Chapter 2. Oil, Islam and Gender Inequality in Middle East and North Africa
2.2 Religion and its consequences on gender inequality in MENA
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2.2 Religion and its consequences on gender inequality in MENA
Religion is too high extent interrelated to sociology, shaping a person´s view of life and world as a whole. Religious beliefs are powerful forces penetrating deeply into sociology, creating images of normative principles of how the world should be, transforming it into reality. These forces might also build up the normative roles in gender studies, prescribing the roles of men and women in religious societies. Even nowadays, rationalists are failing to explain why strong religious powers still prevail in the twenty-first century, creating a place for rational explanations based on scientific researches. However, even due to the fact that science is proving them wrong, believers still tend to be sceptical towards scientific explanations, influencing behavior and ideas of the believers. Importantly, the status of women in society is an outcome of the interpretation of religious texts penetrating deeply into society even nowadays, and of the cultural and institutional settings of religious communities.99 Gender inequality as the form of social inequality between genders is visible not only in Muslim majority countries, but no different extent in the whole world.
Therefore, when Islam describes the role of women in Islam as subordinate, this draws normative images of different roles of gender in Islamist society, changing traditions and development of the culture for centuries. In authors point of view based on his direct observation from Malaysian society, workings of Islamist religion are indirectly responsible for causing gender inequality in the society, by influencing traditions, which became part of Muslim culture, even due the fact that Quran many times try to protect and advantage women´s status in society, but development of patriarchal writings and patriarchal visions transformed way of how Islam is perceived among society nowadays.
99 Kamila Klingorova and Tomáš Havlicek, “Religion and gender inequality: The status of women in the societies of world religions,” Moravian Geographical Reports 2/2015, Vol. 23 (Prague: February, 2015), p.3-5
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Conservative traditions prevailing regarding faith, and as was mentioned in the literature review, they strictly apply towards the women rather than men.100 These facts possibly have negative consequences by spreading religious beliefs into everyday interactions, impacting women´s status in the society. “Majority of men in Middle East believe a woman's place is in the home.”101 This old conservative views in MENA countries shaped by religion are keeping long distance for not only men, but whole society to fully accept and support equality of women in MENA region, as in many parts of the world.”102 The vast majority of the population of Middle East and North Africa views gender inequality as a mixture of long traditions and the possible fault of undermining women opportunities.103
As literature review uncovered from interviews conducted in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Palestine, men are the one who are bringing financial resources home, therefore perceiving women´s role as staying home and taking care of kids and household, paralyzing participation of the women in social and public life outside of their homes.104 Together with assumptions from the previous section that oil´s money are redistributed into households, keeping women inside of their homes. Therefore, the oil reliance mixed together with Islamist religion is strongly affiliated with the low status of women, affecting MENA countries to a high extent based on secondary sources retrieved out of literature review.
Rich literature review uncovered a significant correlation between religiosity, especially Islamist religiosity and gender inequality. Existing empirical results indicating that the greater the degree of religiosity in particular state, the more negative results for gender inequality, impacting even economic growth what is indirectly diminishing job opportunities
100 Ankita Singh, “Why Religion Is The Hardest Barrier Women Must Overcome For Gender Equality,” Elite Daily, (March 9, 2016), Available at: http://elitedaily.com/women/religion-women-barrier-equality/1412604/
101 Kate Lyons, “Majority of men in Middle East survey believe a woman's place is in the home,” The Guardian (May 2, 2017), Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/02/majority-of-men-in-middle-east-north-africa-survey-believe-a-womans-place-is-in-the-home
102 Ibid.
103 Ankita Singh, “Why Religion Is The Hardest Barrier Women Must Overcome For Gender Equality”
104 Kate Lyons, “Majority of men in Middle East survey believe a woman's place is in the home,” The Guardian
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for women, decreasing gender inequality.105 Moreover, literature review pointed out that Islamist religiosity is hurting the women more than any other religion.106 The goal of this thesis is to not explore why, but it is to examine differences between Muslim majority petro states and provide counter argument by analyzing a case study of Malaysia. This country is relatively gender equal, possessing with counter mitigating variables, diminishing the negative effects of oil revenues and Islamist religiosity to a certain point.
