering of change in, 59
Quality of life, 47–49 spaces of, 189–193
Qur’an, 56, 183, 227, 233, 237, 280 Seclusion, of women, 39, 59, 63n.14,
100, 151. See also Veiling
R Sectarian relations, 37–38
Recruitment, of labor, 129, 140 September 11, 1001, 151
Refah Partisi, 213 September 11, 2001 attacks, Muslim/
Regie, labor strike against, 249–251, Arab women and, 307, 313
256–268 Sex ratio, in Pakistan, 27
Regimes of veiling, 204–205 Sexuality, gender separation and, 183
Regional distribution, of Pakistani Shame, veiling practices and, 204
Muslims in Britain, 181– Sheiks, 101, 120n
182 Shia sect, 26, 37
Relational freedom, “total” freedom and, Shi’ite Muslims, 20, 252, 253–254,
160 256
Religion, 13 Sindhi culture, 40n.2
gender and, 7 Sitaad center, 236–237
gender differences and, 39–40 Socialism, 63n.16
Indonesian domestic workers in Saudi Socialization, 24, 57–58
Arabia and, 127, 128 Social mores, transgression of, 160, 161–
labor recruitment and, 135–137 162
recruitment of domestic workers and, Social network theories, 130–131
140 Social structure, reorganization of, 36
Somalian women and, 230 Somalia, 228–246
veiling practices and, 210 colonial transformations in, 231–237
Index 329

Islamic practice, precolonial, 226– T

228
Taliban regime, 2, 68, 70, 86n.5, 151,
liberation war in, 234
308, 309
men in, 228–230
Afghan women during, 44–45
mode of dress in, 230–231
legal status of Afghan women under,
political economy, precolonial, 228–
53
231
seclusion of women and, 63n.14
religion in, 230
Tanzanian women, 149
women’s mosque in, 238–241
Teachers, 35, 56, 59, 64n.19
women’s space in, 230
“Technologies” of citizenship, 204
Sons, outside errands for, 32–33
“Technologies of the self,” 205
Soviet Union, invasion of Afghanistan,
Television, Arab/Muslim stereotypes in,
74
303
Spaces
Tesettür, 207, 210
body politics and, 64n.20
Transgressions, spatial, 292–295
consumer, women’s safety in, 164
Transnational migration, 128–129
contestations, 10
gendered, 127–128
control of, household male/female
Tunisia
ratio and, 94
French influence in, 287
domestic, 183, 282–283
modernization of, 278–279
intermediaries and, 290–292
Tunisian women writers, 275–297
physical isolation in, 284–285
city versus country and, 289–290
security and, 282
literary geographies of space and
female, 70, 91–92, 155, 230, 250–
place, 277–278
251, 286, 287
movement, processes transgressions
gendered nature of, 30, 38–39
and, 290–295
literary geographies of, 277–278
novels written by, 11–12
male-dominant, 91–92, 182–183, 250,
private versus public spaces and, 281–
287
289
private, 133, 141
search for rightful place, 295–296
private–public division of, 11, 92, 94,
Türban, 207
149–150, 250–251
Turkey
domestic service and, 133, 141
“February 28th Process in, 203–204,
female resistance to, 250–251
218, 220
intermediaries and, 290–292
headscarf issue, 203
in literature, 281–289
headscarf issue in, 10–11, 210–213
transgressions and, 292–295
Islamist parties in, 223–224n.6
of production, 80–82, 93–96, 100–
veiling practices in, 206–210
101, 103–106
public, 51, 189, 263–268, 288
U
regulation, gender roles and, 250–
251 Umma, 128
of school, 189–193 UNDP (United Nations Development
social controls on, 37 Programme ), 47–48
Spatial boundaries, 35 Unemployment rate, for British
Stereotypes, of Muslim women, 69, 300, Pakistanis, 185, 186
303–305 Union of the Regie Workers and
Subordination, internalization of, 64n.21 Employees (URWE), 260–261,
Sudan, 24 263, 265, 266
Suharto, President, 141 United Nations Convention on the
Suicide bombers, female, 313–314 Rights of the Child, 25
Sunni sect, 26 United Nations Development Programme
Sunnite Muslims, 253–255 (UNDP), 47–48
330 Index

