[lbo-talk] The Political Economy of Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

One of the problems of Marxists in the Middle East, aside from the
general problem of the record of state socialism on the question of
freedom and the particular problem of the sorry Soviet foreign policy
toward West Asia and North Africa, is a great mismatch on the question
of religion between Middle Eastern Marxists (who tend to come from
relatively well-off families and are relatively well educated and
often dogmatically secularist, much more so than Latin American
Marxists) and their supposed constituencies, especially, the poorer
and less educated half of society who are generally fundamentalist,
religious, or traditionalist rather than secular-liberal (according to
the classifications of Lisa Blaydes and Drew A. Linzer), as the
secular liberals in the Middle East are concentrated in the highest
echelons of society.  The greatest difficulty is that "[a]t the lowest
levels of education, almost no women fall in the secular-liberal
grouping, while approximately seventy percent are either
'fundamentalist' or 'traditional'" (Lisa Blaydes and Drew A. Linzer,
"The Political Economy of Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam,"
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Philadelphia, 2006, p. 14). -- Yoshie

<http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~blaydes/Women.pdf>
The Political Economy of Women's Support for Fundamentalist Islam*
Lisa Blaydes
blaydes at ucla.edu
Drew A. Linzer
dlinzer at ucla.edu
Department of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

* Acknowledgements: We thank James Honaker, Jonathan Slapin, and
George Tsebelis for useful suggestions. Special thanks goes to Amaney
Jamal for her extremely insightful comments. This research was
presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Philadelphia, PA, and is a substantially revised version
of a paper we originally presented under the same title at the 2006
Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago,
IL.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5.2 Latent class characteristics

The four groupings identified by the latent class model provide
significant insight into the belief systems of Muslims worldwide. The
primary division in the survey sample is between a class we term
'secular-liberal' and the other three classes. Individuals in the
'secular-liberal' class tend to both eschew traditional notions of
gender roles and exhibit generally low levels of religiosity. They
pray infrequently, object strongly to the veil, and oppose the
implementation of Islamic law. Unlike those in the conservative
subgroups, these individuals are divided on questions of whether
having children is necessary for a woman and if, when jobs are scarce,
men should be advantaged over women. While many of these individuals
would not be described as strictly 'secular' or 'liberal' in the
context of OECD countries, they represent the secular-liberal trend in
the Islamic world.

At the other end of the spectrum, the 'fundamentalist' grouping
combines traditionalist gender norms with high levels of personal and
political religiosity. Individuals in this category believe
overwhelmingly that women should be religious, veiled, obey their
husbands, and must have children. They take comfort in religion,
believe that religion and God are very important in their lives, and
think politicians must believe in God as well. They also favor
implementing Islamic law, and believe that men make better political
leaders than women.

The two intermediate subgroups are both more traditional and religious
than the 'secular' subgroup, yet they differ from the
'fundamentalists' in specific ways. The first of these classes
consists of individuals who are similar to the 'fundamentalists' on
issues of traditional gender roles, but are not as religious as the
'fundamentalists', nor believe that religion should be as involved in
politics. We term this cluster of individuals the 'traditional' class.
The other intermediate class, in contrast, consists of individuals who
are very much religious and supportive of religious practices such as
veiling and the implementation of Islamic law. However, this group is
nearly indistinguishable from the 'secular-liberal' class on issues of
traditional gender roles, including opportunities for employment and
education, whether men make better political leaders, whether wives
must obey their husbands, and whether polygamy is acceptable. We term
this final cluster of individuals the 'religious' class.

5.3 Predicting belief system groupings

The effects of sex, education, social class, and employment status
jointly predict which of the four belief system groups an individual
is most likely to belong to. In order to interpret the estimated
effect of these variables on the latent class membership of Muslim
women, we calculate predicted prior probabilities for various
hypothetical values of the covariates using the multinomial logit link
function (Eq. 2).

Increased education reduces the propensity of Muslim women to hold
strongly traditionalist beliefs (Figure 1). At the lowest levels of
education, almost no women fall in the secular-liberal grouping, while
approximately seventy percent are either 'fundamentalist' or
'traditional'. The probability that a woman will belong to the
'traditional' class declines at each subsequently higher education
level. The falloff in the probability of belonging to the
'fundamentalist' class is even more precipitous at first, reaching a
minimum once a woman has achieved around a university preparatory
level of education, and then increasing slightly. At the minimum,
however, for women, achieving a secondary school education _reduces by
more than half_ the prior probability of falling in the fundamentalist
group, compared to having only an elementary level (or less) of formal
education. It is not that as women become more educated, they are
necessarily becoming more religious; rather, they are believing less
and less in traditionalist notions of gender roles, and hence moving
from the 'traditionalist' and 'fundamentalist' classes into the
'religious' and 'secular-liberal' classes. This transition occurs in a
slightly different manner depending upon whether a woman is in a high
or low social class. Low-class women are more likely to adopt secular
belief systems, while high-class women are more likely to retain their
religious beliefs.

An economic explanation for the effect of education is that having at
least a high school education creates opportunities for women to gain
employment in the formal rather than informal or agricultural sectors
where wages are low and often only serve to supplement a primary
income. A possible alternate explanation is that education lowers
women's propensity to hold fundamentalist beliefs because the
education system is itself secular and encourages that type of
thinking. We therefore re-estimate the model only for respondents in
Iran, a country where women receive explicitly Islamic education. The
estimated effect of education on fundamentalism and secularism in Iran
follows the same pattern as in Figure 1, except without the increase
in fundamentalism at the highest education levels.20

Muslim women who are not employed are roughly five percent more likely
to possess 'fundamentalist' belief systems than those who work,
regardless of education level and social class. Employment has similar
effects on the 'religious' class for women with higher levels of
education. As a result, women who work, are students, or are retired
are far more likely to belong to the secular-liberal class; by as much
as 12 percent for women with some university-level education (Figure
2). Overall, highly educated, low-social class Muslim women who work
are the most likely to hold secular beliefs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Worldwide, approximately thirty percent of Muslims belong to each of
the fundamentalist, religious, and traditional belief system groups;
the remaining ten percent fall into the secular-liberal group. Once
again, Muslim women are more likely to belong to the religious group,
and Muslim men are more likely to belong to the fundamentalist group.

(pp. 12, 14-15)
-- 
Yoshie
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