With Muslim women’s apparent visibility on university campuses, Muslim women are pushing gendered boundaries by navigating new educational and employment options. In so doing, women remain aware that they are setting new trends for Muslim women in Britain, as they navigate options to choose university degrees, career paths, live at home or away and get involved in university life. To further comprehend women’s agency to form new gender boundaries, I wanted to analyse the intergenerational shifts that educated Muslim women are currently experiencing in Britain in relation to education and employment. This remains important as it demonstrates that through these intergenerational changes, respondents’ gender identities are evolving as they assert new ones. I therefore asked respondents whether they thought there were differences in the ways women in their family (grandmothers and mother) perceive education and work. All of them claim that the differences are noticeable; women then had limited or no other option but to get married. Most importantly, when respondents were asked whether changes in educational achievements or work were apparent for men in their family across the generations (grandfathers, father, brothers), they all maintain that they cannot perceive massive differences as men are more likely to inherit businesses or go straight into employment. Indeed, as many respondents suggest, their male cousins or brothers were not heavily concerned with university degrees, although some had degrees. Nevertheless, for men in the family, not going to university was considered an option, as opposed to my respondents, who would not compromise on attending university. This portrays women’s aspirations as fully geared towards education rather than non-professional employment or marriage.
‘For sure…my grandmother was married at 13, and had her first child at 16. My mum went to school for a year and then married at 16. And I often talk to my mum and she always says ‘when I was your age I had 4 kids’ and I’m like ‘Oh God’...I’m still a child you can just see the difference and we don’t plan on getting married for a few years yet...and my mum could speak English, like broken, and she can read a bit but that’s just a year at school, not educated at all’ (Saeema).
The changes in women’s lifestyles are hence apparent. Women’s grandmothers had no or extremely limited education, while many of my respondents’ mothers had basic levels of education (compulsory education), with the exception of five mothers who had university
degrees. If mothers were interested in work or studying for courses, these were usually done after marriage and in some cases, after migration to the UK from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Women’s grandmothers tended to get married at around 13 to 16 years of age on average, while their mothers married in their late teens and early twenties, between 16 to 23 years of age. Married women in this research got married in their mid to late twenties, between 24 to 28 years of age; they all had university degrees before their marriages and they are all currently working. This in itself portrays that Muslim women in Britain are nowadays marrying a decade later than their grandmothers did.
‘My mum is such an intelligent woman and she never got the chance. She got married and she had kids. Her husband was from Pakistan and they all had that mentality which means that she missed out on so much…She knew that she’d have to stay at home, have kids, and take care of her husband, cook, clean and that’s it. She knew she was going to be a housewife, and two of my aunties, they went to school in Scotland, but they stopped at high school, they didn’t go to university. And that’s because they never had the option… taking my parents into consideration and my aunties and uncles, their lives, going from that…ours in completely different. And it’s such a big generation gap…Even to the way we are, the way we dress, and the fact that we’ve all gone to university, and we’ve got careers’ (Asma).
Indeed, Asma highlights that women of her mother’s generation were not given another option apart from ‘becoming a housewife’; for her, ‘Pakistani mentality’, meaning cultural tradition, acted as hurdle for women like her mother. Likewise, other respondents agree with this principle, adding that financial constraints contributed heavily to their lack of resources to follow educational routes. Nowadays, students, like most respondents in my study, depend on student loans and weekly allowances to survive their university years.
‘Mum went to uni, and school in Pakistan and then got married to Dad so that’s evolved...like my granddad was well educated for his time and made sure my Mum and her sisters all went to uni and stuff, if they had brothers or husbands encouraging education then they had more chances of education’ (Sadia).
In contrast, for participants’ mothers who went to university, women view it as an uncommon phenomenon of their time. As Sadia expresses, having a male figure, mothers’ own fathers, brothers or husbands in the family who approved of and encouraged their mothers to study made all the difference. Fawzia describes her mother as a ‘radical mother’, who transgressed all expectations to be able to get a degree:
‘My mother thought that she was unmarriageable because she was the first in her generation to want to do a degree and she went against her parents to do it and her eldest brother financed everything for her because my mum’s dad died when she was like 13 and she was the youngest daughter and my grandmother wanted to see her settled but she finished her degree and then she married my dad at 24…she did really well for herself but for us, I think it’s more of an expectation to do it whereas for her it was the expectation of not to do it, so it was the complete opposite’(Fawzia).
