Canadian Muslim Women: Shifting from Integration to Segregation
The Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) has released a compendium of three research papers on the theme of Canadian Muslim Women at the Crossroads: From Integration to Segregation?
According to various studies by CCMW, Muslim women tend to be disengaged from civic and political life in Canada. Despite high levels of education, they are also more likely to be underemployed or absent from the labour force.
Some Muslim women have also expressed concerns about a movement within Muslim communities to segregate women and the growing acceptance of such segregation within Muslim communities in Canada.
At its 2006 annual conference in Ottawa CCMW explored the phenomenon of separation of Muslim women from mainstream society. Key to this exploration is a determination of how and why the separation may be occurring.
“We’re asking ourselves what’s causing this”, said Nuzhat Jafri, CCMW board member and author of the introduction to the compendium. “Is it systemic of self-imposed?”
Further discussions and thinking prompted CCMW to commission the three papers:
Cultural Relativism: Theoretical, Political and Ideological Debates by Shahrzad Mojab and Nadeen El-Kassem;
Islam and Decision Making: the Effects of Religion and Family in Muslim Women’s Lives by G Yrdakul; and
Multitudes of Solitudes? Canadian Muslim Women and Rising Religiosity by Eman Ahmed.
The authors, well known for their work on women in the diaspora, gender, politics and religion, provide wide-ranging and provocative findings and observations. They move us from a theoretical discussion to very practical issues of day-to-day lives facing Canadian Muslim women.
For more information, contact Eman Ahmed at ccmw_board@yahoo.ca or (416) 225-4322.