This thesis already unveiled the problematic to measure Islamic religiosity, because there are too many components of religion, making to capture to what extent religious beliefs influence individuals from a social perspective. Pooling many aspects of Islamic religiosity was used to come up with the overall table above, comparing Muslim majority countries and level of their Islamicity. According to the table, Malaysia scored as the best rated country among all Muslim majority petro states, although, the author is aware of the fact that if other variables of measuring Islamicity would be taken into consideration, it would change the rating of countries displayed inside of the table. Regarding this fact, it is still predictable that Muslims in Malaysia have a more liberal point of view compared to countries in MENA.
Chapter IV is going to elaborate what is the reason behind it, by identification of counter mitigating variables influencing gender inequality index.
Before turning to the following chapter, the author finds useful to provide a visual explanation of the visibility of oil dependency, the percentile of population affiliated to Islam and gender inequality index in order to provide facts putting individual countries closer or further from each other when taking into consideration these particular variables. The maps
105 Stephanie Seguino and James Lovinsky, “The Impact of Religiosity on Gender Attitudes and Outcomes,”
University of Vermount, (Feb. 24, 2009), Available at: http://www.uvm.edu/~sseguino/pdf/Religiosity.pdf
106 David P. Stump, “Book Review: Evolution and Religious Creation Myths: How Scientists Respond,”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (December 29, 2009)
Kamila Klingorova, Tomáš Havlicek, “Religion and gender inequality: The status of women in the societies of world religions,”
Jean Holm, “Women in Religion,” (Bloomsbury Academic – 1994)
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provide a good explanation of the high correlation between the degree of religiosity and highest values of gender inequality in MENA region.
The maps also provide a good visual representation of gender inequality among countries based on gender inequality index from the year of 2012. States in red represent high gender inequality above 0.60 and higher towards green colour, where there is greater equality lesser than 0.15; therefore countries in green have a lower gender inequality index. It clearly shows that countries in MENA region are worst compared to other countries across the world.
Other Muslim majority countries located outside of MENA region are doing relatively better.
Map 2.1 Gender Inequality Index, UNDP – 2014
Source: United Nations Development Programme – 2014
The most recent Global Gender Gap Report of 2017, benchmarks 144 countries according to their progress towards gender parity across four thematic dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. Among Muslim majority countries, the best are doing European Balkan
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countries – Albania (62) and Bosnia and Herzegovina followed by Bangladesh (72). Malaysia scored 106th, right behind its Muslim majority neighbour – Indonesia (92).107 These two South East Asian Muslim majority countries are leaving behind all the rest of countries located in MENA region. It is also important to mention that even due to the fact that Indonesia scored better than Malaysia; however, Indonesia is by population biggest Muslim country, but does not possess with a high value of oil income per capita. Therefore, Malaysia is more suitable country as a counter argument towards countries located in MENA.
Out of 26 worst ranking countries, 16 of them are majority Muslim countries located in MENA region.108 The importance of this thesis is to initially explain the variables causing the highest rates of gender inequality in majority Muslim countries, especially ones located in the region of North Africa and Middle East and later on to analyze the difference within Muslim majority countries inside and outside of MENA based on the case study of Malaysia.
Malaysia managed to keep progress on closing gaps in women´s labour participation and estimated earned income, closing to full extent secondary education enrolment gap, improved status of women in the society.109
107 World Economic Report, “The Global Gender Gap Report 2017,” WEF, (2017). Available at:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR16/WEF_Global_Gender_Gap_Report_2017.pdf
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid.
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Map 2.2 Countries´ Commodities Dependency – 2016
Source: CIA World Fact Book
This global map of economic dependency on the mainstream countries´ industry can give us a clue of the high dependency of oil in MENA region. Malaysia as our case study nowadays poses with capability of providing revenues from diversifies economic flows, moving country out of oil dependency. This fact is visible on the oil economic indicators of oil income per capita or the percentile of oil contribution into GDP. Since fluctuation of global oil prices affects the percentile which oil contributes into countries´ GDP greatly vary annually, so it is hard to define Malaysia as a petro state due to the diversification of their economy in latest years. Based on oil income per capita, Malaysia is still ranked in top 30 countries performing, jumping before couple of countries located in MENA region.