All unmarried women in my research want to finish their studies and get a job before thinking of getting married. Gaining financial independence before marriage to them remains important. Women like Haleema and Tasneem have also suggested that in this day and age, it is important that both partners work in a couple so that the family can be better off economically. This may hence explain the intergenerational shifts relating to more Muslim women opting to pursue educational and work careers; respondents’ evolution in perceptions about education and work challenge marriage and children as being the sole life ambition of women. In some cases, even though grandmothers were not encouraging of their daughters’ choices to study, they remain extremely proud of the fact that their granddaughters have got degrees and are working. As Yasmin states:
‘Because women have been challenged in the past, like for example my grandma she would never have been able to go to university and I know that so for me I’m more motivated to push myself’. …the weird thing is my grandma loves the fact that I’m at university and I guess it’s because her approach to education has changed and I mean she can read Urdu and I think she realised over time that if you’ve got a grand-daughter who is a doctor you don’t question that (Laugh)’.
Aisha also understands the progression of women’s educational and professional careers as a movement:
‘I’ve seen that people have become more and more driven to go to university and studying good degrees and that’s amazing, like 10 years ago, hardly anyone was going to university and it’s the same with the hijab, 10 years ago nobody was wearing the hijab and I think in that sense it has changed so much and people have become more aware that education has become important’ (Aisha).
Bringing it to a more personal level, Aisha, who wears the jilbab, makes an interesting comparison between women going to university and women wearing the hijab in the UK. Here, Aisha equates the rate of Muslim women entering into higher education with the rate of Muslim women wearing the hijab. For her, women’s freedom to have access to educational opportunities as well as freedom to publicise their Islamic faith in Britain are inter-related. Even if higher education is regarded as important and is encouraged by themselves and their families, women may still feel constrained when assessing their educational aspirations. Indeed, in desiring to fulfil educational aims, women’s re-assertion of a new gender identity might not always play in their favour.
Indeed, they express their concerns about the limits of educational achievements, as opposed to Singh’s (1990) study, which suggests that higher education improves women’s chances in the ‘marriage market’. My research findings tally with Ahmad’s (2001) study, where the contradiction of ‘being too educated’ is highlighted by my respondents. Describing it as ‘conflicting interests, a double-bind situation’, Ahmad’s (2001: 147) study also shows the predicament faced by Muslim daughters as far as degree levels are concerned
when it comes to their marriage prospects. Ahmad (2001) mentions cases of women ‘being too educated’, a situation that hinders the flow of marriage proposals or the interest of families to approach women with higher educational status. Indeed, from my research, although Farha (quoted below) reiterates the importance that higher education has in opening up options for women, she also mentions the potential risks that education may entail in relation to women’s marriage options. Being ‘too educated’ means being labelled and categorised as a woman who has rejected marriage for education. On the other hand, Fawzia maintains that having an education remains extremely important when it comes to marriage:
‘I mean you can’t go anywhere without education...for your career and for your marriage prospects as well, shouldn’t be but you know it does come in’ (Fawzia). Interestingly, women have to also think about the extent to which they want to be educated so as to find the right balance and a degree of acceptance in their communities. The degree of education a woman acquires seems to always be juxtaposed with her marriage options; too little education can limit one’s options and too much education can put people off:
‘There’s someone who came to see me last year, he came with his daughter who wanted to do her bar and he wanted some advice. So basically he wanted to hear from me that it wasn’t worth it. That’s what he really wanted me to say to his daughter. She had just finished her LLB and wanted to go abroad for a year. He was a civil servant, well educated himself…she was twenty-one. I asked her whether she wanted to come back to do her pupilage and she kept saying ‘depending on my situation’. And I said ‘what do you mean your situation?’– which basically meant ‘whether I’m married or not’ (Farha).
As Farha suggests, being ‘in a situation’ means not being married yet. This ‘situation’ signifies that a woman needs to make a choice between education and marriage. Farha recounts an episode where her advice about higher education and consequently, her position as an unmarried woman in employment was sought. Hanah, quoted below, also illustrates the tension that exists between education and marriage, where the decision to carry on with further studies such as postgraduate qualifications must be weighed against marriage options. As this shows, too much education is not encouraged as marriage must be considered alongside educational aspirations. Women think that a compromise has to be reached between study and family life. Indeed, Hanah suggests:
‘I’m going down that route, that path of education, education, education and work for money but there are other areas of my life that I need to fulfil so it’s that path that I’m kind of concerned about going on too focused and then lose interest in other areas and I think we need to have a balance, especially with Asian women’ (Hanah).
When asked about what she means when she talks about ‘Asian women’ with respect to education and work, Hanah draws on the cultural expectations that families and communities have when it comes to women; getting married and raising children still remains a priority in British South Asian Muslim communities and in some cases, educated unmarried women feel the pressure to settle down and have children. As she exclaims ‘the culture is such that this is what they want you to do’. Hanah’s views can be perceived as renegotiating gender norms so as to fit her personal expectations (individual needs) as well as fulfil normative gender roles (community expectations). Becoming wives and mothers has precedence over acquiring education, and the independence that comes with it. She categorises ‘Asian women’ and subtly adheres and perpetuates constructed notions of Asian womanhood. Indeed, for unmarried women in this research, marriage is inevitable as they expect it to happen in the coming years, once they settle in their careers. Dwyer and Shah’s (2009) sample also demonstrates similar notions around marital expectations, where marriage remains a reality.
