Love marriage or arranged marriage? Choice, rights, and empowerment for educated Muslim women from rural and low-income Pakistani communities

ABSTRACT

Using ethnographic data collected with Muslim women teachers from rural and low-income communities in Pakistan, this article shows how empowerment for these educated women meant access to different forms of power within families and communities. The focus on the issue of choice in marriage reveals how the participants conceptualised empowerment as practice of rights that entailed right choices; choices that produced positive long-term benefits in terms of making new opportunities and roles available to them within their contexts. Through focusing on the lived experiences of educated and professional Muslim women in a specific cultural context, this analysis presents a critical analysis of the gendered concepts and practices of choice, rights, and empowerment. It disrupts the global narrative that mobilises the image of Muslim women as victims of their culture and presents education as a tool that empowers Muslim women against their patriarchal families and institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Muslim women
• gender empowerment
• women’s education
• arranged marriage
• Islam

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the leaders and staff of the IEL who made this research possible. A very special thanks to the IEL teachers, their families, and members of the communities who welcomed me into their homes and lives. I am grateful to my mentor Myra Marx Ferree for her critical feedback and support throughout my research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The practices of arranged marriage are not the same as forced marriages. Marriage arranged by the parents or by the family does not imply that it is against the consent and/or choice of the women or men.

2. Love marriage was the term used by the participants to refer to the marriages where men and women liked each other before getting married. It could indicate a formal relationship or merely a liking for each other. These marital arrangements were rare and were approved by the families only in the cases of right kinship, caste, and class relations.