Recognizing Agency and Strength of Muslim Women in Higher Education

Reflect One’s Own Bias Towards Muslim Women

Muslim women, particularly those who wear hijab, encounter the vision of alien and foreign in the eyes of their peers and colleagues and struggle from their under-represented status in higher education.¹ They often find themselves as the only Muslim women wearing hijabs in their courses or entire major programs.² They also experience physical threats targeting Muslims and are especially vulnerable because they are more “visibly Muslim” with their hijabs.³  For these reasons, some Muslim families have reached the point of even discouraging their daughters from choosing to wear hijab⁴  as wearing a hijab is not required for young Muslim women in many Islamic spheres.⁵  

Hijab means “to cover” in Arabic and is a type of headscarf and shawl.⁶  Muslim women also wear modest full-length outer cloaks or garments (such as abaya and burqa) depending on their affiliations to Islamic practices. However, their choice of wearing a hijab and Islamic clothing is greatly stigmatized in the form of hijabophobia at colleges and universities in the U.S. The hijabi (hijab-wearing) students and faculty often undergo gendered-islamophobic microaggressions such as being automatically perceived as afraid, uneducated, unaware of their rights, and thus, needing to be saved.⁷  However, like many negative stereotypes, these images of hijabi women are largely shaped through the media portraying Muslim women as backward and oppressed by Muslim extremist men.⁸  In fact, much research shows that Muslim women, particularly hijabi women in higher education, suffer from externally imposed stereotypes against them which “homogenize Muslim women and (mis)represent them as oppressed by Islamic patriarchy.” The negative stereotypes of hijabi women also lead to the undervaluing of their academic agency and work.⁹   So, consider your inner thoughts when you see a hijab-wearing (hijabi) woman on campus and reflect if any negative stereotypes of Muslim women wearing hijabs unconsciously influence how you value their work. 

Action Tips for Allies

• Listen to the narratives of each Muslim woman: Many of them share they feel empowered by choosing to wear hijab.¹³  It makes them live more focused, intentional, and meaningful lives and strive in the field to which they want to contribute.¹⁴  Some even capitalize on the visibility of their faith as they wear hijabs to educate their non-Muslim peers and colleagues.^{15, 16}  However, due to the negative stereotypes about hijab-wearing women, they are likely to face formal and informal discrimination at work and in the hiring process.¹⁷  At the same time, it should also be noted that hijab is politicized in certain Islamic countries outside the U.S., and thus, many other Muslim women also choose not to wear it as a form of resistance against institutional rules controlling women’s choice in religious practice.^{18, 19}  There can be various reasons and narratives regarding why Muslim women choose to or choose not to wear hijab.²⁰  Besides their decision to wear hijabs, Muslim women make choices for their social practices, such as handshaking that reflects their identities as Muslim women, their minoritized status, their political stances, and so on. So, by first listening to their reasons and narratives of their choices, you will learn how well-intentioned, brave, and agentic Muslim women are.  

• Support Muslim students and faculty associations and appreciate their impact: Young Muslim women need support and role models to navigate and maintain their Islamic identities in colleges and universities. Farzaneh Khosrojerdi found that Muslim women greatly benefit from the Muslim student associations on campus, which makes it essential for allies to support Muslim student and faculty associations to be visible, accessible, and grow on campus.  

• Call out spiritual microaggressions: People of all (non-)religious backgrounds can perpetuate and experience microaggressions around religion and spirituality. Several features of the expression of religious identity can lead to organizational conflict when religious diversity is not explored: in-group/out-group classification (worsened by fundamentalism), religious expression vs. proselytism, and how religious expression highlights potential inequities.²¹   A more common and visible manifestation of this conflict is microaggressions,²²   including making jokes about religious clothing, calling someone “crazy” for their beliefs, making statements of the superiority of one’s religion over another’s, and overgeneralizations about all people of a religious group. If you see someone speaking this way, “call them in” and ask them what they are trying to say.