I start this section by discussing the possibilities respondents have in terms of living or moving away from home as they study. This aspect of university life remains significant as participants engage in processes of negotiations with their families to acquire the independence required to live away from home; as such, changes such as living independently encourage the evolution of gender identities. Despite the unequal status that women face with university options, half of my respondents moved away from home to go to university whilst the rest stayed at home during their study years. Studying in one’s community/city has shown to be more typical for Muslim women but my study reflects that young women have been able to negotiate with their parents so as to gain permission to leave home for further studies. Ahmad’s research (2001) also mentions the difficulty that women may experience in the advent of them deciding to study away from home; parents remain wary of women’s reputation out of their community context.
In my study, women who have moved away from home to study have found it easier to still live away to find work after studying. Whilst studying, they have lived in halls of residence or have shared apartments with housemates or friends. As Ahmad (2001) also found, it was easier for women of middle-class backgrounds to move out of home to study as compared to women from working-class backgrounds; women whose parents were educated themselves had no problems with the possibility of girls moving away for studies. If a member of the family, especially a woman (elder sister or cousin) has moved out to study, then it is generally easier for parents to accept that daughters move away to go to university. Respondents who have moved away from home have done so out of choice. Those who have not moved out have either stayed due to parental restrictions or have done so out of choice, so as to save money and be better off financially during their study years.
Parental restrictions, as mentioned earlier, revolve around women’s families’ fear of their daughters’ reputation being tarnished whilst living away from their communities; parents are wary of ‘daughters having a social life at university’ (Shazia). The patriarchal structure of the South Asian family is evident as women are kept in sight and their freedom
restricted (Brah, 1993); they are not prevented from studying but they are not allowed to do it without supervision. In effect, women hence face a gender bias as opposed to men in their communities, who are given the liberty to study, home or away. As Asma mentions, there are obvious gender differences in the ways parents respond to girls and boys moving away to study:
‘My little brother moved away at the exact same time as me, but for my mum it was a big deal to let me go… it’s because I’m a girl…definitely, culturally it was always the guys could go away to uni…I don’t know if it’s a case of trust or if it’s just a case of ‘Will they be ok? It’s scary for a woman to move away, you’re alone, and you don’t have that protection’ (Asma).
This is echoed by Alia and Rubina:
‘Parents make you feel that you are different from boys who have more freedom’ (Alia).
‘It is always because you’re a girl and there’s not even a proper reason, it’s what they think, I’m like ‘so what if I’m a girl?’ I don’t understand, because I’m a girl I can’t handle university life?’ (Rubina)
Women also maintain that traditionally, marriage is the legitimate reason for women to leave the family home. Nevertheless, as more Muslim women decide to live independently during their university years, parents are ‘becoming more liberal’ and accepting of this trend, especially with the younger generation, who are forging ‘new’ gender identities for themselves.
‘Everybody’s at home. In my family you cannot move away until you’re married or have a reason to move away. Nobody moves out until they marry’ (Sabina).
Indeed, Sabina stayed home whilst studying at university and left home after she got married. Faiza studied at home for her first degree but moved out to study on campus for her Master’s degree:
‘Traditionally girls in my family had lived at home and it would have been an issue if I left to study at that time, It was just based on what people did at the time, and then I did my Masters and then moved away…my parents are much more liberal now, like my sister after me, she moved out fast and obviously she’s younger than me and I was like ‘wow’...if she can move out, then I can as well’ (Faiza).
Moreover, parents’ restrictive measures are highlighted by participants, whereby such limitations influence their gender identities. Indeed, women feel that parental control can sometimes become overbearing when it comes to university experiences, where parents have different degree levels of maintaining ‘control’ over their daughters. For instance, Lubaina lives at home and is dropped and picked up from university by her father:
‘I’m a girl, I do follow Islamic guidelines, I want to do it properly… my dad at one point said ‘Go to Scotland, you’ve got family there’ and then I thought ‘No I can’t
live there without you guys’. If you’re used to living with your immediate family and your extended family, it’s like you’re an outsider if you don’t have family, I knew it would be hard’ (Lubaina).
Lubaina is not allowed to commute from Bradford to Leeds by train but is happy to comply with her parents’ wishes as she is personally concerned about Islamic propriety and behaviour. On the other hand, Yasmin was disappointed not to have been able to live independently during her medical degree. As she explains:
‘I felt in the beginning that I was a bit disadvantaged, I wasn’t living on campus but I got to know loads of people cause I got involved in heaps of students’ activities…I applied to four medical schools and I got in everywhere and I would have gone to Manchester but then there were issues like moving away would have to be like taking a student loan or have my parents pay and it would have been very expensive so the advantage of living at home was Leeds University is nearby and I’m debt-free which is really good, for a medical student… part of me wanted to move away and I would have been happy to have a fresh start but when it came to filling in forms for other universities my parents didn’t help but when it came to Leeds then yeah’ (Yasmin).
