Women of Purdah

Tuesday’s class conversation spurred multiple branches of thought, as do most conversations with Feminism as their leading topics. I wanted to looked more at what Dr. Lillian was talking about concerning the Muslim feminist. I recently read a book entitled Lost in the Land of Oz by Madonna Kolbenschlag in which she undertakes the goal of identity, specifically feminist identity, in American culture. She talks about Muslim feminist and their adherence to the practice of purdah: the veiling and seclusion of women from the society of men. A Western view of this practice stimulates one to think of this it as the suppression and oppression of women. Likened to this, is the ceremonial, often religious, practice of female circumcision in many African cultures – a practice that Western critics interestingly renamed female ‘mutilation’. Again, this is an instance where Western inclination manifests claims of female suppression. I think it is of utmost importance for us to research and understand these practices from an emic point of view; that is, from the cultural point of view of those who function within the culture that uses these practices. The Muslim Feminist that Dr. Lillian talked about and about whom Kolbenschlag writes fight for the right to maintain the practice of purdah because they do not view it as suppression, but rather as a cultural practice important to their society. They ‘submit’ themselves to the practice because they feel that it is religiously and ideologically upright. This mindset can only be understood from these women’s worldview.

However, it is also important for us to understand that these women’s worldview – just like your worldview and my worldview – are shaped and constructed by the cultural atmosphere in which they are born, raised, grow, and function. Here we can step out and take an anthropological etic (scientifically object) view of the cultural influences that may predispose Muslim women to accept their position within the purdah system. For an Anthropology class centered on gender and gender manifestations within culture, I am reading a text by Daphne Spain titled Gendered Spaces in which she analyzes cross-cultural manifestations of gender in terms of spatial segregation in the home, workplace, schools, and other meaningful spaces. Spain concludes at one point that cultures where women are veiled, secluded, and kept separate or distant from the ‘realm of men’ (she speaks specifically on cultures that practice purdah and many gender-segregated African cultures) are most typically also characterized by a limited access to knowledge for women. She dissects the typical home of a Muslim family and shows how women are secluded within different spaces of the home and are almost always kept away from gaining any type of knowledge outside of the domestic skills needed for her role as wife and mother. Knowledge outside of this is reserved only for men. If we track American feminism, we see that as women were progressively allowed access to knowledge (first grades schools, then college, then post graduate studies) through the end of the 19th century on into the middle of the 20th century, we see a direct rise in the movement for women’s rights of equality and integration into what was typically known as the ‘realm of men’. So in this manner it appears that a women’s self-adherence to purdah practices or female circumcision practices may in fact be a direct cause of their limited access to the knowledge of men.

So the question stands: if given more access to knowledge and education, would the women of these cultures more readily shed the practices that work to seclude and possibly degrade or oppress them, or will they be even more submissive to these practices? Are these practices caused by controlling men and their dominance over knowledge or is it unfair to make such a judgment on the basis that only the women within these cultures can understand their loyalty to such practices? Whatever the answer, the point that most warrants making is that we should always be willing to examine cultural situations from all angles, including the point of view from inside the source.