United Nations Food and Agriculture W

Organization, 84, 87n.14
United States Wahid, Abdurrahman, 141
Bush administration, 1–2, 45, 308, Wealth-ranking, 101–102
311 WED (women, environment and
military intervention in Middle East, development), 83
308, 309 Weddings, 40n.2
national interest of, 304 Western society
political interests, affirmed by superiority claims of, 151
journalistic images, 311 values of, 189
strategic goals in Middle East, 304– veiling practices and, 206–207
305 WID (women in development), 71–72,
Universal feminism, 47–48 83, 87n.16, 88n.25
Urbanization, in Somalia, 232 Wives, role of, preparation for, 188–189
Urban space, versus rural space, 289–290 Womanhood, veiling practices and, 204
URWE (Union of the Regie Workers and Women, Muslim, 5. See also specific
Employees), 260–261, 263, 265, groups of Muslim women
266 appropriate behavior of, 149
USAID, 75 behavioral norms for, 28
bodies of, 35, 37, 149, 183, 214
V communal control over, 36
daily life, regulation of, 213–218
Veiling (purdah), 1, 2, 3, 30, 36–39, 131 daughters, 28, 30–31, 34–38, 157
burqas and, 59, 64n.20 dichotomization of, 128–129
community practices of, 208, 209 domestic/farm responsibilities of, 39
forms of, 183 education for, 7–8, 52
gender discrimination and, 23 in Egypt, 315
girls’ status and, 23 employment and, 193–198
government regulation of, 213–218 faith versus education/profession, 203
imam-hatip schools and, 203 free but oppressed, 168
as imposition versus choice, 183 freedom of (See Freedom, of women)
Koochi women and, 79 futures of, visions for, 34–38
of Kurdish women, 208–210 girlhood of, 19–22, 30–34, 38–40
national identity and, 206 in Indonesia, 128–129
personal meanings of, 208 Kurdish refugees, 307–308
as political issue, 204 labor intensification of, 39
politics of, 208–210 labor value of girls, 7
power and, 204 Lebanese, tasks/work environments of,
purdah and, 22–23 255–258
range of practices, 208–210 life options for, 7
regulations, biopower and, 218–221 migrants, 139, 147, 148
rights, 213–218 mobility of (See Mobility, female)
styles of, 207–208 normal lives of, 306, 307
“technologies” of citizenship and, on-farm responsibilities of, 29–30
204 orientalized stereotypes of, 300
in Turkey, fieldwork methods, 5, 205– political consciousness of, 313
206, 223n.4 preparation for adulthood, 34
in Turkish society, 203–204 purity of, 149–150, 183, 189–191
Victimization, of Muslim/Arab women, reproductive roles, under Taliban, 70
305, 306–312 responsibilities of, 92
Village organizations (VOs), 40–41n.3 restrictions on, 22
Visibility, of women in public, 50, 162, rights of, 26
164, 207 role of, in pastoral societies, 228–229
Index 331

sexual morality, mobility/migration, insulated from text, 305

149–150 as passive victims, 305, 306–312
social controls on, 37 problems with, 307–308
solidarity with Americans, 313 stereotyping and, 303–305
spaces of (See Spaces, female) time frame of study, 300–301
status of, 23, 95, 151 value of, 28–30
stereotypes of, 69, 300, 303–305 visual representation in American
subsistence gardens and, 106– newspapers, 12
109 workload for, 32
underrepresentation in social science workloads for, 39
disciplines, 5
uneducated, 35 Y
in U.S. print media, 300–318
Yarmulkes, 1
as active political agents, 305–306,
312–317
Z
data collection/methodology, 301–
303, 317 Zia ul-Haq, General, 26
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About the Editors

About the Editors

Ghazi-Walid Falah is an associate professor in the Department of Geogra-

phy and Planning, University of Akron, Ohio, and is editor-in-chief of The
Arab World Geographer. His major areas of research include the political,
social, and cultural geography of the Middle East, with a special focus on
Palestine. His current research centers on Arab–American bilateral rela-
tions from the perspective of media discourse. His publications include two
books in Arabic—The Forgotten Palestinians (1989) and Galilee and
Judaization Plans (1993)—as well as book chapters and numerous articles
in such journals as the Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
The Canadian Geographer, Transaction, Political Geography, Progress in
Human Geography, Environment and Planning A, The Professional Geog-
rapher, Area, and Third World Quarterly.

Caroline Nagel is a lecturer in human geography at Loughborough Univer-

sity in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. She received a PhD in 1998 from
the University of Colorado, where she developed an interest in Arab and
Muslim immigrant communities in Western countries. She is currently re-
searching issues relating to citizenship and cultural identity among Arab
Americans and British Arabs. She has a long-standing interest in theories of
immigrant settlement and has published several scholarly articles on assimi-
lation theory and immigrant transnationalism. She also has more general
interests in urban geography and qualitative research methods.

