Perceptions of work by pious Muslim students: a comparison between the Netherlands and Turkey

Abstract

There are widespread ideas about Muslim women being oriented to life at home and not participating in paid labour. This article explores notions of work in the groups of practicing Muslim, veiled Turkish-Dutch students of higher education in the Netherlands and Turkish veiled higher education students in Turkey, as the best-prepared group of women for a future in paid work. The primary objective of this article is to see how respondents think about their futures with regard to paid work. Their views are compared drawing on in-depth interviews analysed using grounded theory. The article shows that respondents in both settings have a keen interest in taking up paid work while also raising families. However, ideas of work differ in the two settings. As the Turkish-Dutch are faced with rather gendered expectations in their local community, for them paid work is perceived more along gendered lines taking into account one’s roles as wife and mother. Their choices of profession are rather gender-specific. However, Turkish respondents do not encounter gendered discourses of marriage and homemaking as strongly. Their choices of profession are less gender-specific; rather they choose their professions regarding perceptions of how much money they would make. The article shows that the different discourses regarding gender roles and work shape how they think about paid work differently in the two settings.

Keywords:

• Muslim women
• paid work
• veil
• second generation immigrants
• gender roles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The respondents in this study are all self-identified as conscious, practicing Muslims.

2. For a similar debate in the UK, see Ward (2006).

3. After the Turkish Republic was established in 1923, Turkish women were encouraged to unveil and participate in the public sphere through the country’s modernisation project (Arat, 1999). While some argue that individuals have the right to veil within the discourse of freedom of religious expression, others see veiling in public institutions of education and work as symbolic of the backwards lifestyle of pre-republican times. In line with this, starting with 1980s veiled university students were forbidden to enter university premises, which led to protests (Cindoğlu & Zencirci, 2008). For more on the historical chronicles of veiling in Turkey (see Bottoni, 2013; Göle, 2003; Müftüler-Bac, 1999; Saktanber & Çorbacıoğlu, 2008; Turam, 2008).

4. By 2010, the veiling ban in Turkish universities had been mostly lifted (Head, 2010).

5. In a poll conducted in 2006, 92% of autochthon respondents believed that Muslim men dominated Muslim women, while 43% believed that Islamic women who wear a headscarf do not adjust to our society, and 74% believed that most Muslims have no respect for homosexuals in 2005 (Gijsberts & Lubbers, 2009, pp. 272–273).

6. Turkish-Dutch women have been also identified as the least engaged group in Dutch social life (Merens & Hermans, 2009, p. 128). However, when they work, more immigrant women work full time compared to the part-time working Dutch (Bevelander & Groeneveld, 2007, p. 13).

7. Urbanisation (İlkkaracan, 2012), lower education levels of women (Gündüz-Hoşgör & Smits, 2008), lack of effective childcare solutions (Acar, 2008), as well as unequal division of household labour (Dedeoğlu, 2010) and socially conservative beliefs about women’s work (Göksel, 2013) have all been cited as reasons for women’s low labour participation.

8. This maintains that women’s duties pertain to housework and child-rearing while the men are to provide for the family. Motherhood is an important component of Muslim femininity (Siraj, 2012).

9. ‘The flip-side of these “freedoms” is that women are denied access to careers or promotions and remain financially dependent on a male breadwinner’ (Charlebois, 2012, p. 202).

10. The various components of this framework are as follows: (1) The context. Women’s direct environment, the specific context of household, community, or the country has an influence. In women’s immediate environment, the inherent social norms, geographic proximity or availability of labour opportunities all have an effect. (2) Differing micro-level effects such as being married or single, household income, or dependents at home are also embedded in the context. (3) Needs; such as economic and physical; Opportunities; such as availability of accessible jobs and women’s human capital; Values which entail whether it is appropriate for women to work or not, or in which professions and posts. These might entail societal norms as well as ideas of women themselves. Values can interfere with micro-level effects’ influence on work.

11. Please note that the term Islamist is used by Predelli in the original text, and does not reflect my own judgement.

12. In this model, women are categorised according to their support for gender segregation and the interchangeability of gender roles based on levels of participation in home and/or society.

13. Holists argue that both working and staying at home are equally valid and Islamically acceptable, while egalitarians more fervently support work outside and traditionalists support being oriented towards one’s household.

14. ‘Unto men a fortune from that which they have earned, and unto women a fortune from that which they have earned’ (Quran 4:32) (Pickthall, 2001, p. 75).

15. For the same phenomenon in Algerian context, see Jansen (2004).

16. It should also be noted here that when the respondents refer to Turkish-Dutch community in this instance, they exclude some integrated Turks who ‘don’t live by their religion’ (dinini yaşamayan).

17. Ten out of thirty respondents argued they were interested in continuing studies whereas only three Turkish-Dutch did so.

18. Some respondents’ families received unemployment benefits or rent subsidies from the social security system, as well as the study subsidies they received themselves.

19. Some of the respondents were slightly concerned about my status as an unmarried Turkish woman in her late twenties. They would often ask prying questions about why I still hadn’t married. One respondent even insisted that I should ask around my relatives and friends for a suitor, as she liked me so much she wanted to see me married. On occasion, it was joked that my status as an educated woman would make it harder for me to get married, as it was humorously argued that ‘Turkish men don’t want too smart women.’