Significant oil´s contribution of oil into economy is still making credible example out of Malaysia.
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Map 2.3 Percentage of Muslim Population in Individual Countries – 2014
Source: Pew Research Centre
The map constructed by PEW research, displays the disparity of Muslim population in the world, according the percentage of Muslim population living in particular country. The most of the Muslim majority countries are located in North Africa and Middle East region.
Central Asia is another region with high percentage of Muslim population living in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. However, the difference is that women in this region can enjoy the higher levels of gender equality compared to MENA. Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina are European countries with significant Muslim population over 50%, where women are doing the best in terms of gender equality towards their male counterparts among all the others majority Muslim countries around the world. South East Asian countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and East Timor are majority Muslim countries, possessing with significant oil reserves, but on the other side, they can manage to fulfil gender inequality gap faster than countries of MENA.
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Map 3.4 Gender Equality Index Map – 2014
Source: United Nations Development Programme – 2014
Based on the various maps, the basic assumptions can be made that oil reliance mixed together with Islamist religion is strongly affiliated with low status of women, affecting MENA countries to high extent. Therefore, the following chapters will mainly deal with question of why Malaysia can still perform better in terms of gender equality than any other country located inside of MENA region. Even due to fact, they share the common status of Muslim majority Petro states, possessing with significant reserves of oil, having Muslim majority population, downgrading status of women. The following chapter of thesis will qualitatively examine variables which are mitigating negative consequences of oil and Islamist religion, keeping gender gap relatively equal in Malaysia.
As a greater degree of religiosity causing greater gender inequality, therefore the important task of this thesis will be the evaluation of the level of Islamist religiosity in Malaysia as it might be valuable asset to find out answer on the question why Malaysian women can enjoy higher gender status than women living in one of the MENA country. The author will examine the impact of Islamist religiosity in Chapter IV by redistributing
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questionnaires and conducting interviews. Furthermore, the results might be compared with the results of already existing data, conducted from particular countries in MENA region. This might help us to compare results, finding mitigating variables, making Malaysia relatively gender equal country compared to MENA region.
2.5 Conclusion
The Middle East and North African region has the most conservative population affiliated to Islam; unable to close deepest gender gaps worldwide, even due to the fact that oil reserves in the region represent more than 60% of whole global reserves, bringing tremendous oil revenues into the region. Thus, this chapter of thesis examined the relationship between oil revenues, Islamist religiosity and gender inequality in Middle East and North Africa, providing a solid foundation, proving correlation and causality between variables. A theoretical framework of Dutch disease explained and described the negative consequences of oil and Islamist religiosity, affecting gender inequality index inside of these countries. The empirical case studies proved the validity of the theory, pointing out that oil and Islam have a tremendous impact on the status of women in MENA.
This chapter also provided an explanation of the visibility of oil dependency with lack of economic diversification, causing a low level of female labour force participation, having an effect on highest rates of gender inequality inside of MENA region. The different levels of Islamist religiosity in various Muslim majority petro states were visible as well. Together with knowledge from literature review, the author can conclude that conservative Islamist´s perceptions of women are dragging down status of women in MENA. Non-democratic regimes are also distributing oil´s social welfare, and together with Islamist beliefs supporting women to stay inside of their homes.
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Reviewing of characteristics of MENA countries served as a valuable asset, obtaining differences among Muslim majority petro states. These characteristics are putting individual countries closer or further from each other, finding counter mitigating variables, which might be lessening negative effects of oil and religion in case of Malaysia. The following knowledge together with theoretical framework and literature review are describing, how oil and Islamist religiosity is impacting gender inequality in majority Muslim Petro states. This logic is going to be implemented into the case of Malaysia, serving as counter-argument that the impact of independent variables differs in certain countries.
As literature review suggests oil and religion are highly correlated with gender inequality index, dragging women status at the bottom of world´s standards. The analytical part of this thesis will provide implications of these assumptions into the case of Malaysia, a country possessing with oil reserves and majority Muslim population where gender inequality is not as visible as in more conservative MENA countries. Therefore, the importance of this paper will be to answer why Malaysian women can enjoy lower gender inequality index than other majority Muslim Petro states, by examining the counter variables, mitigating negative forces of oil and Islam.
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