The Political Economy of Women’s Support for Fundamentalist Islam

Why do some women in Muslim countries adopt fundamentalist Islamic value systems that promote gender-based inequalities while others do not? This article considers the economic determinants of fundamentalist beliefs in the Muslim world, as women look either to marriage or employment to achieve financial security. Using cross-national public opinion data from eighteen countries with significant Muslim populations, we apply a latent class model to characterize respondents according to their views on gender norms, political Islam, and personal religiosity. Among women, lack of economic opportunity is a stronger predictor of fundamentalist belief systems than socioeconomic class. Cross-nationally, fundamentalism among women is most prevalent in poor countries and those with a large male-female wage gap. These findings have important implications for the promotion of women’s rights, the rise of political Islam, and the development of democracy in the Muslim world. Acknowledgements: We thank Tim Büthe, James Honaker, Jonathan Slapin, and George Tsebelis for useful suggestions. Special thanks goes to Amaney Jamal for her extremely insightful comments. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2006 Annual Meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association and the 2006 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association. Introduction The resurgence of revivalist religious practices, or fundamentalism, in the late twentieth century has been described as a “historical counterattack” mounted by threatened religious traditions seeking to slow the spread of secularization and mitigate the perceived negative effects of modern life (Almond et al. 2003, 20). Fundamentalist belief systems typically call for a return to the “golden age” of some society or religion when, almost without exception, men enjoyed considerable social and economic power over women (Kaplan 1992). But fundamentalist movements are not simply backward looking; rather, they possess a political agenda that seeks to restore “lost social virtues” (Kuran 1993, 290) to contemporary society, with specific—and unequal—implications for the freedoms and advantages afforded to men and women. Fundamentalist Islam has garnered particular outside interest in recent years in part because of the unusually restrictive demands that it places upon women. In addition to beliefs typical of fundamentalist ideologies that favor men over women in employment and education opportunities, fundamentalist Islam further uses these beliefs as the basis for practices such as veiling (use of hijab, ‘abayah, or niqab), female genital mutilation, and sometimes even honor killings. Nevertheless, many Muslim women support and identify with the fundamentalist Islamic social and political movements that promote these practices and beliefs, and often willingly participate in these practices themselves. This article addresses the question of why, in Muslim countries, women adopt fundamentalist value systems that limit their social, political, and economic opportunities and, in the extreme, can even result in their physical harm? Explaining why women in Muslim countries hold fundamentalist beliefs is necessarily a complex and multifaceted issue. Our analysis focuses upon the economic and social incentives women face when confronted with fundamentalist versus secular ideologies, but we recognize that these are by no means the only—nor even, perhaps, the primary—determining factors. Nonetheless, as we show empirically, economic pressures do have large and significant effects on women’s belief systems concerning religion, politics, and their own role and status in society. Women with limited economic opportunities—whether due to unemployment, minimal formal education, or poverty—are more likely to take on fundamentalist and traditionalist belief systems that enhance their value as potential marriage partners. We operationalize fundamentalism as a composite belief system that spans two broad areas: preferences consistent with a traditionalist world view that systematically favors men over women; and personal piety and support for the confluence of politics and religion consistent with conservative Islamic values. To ascertain the prevalence of such beliefs in The Islamic basis for these practices is a source of debate in the Muslim world. For example, the performance of female genital mutilation is not supported by most interpretations of Islamic law but many women in the Nile Valley associate this act with adherence to Islam. It is less confusing why Muslim men might support social practices that advantage them vis-à-vis women, though this is also a research subject in need of further investigation. This definition of fundamentalism may not conform with some popular or journalistic uses of the term. We believe that our conceptualization is nonetheless valid and analytically useful. Debate over the status, role, and rights of women in Islam is perhaps the most important line of cleavage between those individuals who believe that the holy texts of Islam can be reinterpreted in the context of the present and those would would be considered hard-line literalists; see also Winter (2001).