Explaining Support for Muslim Feminism in the Arab Middle East and North Africa

Saskia Glas and Amy Alexander ask how common it is for people to combine strong attachment to Islam with support for women’s rights in education, employment and politics. To follow the answer, start with the methods and Table 1 on pages 447–450 in Gender & Society. Move to Figure 2 on page 451 and Table 2 on page 452, then look for what the authors qualify in their conclusion and notes on pages 460–463.

Where the one-in-four figure comes from

The study combines 51 Arab Barometer and World Values Survey samples from 15 Arab countries between 2001 and 2016. It analyzes 57,635 Muslim respondents. A latent class analysis groups people by recurring patterns across seven questions about women’s equality and empowerment and four about religious attachment. The authors label the combination of strong attachment and support for women’s rights “Muslim feminism.” The group represents 25.4 percent of this sample. The group combining support with weaker attachment represents 5.2 percent. Note 1 on page 462 says the study uses attitudes as its measure. The grouping gives no direct evidence of whether respondents call themselves feminists.

Read Figure 2 for what the combined figures conceal. In Bahrain, the two groups that support women’s rights are roughly equal in size. In Morocco, the strongly attached group is about six times as large as the group with weaker attachment. These are comparisons between the survey groups, and the gap alone does not explain how people in each country formed those views.

What changes when the model includes the social setting?

Table 2 puts individuals within surveys and countries. In the authors’ models, women and people with more education are generally more likely to support women’s rights. Table 3 adds societal variables. Stronger feminist movements are associated with the group that combines support with strong attachment to Islam relative to the group with weaker attachment. On pages 461–462, notice a result that fell outside the original expectations. The share of seats held by women in national parliaments did not show the same association. Return to the variable description in Table 1 and ask what a seat count tells you and what would require knowing which agendas elected officials actually pursued.

The surveys end in 2016 and the analysis excludes non-Muslim respondents. To move from survey responses to public claims, read alongside Mhajne and Brandt’s work on organizers in Tunisia and Egypt. Putting patterns of answers beside documented acts of organizing raises a further question about the steps through which attitudes might become political action.