Muslim women can work (?)
According to the article entitled Employment concerns for working Muslim women: Islamic guidelines published in 2012 on the website islamweb.net, whether women ought to work or not, depends on the reason women have to work in the first place. This reason is called, by the author, a “valid reason”:
“Naturally, in her home. Allah, Almighty, Says (what means): “And abide in your houses and do not display yourselves as [was] the display of the former times of ignorance…” [Quran 33: 33]
This does not mean that a woman is a prisoner in her home, but only that she should have a valid reason (meeting her basic needs) to go out, to avoid any tribulation, trial, or temptation that may result from mixing between men and women.”
A further reading on the website takes the reader to a set of established requirements a woman must follow even after having a valid reason. They are five:
First, she must obtain consent from her guardian or husband (if married), who may offer a broader perspective on how her work may influence the family and its functioning.
Secondly, a woman must ensure that
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According to bbc.com, Muslim women are most likely to be at an economic disadvantage when compared to other groups in the UK. Part of this is due to prejudice from British people, but the vast majority is because Muslims do not let their wives work in mixed (woman and man) workplaces or to work at all. In this article, some of these women share how they feel at workplaces by saying "I work part-time and my colleagues treat me like an alien because I am Muslim.”, or "Most of the time they assume a position of superiority over me…”. That demonstrates how hard is, for Muslim women, to be fitted within a non-Muslim society. Being able to “leave” their home with a “valid” reason to work is not enough to guarantee a healthy work environment, as already mentioned
Muslim Women and Western Ideas of Feminism Western feminists aim for completely equal rights for men and women. They want to liberate women from perceived oppressions from men. Their aims are to give women completely free choice in their decisions. Such examples are child-bearing. This is a good view to the extent that men and women were created equally and so they should be treated equally.
Occupational segregation by gender is at the heart of stereotyped career choices and has shown a stubborn resistance to change in the labour market of the United Kingdom, despite women entering the labor market more highly qualified Clouds Work (2009).
For years American women have been and still fight for equality. On the other side
...enging Myths of Muslim Women: The Influence of Islam On Arab-American Women's Labor Force Activity. Muslim World, 92(1/2), 19. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
received the right to work menial jobs for minimum pay with less job security. She has
Take a moment to think of why people have jobs; the salary. Even in this most basic aspect of work, men and women are far from equal. A study by the Office for National Statistics shows that the gross weekly pay for full-time female workers is 458.8 pounds; and the same statistic for men is 556.0 pounds (“Statistical Bulletin: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings”). With a difference of 100 pounds per week, men and women’s pay is not equal. This difference between salaries can be shocking. One would think that wage equality would be present in in a nation as advanced as the United Kingdom. In reality, the advancity of a country cannot keep out the epidemic of patriarchy. Women are paid drastically less than men, proving that gender inequality still thrives on the workplace. Not only is the gender pay gap large; it is also increasing. Another study by the Office for National Statistics proves that the gender pay gap in 2013 was 15.7%, which is an increase from 14.8% in the preceding year (“Labour Market Profile Great Britain”). This is hardly surprising. Now that women have been taking a stand and feminist ideas have been spreading, there is bound to be a backlash. People are afraid o...
The sight of a working woman today is not something that causes one to look twice. However, this was not always the case. It was a long struggle for women to get to where they are today, and there is still a long way to go. There were a few momentous occasions throughout history that caused a shift in the way women were viewed as workers, such as the need for workers during World War II, the Equal Pay Act, and the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. Women have made great strides in integrating themselves into the workforce alongside men and continue to do so today.
Some traditionalists are of the opinion that "according to strict Islamic injunctions, it is not obligatory for a woman to cook food for her husband or children or wash their clothes or even suckle the infants. A woman may refuse to do all these things without this being made ground for legal complaint...
Equality for all sounds like a simple concept for everyone to live by, but it seems that even in today’s society around the world women are lacking the equal rights they deserve. Ever since we can remember in our history, women have always received the short end of the stick when it came to their rights. Right to vote, right to a job, right to equal pay, and the list can go on and on. There have been many attempts for women to receive the same rights as men, but not all have been successful. This is especially true in the workforce. The workforce is the main issue when it comes to equal rights for women in today’s society. Women have been mistreated in the working environment and have affected them socially, but throughout all of this there have been attempts to stop it.
As the times change, so do the standards. Women previously have been looked at as homemakers, housewives, subordinates. In this new century, this has changed dramatically. Not only have women sought extensive amounts of education, they have sought means to expand and solidify their skills. Although women continue to face discrimination, the qualifications of the playing field have leveled out.
The opportunities available to women in the market are not as diverse as those presented to men. Still, the construct of gender ideology influences how employers undertake economic decisions, and that is why companies still have jobs labelled as “men’s work” and occupations categorized as “women’s work.” Indeed, the pervasiveness of gender differences in labor markets is undeniably true, specifically with respect to salary gap between men and women, occupational gender segregation of men and women, and the challenge that women face in terms of juggling their time and attention between their career and family life. There is no denying that the salary of men is far more than that of women’s. In the Great Britain (and other parts of the globe), there are pieces of evidence which suggest that gendered practices of participation in the labor force still have significant impact on the economic security level that men and women develop over the course of their lives (Warren 606).
The prophet, Muhammad, said that “The pursuit of knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, man and woman,” this gave people the motivation to educate themselves, regardless of their gender, which was originally frowned upon (Angha). Since women are now able to educated themselves, they have the necessary knowledge to take advantage of their new freedom, joining the workforce. By joining the workforce women in the Islamic culture can really feel a sense of freedom because they are no longer expected to just sit at home and take care of the house and children, while their husband is at work. Women’s education and work abilities also helps further push for equality and allows them to join “reformist efforts to challenge the control of the male clerical elite over social life” (Fisher). The women in the Islamic culture have become empowered to make changes by being allowed to gain further education. In pre-Islam, women could not purchase their own property, but with women not being able to work, they would have never had the funds to purchase the properties. Today in Islam, women can work and use the money to purchase their own property, another step in making women equal to
In Islam, there is no concept that women cannot work. The only concept in Islam is that women and men should work separately which leads to misconception that women are forced to stay home and their only place is home. However, Islam encourages women to choose professions like teaching, nursing, and doctor. That can also help other Muslim women because they will not feel any hesitation that a man is diagnosing them. An adult woman can own, she has option to dispose also without anyone’s consultation regardless of whether she is married or not.
In today’s globalized world, women’s studies is emerging as a fast growing discipline which is not restricted any more to the academia but is significantly capturing the attention of the civil society. The way civil society responded to “Nirbhaya” gang-rape case of December, 2012 in Delhi; the way people came on the streets in protest against this horrific and barbarous crime committed against a 23 year old woman; this people’s movement has undoubtedly engineered the emergence of a new consciousness among us about the need for a realization of women’s honour and dignity in the society. There have been serious debates on the issue of whether more stringent laws (in the line of Shari’a law) be implemented in our Indian society so that such heinous crimes against women can be prevented. However, the aforesaid incident is only one among many hundred other such crimes happening everyday in almost every corner of the globe. Many such incidents of crime are either suppressed or do not come to limelight. The following analysis is a humble attempt to deal with the status of women (especially in Islam) in a globalized world.
...el the status of women in the Muslim world today as "Islamic" is as far from the truth as labeling the position of women in the West today as "totally liberated and equal".