‘There are a lot of girls out there who are looking to get married and they just cannot find anyone because guys want somebody who is a convenience and a woman with ambition is not always a convenience. I come from a family where the mum has always worked and that’s normal and my brother doesn’t have a problem marrying a working wife, but most boys my age have not had a working mother and had a mum who has doted on them and that’s what they expect in a wife so there’s a big mismatch between boys’ expectations in my generation and girls’ expectations, and that’s why the number of Muslim women who are approaching their 30s are still not married and it’s just increasing’ (Yasmin).
Yasmin exemplifies how generational changes in women’s roles in South Asian Muslim communities may affect their marriage options. It appears that in households whereby men are used to women working, the former would find it easier to contemplate having a ‘working wife’. However, according to Yasmin, with regarding her generation, men’s expectations follow the pattern of women as homemakers. Nevertheless, respondents are not ready to comply with this notion that gender roles in marriage are fixed; consequently, this gender gap and differences in respondents’ marital expectations may result in women struggling to find marriageable partners who would be agreeable to their future wives’ educational achievements:
‘What annoys me the most is that it’s easy to listen to those religious people saying these women are wasting time with education and they’re putting marriage on the back seat and they’re becoming all ambitious…but they’re not thinking that marriage is between two people coming together, not one person doing whatever they want and the other person straying along’ (Yasmin).
Moreover, Yasmin points out the role of ‘religious people’ in perpetuating such gendered expectations in her community. In questioning the discrimination that women encounter,
Yasmin is also redefining meanings of marriage for Muslim women of her generation as their educational interests rise. As women are choosing higher education over marriage, and ultimately, pushing the gendered norms in their communities, I asked them whether their choices to go into higher education have affected any plans to marry. The majority of respondents maintain that marriage has been delayed as they opted to go to university; two respondents suggest that this has not been the case as they met their husbands at university, and married just after having finished their degrees.
I also asked participants if higher education has influenced marriage prospects for them. Most respondents reiterate that the choice of marriage partners is an area where they think they have more power to express an authority in terms of who they wish marry. Marrying an ‘educated’ partner seems to be an extremely important factor for participants, demonstrating that young women are ready to exercise freewill when it comes to marriage partners. Their views highlight that access to higher education, paid employment, upward social mobility and choice of marriage partners remain significant factors that work together to alter the gendered identities of British South Asian Muslim women.
‘I think it will... I know this sounds wrong but I wouldn’t want to marry a cleaner...not because I think they’re lower but I’m thinking of the future, especially in the society we are living now, how am I going to support my kids? I need someone who is on a similar wavelength and wage so we can be comfortable’ (Saeema).
Indeed, Saeema talks about the benefits of marrying someone who has also been to university. In not only looking at the practical financial gains, Saeema is convinced that to be able to better provide for the future generation, being on a ‘similar wavelength’ with one’s partner is important. This means that in having more or less the same status between wife and husband, respondents expect a more equitable gender relationship between spouses, hence definitely accounting for women’s evolving gender identities:
‘I would not like to marry somebody who would be uneducated because I would like my husband to want our kids to go to university and push them’ (Shazia).
‘I know girls who have really liked a guy and then said no because he doesn’t have a degree which I think is stupid, what you need in somebody more than anything is that firstly their religion is important to them and secondly that they understand you for who you are, if you have a degree it helps cause you have been through the same experiences but it’s not the most important thing, my dad doesn’t have a degree and my mum’s done a PhD so that’s a huge gap isn’t it? But they have so much in common so that’s what makes a marriage work’ (Yasmin).
As opposed to Shazia, Yasmin does not think that education should be a pre- requisite when considering marriage. For her, marriage prospects are not considerably affected by the fact that she now practices medicine. Yasmin’s parents have different
educational levels and taking that as an example, Yasmin maintains that religion should take priority over educational achievements when considering marriage. Other respondents acknowledge the importance of Islam when considering marriage but nevertheless, consider higher education as an extremely important attribute to have in a partner. Going back to the strategy of women using education and work so as to encourage upward social mobility, Shazia reiterates that an educated partner will also provide considerable support to her children in ensuring that the latter develop an interest for education, thereby showing that women have clear expectations they hope to fulfill when considering marriage.
‘For girls, it’s impressive to be able to say ‘this is what my daughter or daughter- in-law does’, there’s a bit of a token for it. At the end of the day it’s the guy’s responsibility to earn and provide and it is the girl’s responsibility to look after the