Stereotypes and Self-Representations of Women with a Muslim Background

The Stigma of Being Oppressed

Margaretha A. van Es

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9783319406756
• eBook ISBN: 9783319406763
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores how stereotypes of "oppressed Muslim women" feed into the self-representations of women with a Muslim background. The focus is on women active in, and speaking on behalf of, a wide variety of minority self-organisations in the Netherlands and Norway between 1975 and 2010. The author reveals how these women have internalised and appropriated particular stereotypes, and also developed counter-stereotypes about majority Dutch or Norwegian women. She demonstrates, above all, how they have tried time and again to change popular perceptions by providing alternative images of themselves and of Islam, paying particular attention to their attempts to gain access to media debates. Her central argument is that their efforts to undermine stereotypes can be understood as an assertion of belonging in Dutch and Norwegian society and, in the case of women committed to Islam, as a demand for their religion to be accepted. This innovative work provides a "history from below" thatmakes a valuable contribution to scholarly debates about citizenship as a practice of inclusion and exclusion. Providing new insights into the dynamics between stereotyping and self-representation, it will appeal to scholars of gender, religion, media, and cultural diversity.

© The Author(s) 2016

Margaretha A. van EsStereotypes and Self-Representations of Women with a Muslim BackgroundCitizenship, Gender and Diversity10.1007/978-3-319-40676-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Margaretha A. van Es¹

(1)

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

End Abstract

Stereotypes and Self-Representations of Women with a Muslim Background

In January 2016, British Prime Minister James Cameron announced an investment of 20 million pounds into English lessons for Muslim women living in Britain. He argued that this would, among other things, help tackle the “traditional submissiveness of Muslim women”. His statement provoked a storm of twitter protests among Muslim women in the United Kingdom—and even across the world—who felt deeply offended by his words. Using the hashtag #traditionally submissive, hundreds of women mocked Cameron’s statement by sharing pictures of themselves together with a list of their accomplishments. For example, a young woman twittered a selfie with the text “Columbia grad, BBC journalist, Pilates instructor, sports enthusiast and mummy. Yes, Cameron #traditionally submissive”. Another woman posted a picture of herself holding a note “Working in NHS 22 years, mother of 3, grandmother of 10, know 5 languages AND English, community activist, volunteer”. Her picture was accompanied by the text “Muslim women are not a problem that needs solving #traditionally submissive”. Virtually all of these women wore a hijab (a form of Islamic dress that includes a headscarf).¹ This was not the first time that women reacted against (what they perceived as) stereotypical representations of Muslim women, nor the last. In fact, since large groups of women from predominantly Muslim countries began to arrive in post-war Western Europe as a result of de-colonisation, labour migration, family reunification, and refugee migration, more and more of these women have actively tried to break stereotypes and prejudices about “foreign”, “migrant”, “minority”, or “Muslim” women, depending on what label was in widest use at a given time.

This book explores how women with a Muslim background have represented themselves in interaction with popular perceptions of Muslim women between 1975 and 2010. The focus is on women active in, and speaking on behalf of, a wide variety of minority self-organisations in the Netherlands and Norway. What kinds of explicit or implicit statements did these women make, whether through texts, images, or bodily behaviour, about themselves and the broader constituency of their organisation? Did they address the position of women in Islam, and if so, how? Did their self-representations confirm or challenge the dominant image? Did the organisations actively try to change popular perceptions of their respective constituencies, and if so, what strategies did they use?

I argue that dominant representations of Muslim women and Islam in public discourse strongly feed into the self-representations of the women studied. This book tells how women have internalised and appropriated particular stereotypes, how they have developed counter-stereotypes about majority Dutch or Norwegian women, and, above all, how they have time and again tried to change the dominant image by providing alternative images of themselves. It also reveals how essentialist representations of Islam as oppressive to women have provoked almost equally essentialist representations of Islam as a woman-friendly religion.

As I will elaborate, the women’s efforts to break stereotypes can be understood as attempts to affirm their belonging to Dutch or Norwegian society and, in the case of women committed to Islam, to demand acceptance for their religion. This work thereby contributes to scholarly debate about citizenship. Although citizenship is commonly understood as a matter of formal rights (such as the right to reside in a country and to hold a passport), it is much more than that: it is about full membership of the nation as a community,² even if that is an “imagined community”.³ This means that citizenship is not only a matter of legal rights and responsibilities but also of participation, identity, and a sense of belonging. Hence, a growing group of scholars studies citizenship as a subjective experience of being included or excluded and as a process where people continuously affirm or contest their belonging to the imagined community through various practices.⁴ This book attempts to contribute to the study of citizenship as an experience and a practice by focusing on the “bottom-up agentic processes”⁵ through which women with a Muslim background have negotiated their belonging to Dutch or Norwegian society over a long period.

