Pious capital: fashionable femininity and the predicament of financial freedom

ABSTRACT

I take up the figure of the new Pakistani working woman as constructed in the advertising campaign of the fashion brand Working Woman to think about transnational frames of class, womanhood, piety, femininity, and empowerment. I introduce pious capital as a concept that illuminates how this figure embodies the intersections of borders where borders mean the binaries that this figure appears to transcend: she is the best of the East and worthy of the West both. Situated at the apparent intersection of the East and the West, this new Pakistani working woman represents Islam as modern (read compatible with capital), Pakistan as productive, and certain forms of piety as empowerment. This is not about the customers who frequent Working Woman or class simply as purchasing power, rather it is about the story this ad campaign by Working Woman is trying to tell and sell about Pakistani womanhood on a global stage. Part fantasy, part aspiration, part control, this new feminist story still upholds discourses of cultural and religious authenticity and heteronormative femininity – with a new fashion-forward twist. The mobility of this figure signals transnational discourses of value, and the movement of bodies, capital, affect, and aesthetics across borders.

KEYWORDS:

• piety
• sexuality
• modesty
• racial capital
• Pakistan
• economics

Acknowledgment

I am most grateful to my mentors Dr. L.H.M. Ling and Dr. Jasmine Rault for their close reading of my work. The final paper has benefited tremendously from my ongoing engagement with Dr. Moon Charania and Dr. Naveen Minai. I presented an earlier version of the paper at IBA, Department of Social Sciences in Karachi, Pakistan. I am indebted to Dr. Faiza Mushtaq for both organizing the talk and for her critical insights. I also want to acknowledge my anonymous reviewers as well as my editors Dr. Nazia Hussein and Saba Hussain for their thoughtful input and generative revisions.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Sefam, “The Working Woman”.

2. Friedman, “Women, Fashion Has You Covered”.

3. Fry, “Modest Dressing, as a Virtue”.

4. Bucar, Pious Fashion.

5. Gökariksel and McLarney, “Muslim Women, Consumer Capitalism,” 1–18; and Jones, “Images of Desire,” 91–117.

6. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; and Mignolo, and Tlostanova, “Theorizing from the Borders,” 205–221.

7. Pham, “The Right to Fashion in the Age of Terrorism,” 385–410.

8. Sefam, The Working Woman.

9. Marx, Capital.

10. Harvey, “Marx’s Refusal”.

11. Harvey, “Marx’s Refusal,” 1.

12. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages; Abbas, At Freedom’s Limit; Charania, Will the Real Pakistani Woman Please Stand Up; Byrd, Goldstein, Melamed, and Chandan Reddy, “Predatory Value,” 1–18; and Bacchetta, Maria, and Winant, Global Raciality.

13. Eisenstein, Capitalist Patriarchy; Robinson, Black Marxism; Gilmore, Golden Gulag; Hong, and Ferguson, Strange Affinities; and Melamed, “Racial Capitalism,” 76–85.

14. Mahmood, Politics of Piety.

15. Ong, Neoliberalism as exception; Ferreira da Silva, Towards a Global Idea of Race; and Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment .

16. Charusheela and Zein-Elabdin, Postcolonialism Meets Economics; and Kongar, Olmsted, and Shehabuddin, “Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities”.

17. Isik, “Just Like Prophet Mohammed Preached”.

18. Isik, “Just Like Prophet Mohammed,” 219.

19. See note 8 above.

20. The Express Tribune. “Gender Discrimination: Pakistan’s Labour Laws very Biased Against Women.” 22 August 2014.

21. Osborne and Sunnucks “Why Pakistan’s most successful businesswoman”.

22. Murphy, The Economisation of Life.

23. Masooma, “Wearing “Made of Pakistan” On Its Sleeve”.

24. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Labour Force Survey 2014–15.

25. See note 8 above.

26. Ibid.

27. Secret Closet. Ready, Set, Shoot: Adnan Pardesy’s ‘The Working Woman’ through the Lens of H&Z. 12 December 2012. http://www.secretcloset.pk/blog/2012/12/14/ready-set-shoot-adnan-pardesys-the-working-woman-through-the-lens-of-hz/.

28. Grewal, Transnational America; Gill, Gender and the Media; and McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism.

29. Kaplan and VanderBurg, “The Rise of Gender Capitalism”; Zahidi, ““Womenomics” is starting to transform the Muslim World”; and Nasr, Meccanomics.

30. Radhakrishnan, “Professional women, good families,” 195–212; Gilbertson, “A Fine Balance,” 120–158; and Hussein, “Bangladeshi New Women’s ‘Smart’ Dressing,” 97–121.

31. See note 8 above.

32. Sibtain, “High-end meets high-street for modern working women”.

33. Adnan Pardesy for Working Woman – Behind the scene. The Working Woman, [video]. 2012. https://www.facebook.com/theworkingwoman/videos/10151322055802226/ .

34. Bourdieu, Distinctions .

35. Shirazi, Brand Islam; Maqsood, “Buying Modern,” 84–107; and Maqsood, The New Pakistani Middle Class.

36. Sefam, “The Working Woman.

37. The Careerist. Adnan Pardesy for The Working Woman by H&Z. 2012.

38. These pyjamas trace their lineage to the Mughal era. They are cut wide at the top, which allows for roominess, and narrow at the ankle. The multiple folds tighten at the ankle like a set of churis (bangles). Men and women both wear churidars.

39. Pakistan Bureau, “Labour Force Survey”.

40. Federici, Wages Against Housework; and Miles, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale.

41. Abbas, “Itineraries of Conversion,” 344–369.

42. Sefam, “The Working Woman”.

43. Siddiqa, Military Inc.

44. See note 42 above.

45. Pham, “The Right to Fashion in the Age of Terrorism”.

46. Shirazi, Brand Islam.

47. Puar and Rai, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag,” 117–48.

48. Behnke, The International Politics of Fashion.

49. Shaheed, “Contested identities,” 851–867.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Shroff

Sara Shroff is the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in Urban and Public Policy from The New School. Her doctoral work focused on sexuality, race, capital, and economics in contemporary South Asia. Her current work takes up desire, value, and intimacy to think about queer decolonial histories of sexualities in South Asia and diasporas by engaging performance studies, speculative fiction, mythology, and archives. Sara has taught in global studies, economics, and gender and sexuality studies at The New School, New York University, and PACE University. She previously worked in education policy, global philanthropy and social finance for over 18 years.