Current debates
The meanings of public and private and the
boundaries that differentiate the spaces allocated to
men from those allocated to women are contested
and struggled over. Currently, this contestation is
best manifested in attempts to expand or restrict
women’s access to education, political participa-
tion, and wage employment. Various groups and
activists believe that women should not be limited
to the domestic domain but should be active in pub-
lic life. Behind this view is a strong belief that edu-
cation and work outside the home will empower
women and transform inequalities in family rela-
tionships (Al-Ali 2000). Other groups draw on
Islamic traditions and values to argue that, rather
than reflecting inequality, the public/private dis-
tinction shows that men and women complement
each other. Men, they argue, should be the pro-
viders and protectors while women should be the
mothers, the home-makers, and care givers (Karam
1998). Working outside the home is a form of op-
pression because it contradicts the “natural role”
that God granted women. Female Islamist advo-
cates in particular are actively defining the proper
role of women as wives and mothers and working
to communicate this to other women through vari-
ous means such as informal networks, visits to
homes, and weekly lessons in local mosques. Some
scholars and activists are rereading religious scrip-
tures to provide alternative interpretations that
allow women to play more active economic and
political roles. They argue that it is the interpreta-
tions of Islamic scriptures, done mainly by men,
and not the scriptures themselves that support male
domination and exclude women from various pub-
lic spaces.
Muslim women belong to different nations,
regions, classes, ethnicities, and age groups. They
often live in heterogeneous communities where
different religions and cultural systems coexist.
Accordingly, Islamic texts and discourses are inter-
preted in many contexts and by different actors. All
of these factors complicate any simple generaliza-
tions about the public/private dichotomy. Muslim
women in countries such as Tunisia, Indonesia, and
Turkey, for instance, tend to have more rights than
women in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
when it comes to voting, the legal age of marriage,
divorce, child custody, and work outside the home.
Women’s various public spaces and activities are
shaped not only by Islam and social norms but also
by economic and political forces. For example,
unemployment is high in several Muslim countries
for both men and women. In Egypt, where women
overview 687were usually employed in the public sector, recent
structural adjustment programs have reduced the
opportunities open for them in the public sector
without expanding their access to the private sector
(Karam 1998). Many women find their only option
to be “informal” employment, which grants them
little employment security. At the same time, global
changes such as the development of new means of
communication (including satellite television and
the Internet) and new systems of transportation
are challenging conventional spatial distinctions
between public and private spaces. Therefore, the
shifting meanings of private/public and women’s
access to paid work, education, health services, and
the legal system are all shaped by the complex inter-
play between global forces and local/national reli-
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