Moving away would have put a financial strain on her parents. As an alternative, she got fully involved in societies (Medical, Islamic) so that she could ‘have the university experience’ that she hoped for. Her parents were not supportive of her moving out of home but Yasmin is today thankful to be ‘debt-free’ before starting her medical career.
As Rubina puts it, at university:
‘Women can literally do anything and they want to keep their daughters in check because they need to marry you off and they need you to have a clean slate’ (Rubina).
Rubina talks about the difficulty that women face in persuading their parents for them to stay on campus and hence experience the non-academic side of university life. Parents are not bothered about women’s education per se ‘they don’t mind you going somewhere close to home’ (Rubina), but are more concerned about what kind of lifestyle their daughters are living. Parents are worried about ‘what people are going to say’ and they don’t want to be giving women scope to live independently, away from the family’s gaze. Women having boyfriends, drinking, going clubbing or getting pregnant would have an impact on their family’s status in the community and ‘these would affect their chances of making a good marriage’. Keeping the cultural, and not the religious tradition of ensuring that girls’ reputation remain unblemished results in parents having more bargaining power when it comes to their daughters’ marriage prospects.
Moral discourses about ‘respectability’ directly influence women’s social realities, where the honour of the family (izzat), remains an important factor in British South Asian Muslim families. As Rubina, Nadia and Haleema state:
‘I think it’s got a lot to do with marriage and honour’ (Rubina).
‘A cultural thing, it’s not Islamic where families are forcing you to get married because of the family’s status, what are people going to say? About your daughter who’s been living away from home, get her married, they do that a lot’ (Nadia). ‘ It’s a cultural thing, they always have this fear of if a girl gets raped or if she runs off with somebody then she’s never going to get married and she’s going to be an outcast from the community, it’s the community belief whereas boys even if they are badly behaved and sleep around, they are not seen with the same eyes’ (Haleema). Respecting community norms and not allowing women to move out for the purpose of education is linked to women’s marriage prospects. Exposure to the bigger world remains a concern for parents as it may influence women to review their options, especially when it comes to marriage. For instance, Habibah was not allowed to move out from the parental home to go to university as:
‘A lot of parents think that if you study, it widens your horizons and your mind and you think a lot of things that maybe you wouldn’t if you just went to say college and then get married but obviously they’re my parents and you have to listen to them if you’re living under their roof and I respect them’ (Habibah).
Fatimah had to negotiate, even argue with her parents so as to obtain permission to live independently; gaining her parents’ trust proved key to them agreeing:
‘My parents fear but not because I’m young but I’m still exploring, there was a compromise, I had to agree to their wishes...for example during my first year, I wasn’t allowed to go to a friend’s house, like on campuses it’s fine as long as they were nearby… especially me being a woman and coming from an all girls’ school, I said that I was going to be fine and to just give me a chance to prove that, so it was that little chance, the nudge that you had to push a bit with the parents for your arguments and that is by showing them how you’re going to manage yourself and managing myself was tough but I’m doing well’ (Fatimah).
Because Fatimah attended a Muslim school, her parents were concerned about her adapting to university life where males and females interact with each other on a regular basis. Having ‘reasoned’ with them, Fatimah managed to obtain parental permission to live away from home; bargaining for her independence, Fatimah constructs a platform where she manages personal freedom so as not to abuse it. On the other hand, Nazia rebelled against her parents’ wishes and moved out from the family home to live on campus. Although from a middle-class background, she expresses her frustration at their lack of understanding:
‘Moving out has created a rift between me and my parents...cultural barriers and they make it difficult. They make you choose…you’re stuck then….I wear the hijab,
but it’s not about that, it’s about who you are...I’m actually Pakistani Muslim and I’m British…I might not be as cultural as them but I have my own standards but what it was with my parents, they didn’t let us be individuals, like let us be who we wanted to be’ (Nazia).
Indeed, Nazia stresses the fact that she is Pakistani Muslim but she is also British. However, as she suggests, ‘Pakistani parents forget that you are British’. Since moving out, ‘the control stopped’ and Nazia went away on holidays, without her parents knowing. This said, Nazia still wears the hijab, does not drink alcohol, eats halal food, fasts during Ramadan and ensures that she only has female housemates. Pushing her ‘cultural barriers’ as she terms it, she is now free to affirm a British Muslim identity that is closer to her religion, rather than to the Pakistani culture imposed and practised by her parents. Nazia is not unusual in her approach. Indeed, her concerns about parental pressures imposed by family and community are expressed by others in my sample, whereby negotiating to go to university appears to be one of the main areas of contention between parents and daughters.