During the last decade, much research has been carried out on the representations of Muslim women in European public spheres. It is repeatedly argued that Muslim women are much too one-sidedly presented as “backward”, “pitiable”, and “oppressed”, that gender discrimination and gendered violence among Muslim minorities are all too often attributed to the “inherently patriarchal” religion of Islam, that the stereotypical “oppressed Muslim woman” becomes more and more important as an Other to the “enlightened”, “emancipated”, and “sexually liberated” Western self, and that the growing public debate about the integration and emancipation of Muslim women increasingly stigmatises women instead of empowering them.⁶ These developments have been connected to a broader “backlash”⁷ or “crisis”⁸ of multiculturalism since the turn of the century, which includes a rise of voices condemning multiculturalist policies, an increasing emphasis on national identity and civic integration, a growing focus on Muslim minority cultures as the cause of various social problems, and a surge of right-wing populist parties with an Islamophobic,⁹ anti-immigration agenda.

However, the wide scholarly attention on the stereotyping and othering of Muslim women contrasts sharply with that on the responses of the women affected. Though numerous scholars have observed how women with a Muslim background feel personally harmed by stereotypical representations in the media reporting of Islam and Muslims,¹⁰ only recently have scholars begun addressing how prejudices and stereotypes influence these women’s self-representations or their organisational work¹¹ and how these women participate in mediated debates about Muslims and Islam.¹² Most of these studies focus exclusively on young women who feel strongly committed to Islam. No one has followed Muslim women’s responses to stigmatising public discourses in Europe over a long period. This discrepancy in scholarly attention is remarkable, especially since scholars and activists have for a long time criticised the lack of voice given to women with a Muslim background. As I will show, women with a Muslim background have not simply been passive victims of stigmatising public discourses. It is time to shift the scholarly focus away from the ways in which “Muslim” women have been stereotyped to the contributions made to public discourse by these women themselves.

The Value of a Historical Approach

This book compares self-representations of women in seven minority organisations in the Netherlands with those of women in seven minority organisations in Norway. A short overview of these organisations follows later in this chapter. The historical perspective makes it possible to study how women’s self-representations have changed over time and to connect these changes to developments in dominant discourse about these women. In other words, it provides an analysis of the dynamics between stereotyping and self-representation on a solid empirical basis. The analysis begins at 1975, the year when the oldest of the selected organisations (the Turkish Women’s Association in the Netherlands) was established. This was also the International Year of the Woman and the year in which the Netherlands and Norway implemented an immigration stop for labour migrants from outside the European Economic Community. The immigration stop indirectly boosted family reunification, thereby causing a sudden increase in the number of women with a Muslim background in Western Europe. The analysis stops at 2010, the year before I started the research project that forms the basis of this book.¹³

There are two reasons why I study women’s self-representations in an organisational context instead of focusing on individual women outside organisations. First, it makes it possible to study archival material, which is important when analysing historical developments. Second, although I am also interested in how women present their individual selves, I am even more interested in how they present the group or category of women they claim to belong to, such as “Muslim” women or “Pakistani-Norwegian” women. Minority self-organisations are sites where collective identities are continuously being negotiated and represented. Regardless of their particular goals, all minority organisations explicitly or implicitly make statements about the collective identity of their constituency.¹⁴

This book aims to make a particular contribution to the study of minority organisations. A wealth of research has been carried out on minority organisations in the context of identity politics, but this usually centres on how minority groups claim specific rights instead of how they engage with stereotypes.¹⁵ Research on identity work mostly focuses on how people categorise themselves and how they are categorised by others, but less on the attributes being ascribed.¹⁶ Next to this, extensive research has been carried out regarding why certain types of minority organisations are established at a given time and place and why...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Stereotypes of Women with a Muslim Background
• 3. Self-Representations by Women in the Dutch Organisations
• 4. The Dutch Organisations and Islam
• 5. Women’s Attempts to Break Stereotypes in the Netherlands
• 6. Self-Representations by Women in the Norwegian Organisations
• 7. The Norwegian Organisations and Islam
• 8. Women’s Attempts to Break Stereotypes in Norway
• 9. Conclusion
• Backmatter