333
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Contributors

Contributors

Naheed Gina Aaftaab is a master’s candidate in the Department of Geography at

the University of Washington. Her chapter is based on research done toward
her thesis, entitled “Education as Development: A Case Study of Afghan
Women.” Her projects build upon fieldwork done in Herat, Afghanistan, in
the summer of 2002. Ms. Aaftaab’s next project will be to examine Muslim
women’s education in postcolonial India. She spent the 2003–2004 academic
year in Lucknow, India, as a language fellow at the American Institute of In-
dian Studies.
Malek Abisaab is an instructor in the history department at McGill University,
Montreal, Quebec. His article “ ‘Unruly’ Workingwomen: Contesting French
Colonialism and the National State in Lebanon, 1940–1946,” appeared in
Journal of Women’s History (Fall 2004), and he coauthored “A Millennium
after Qasim Amin: Past and Modern Uses of Tahrir al-Mar’a [The Liberation
of Women]” (2000). He is currently working on a book on community and la-
bor among tobacco workingwomen in Lebanon from the 1900s to the late
20th century.
Leila Ayari is a graduate of the Department of Geography at the University of Ot-
tawa. She pursued her studies at the Faculty of Education at the University of
Ottawa, where she is currently employed.
Marc Brosseau is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the
University of Ottawa. He was coeditor of The Canadian Geographer from
1999 to 2002, and is currently a member of its editorial board as well as that
of Social and Cultural Geography. Dr. Brosseau is the author of several papers,
book chapters, and a book, Des romans-géographes (1996). His research
focuses on various aspects of social and cultural geography and, more specifi-
cally, on the relationship between geography and literature.
Diana K. Davis holds a PhD in geography from the University of California, Berkeley,
and a DVM from Tufts University. She has conducted research with nomads in

335
336 Contributors

Balochistan, Pakistan, and in southern Morocco. Her research and publica-

tions have focused on gender and indigenous knowledges as well as on the po-
litical ecology of pastoral resource use and environmental history. Dr. Davis is
currently an assistant professor of geography and Middle East studies at the
University of Texas at Austin and is completing a book on the environmental
history of North Africa during the colonial period. Her research has been pub-
lished in the Journal of Arid Environments, Cultural Geographies, the Geo-
graphical Review, the Journal of North African Studies, the World Encyclopedia
of Environmental History, and elsewhere.
Ghazi-Walid Falah (see About the Editors).
Amy Freeman recently finished her PhD in geography at the University of Washing-
ton in Seattle. Her dissertation, titled Contingent Modernity: Moroccan
Women’s Narratives in Postcolonial Perspective, examines relational concepts
of modernity from the viewpoint of Moroccan women’s experiences in France
and Morocco. Her research has focused on North African migrants in France
and, more recently, on critiques of modernity and the construction of post-
colonial gender identity in Morocco.
Sarah J. Halvorson is an assistant professor of geography and an active member of
the Central Asia and Caspian Basin Program at the University of Montana.
Her teaching interests include world regional geography, gender and develop-
ment, water resources, and environmental hazards. Her chapter in this volume
is part of her ongoing research on Muslim communities in the mountainous re-
gions of South and Central Asia.
Robina Mohammad is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the South Asian Studies
Programme at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests in-
clude political transformations and their impact on women in different na-
tional contexts and the marketing and consumption of the gendered, sexed
body. Dr. Mohammad’s current project is on the transnationalization of
Bollywood (the Hindi film industry) to and beyond the South Asian diaspora.
Caroline Nagel (see About the Editors).
Abdi Ismail Samatar is a professor of geography and global studies at the University
of Minnesota and is the author of three books on the state and development in
Africa, as well as numerous articles. His book An African Miracle: State and
Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Development (1999) was
a finalist for the Herskovitz Prize of the African Studies Association. Currently,
he is working on a two-volume publication on leadership and democracy in
Africa.
Anna Secor is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Kentucky.
Her recent publications have focused on gender, citizenship, and urban space
in Istanbul. She is currently working on a project on everyday encounters with
the state and civil society in Turkey.
Rachel Silvey is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. Her research interests include gender and feminist geography, critical
Contributors 337

migration and development studies, social activism, Indonesia, and Islam. Her
work has appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers;
Political Geography; Progress in Human Geography; Gender, Place and Cul-
ture; and World Development. She currently serves as a member of the Social
Science Research Council’s Working Group on Gender and International Mi-
gration. As a Fulbright New Century Scholar for 2004–2005, Dr. Silvey is
focusing her research specifically on gender and Islam among Indonesia–U.S.
transnational migrants.
Susanne H. Steinmann specializes in the geographic subfields of cultural and politi-
cal ecology and feminist perspectives. She combines these approaches in her re-
search in Morocco and North Africa on the themes of gender and resources
management, agricultural intensification, economic development, and interna-
tional labor migration. Dr. Steinmann lived in Morocco for 4 years, where she
taught in a public high school, worked as development consultant, and con-
ducted extensive field research toward her master’s and PhD degrees. Her
work challenges geographers to include and empower local people in the pro-
cess of research and community development. Dr. Steinmann teaches in the
geography department and international studies program at Portland State
University in Oregon.