In deciding whether to move away from home or not for studying, respondents are very subtly negotiating power relationships with their parents, and as a result, re-working their positions as Muslim women in their local communities. Some express the difficulties that may arise if they decide to move out of the family home to study, something that is considered normal and inevitable for non-South Asians in British society. Sabina makes an interesting comparison between parental attitudes to women’s independence, highlighting the opposing ends that South Asians and non-South Asians (the term she uses is ‘western’) assume when it comes to women’s freedom:
‘Had I got to move into my own place tomorrow, I could be financially independent…but I’m not allowed…I understand and appreciate why the western families do it …with their women…when you’re independent, modern…you are being forced to learn…But you learn from your own lessons rather than learning from your parents’ lessons because at the moment if I ever express a wish to have a place of my own…my parents, Asian parents, traditional… would be ‘Oh why do you need to?’, ‘Oh it’s so hard!’ Sometimes I say ‘But you have never let me experience it being so hard’…you just need to do it for yourself’ (Sabina).
For Sabina, there is a contrast in being an ‘Asian’ and a ‘western’ student in Britain. Although born here, what she understands as university life on campus/living independently is ‘modern’ and hence, ‘western’, as opposed to living at home, which is ‘traditional’ and hence, ‘Asian’. As this quote below illustrates, the dichotomy between two cultural traditions ‘Asian’ and ‘western’ reflects the tension that some women may face. In agreeing with Sabina, Asma comments on the generational differences that crop up between parents and children in British South Asian Muslim communities, where parents are determined to keep control over daughters:
‘Big generation gap, there’s a lot of clashes because our parents don’t understand that it would be good for me to move away for a year to, like a different country and learn a different language. They just don’t’ (Asma).
‘I moved away from home…my choice… they were hesitant at first… my big sister she stayed at home for uni… my mum’s family they were pretty chilled but my dad’s family they’re fairly backward …the girls get educated and then they get married off after…when I needed money I usually went home (laugh)…And it was quite nice just to be able to go home…to have that option’ (Sadia).
Sadia was happy to be close enough to home, whereby she lived independently during weekdays and visited the family on alternative weekends. Likewise, Bushra opted for an institution where she could drive home. However, coming from an educational background, she claims that in her family, women who move out for educational purposes are not condemned but are encouraged:
‘Moving out to go to university is quite accepted and dad went to university himself...and you learn a lot living on your own...I think because my dad went to university so it was fine’ (Bushra).
Even though Sadia and Bushra both consider themselves to be from middle-class backgrounds, Sadia experienced some concerns on her parents’ part when it came for her to move to university. Her parents are not university educated but have prosperous businesses, as opposed to Bushra, whose parents are both medical practitioners. This is indicative of the fact that there are nuances even in social classes’ attitudes towards women and education. Here, it is clear that women’s educational backgrounds influence their positions when negotiating their living arrangements for university purposes.
Other participants, however, maintain that they consciously chose to stay home whilst studying. Indeed, unlike women who were not given the option to decide where to live, others benefitted from personal circumstances that offered enough room and scope for them to navigate. They come up with motivational factors that demonstrate agency in them thinking about their future. Financial savings, comfort, moral and emotional support remain the main reasons why women do not wish to live away from the family home during their university years. More importantly, these women were given the options and freewill to decide on their accommodation options. For instance, Haleema was encouraged by her parents to move out but chose to stay home, opting to consider living in a different city or even abroad for postgraduate opportunities:
‘Dad suggested Liverpool and I was like ‘no way’ that would be too much of a distraction and I didn’t want to leave, like if I was doing a Masters or a PhD, I might have thought of going quite far but for my Bachelor I didn’t want to move. I’m the eldest, I’m really close to my parents so I do get a bit homesick at times but there’s a lot of people who don’t want to go out of the country for their electives because they don’t want to leave home and I’m like ‘come on it’s just for 10 weeks’,
but I’m definitely leaving!’ (Haleema).
Aisha, who just finished her degree after having stayed home throughout her study years, is not looking forward to moving away from home for her future hospital placements; she would have to support and look after herself:
‘I commute everyday…I lived down in first year and I hated it cause I missed home and I like commuting and when I go home there’s food on the table but I’m moving out soon because of placements in West Yorkshire, can be Dewsbury, Leeds, Wakefield, I won’t be far but living again in student accommodation’ (Aisha). Likewise, Nuzranah opted to stay at home to study as she would be catered for; the prospect of working part-time whilst studying was not appealing to her:
‘I applied close by, I’m not a person who could live away from home...I can’t do my own washing and I’ve never done it …even work part-time...if it meant a very good university further away then that would be ok and I would come back during the weekends...but my first choice was Leeds and close by unis like Sheffield, Manchester’ (Nuzranah).
In choosing to stay home, women are able to better motivate themselves and concentrate on