Sarko: Saviour of Women

Earlier this week, the “Sun President” of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, addressed both House of the French Parliament at Versailles, the first time in 161 years that a French president has done so. One prominent pronouncement was his condemnation of the burqa, terming it a “problem of liberty and women’s dignity”, a “sign of subservience and debasement” and “unwelcome in France”. Consequently, Sarkozy is setting up a 32-member commission to examine the wearing of burqas, whose suggestions could lead to a French law banning the burqa from public places.

The burqa is a full body covering, including a veil completely covering the head with a mesh portion of material over the face. Muslim women (apparently a small minority in France) who wear this dress do so to fulfill their understanding of requirements in the Koran for people (including men) to dress modestly.

Personally, I do not agree with wearing burqas, and from my understanding of Sharia law principles, I do not think the Koran necessarily requires them. Nevertheless, my own thoughts on the matter are an entirely different issue to whether the State should take a stance on them.

Sarkozy voiced his views on the burqa in the name of advancing gender equality. He appears to believe that women who wear the burqa are being forced to do so by their male relatives or religious communities at large. Thus, if there is a ban on the burqa in public places, either these women will suddenly be liberated and/or women in burqas will still wear them yet no longer appear in public places.

In the first instance, this conclusion fails to take into account the possibility, however remote, that women wear burqas because they want to wear them, because in doing so they are dressing modestly according to the religious requirement, and perhaps also because they do not want to be sexually objectified and judged on their looks as is the case for women in “mainstream” Western society. There is no way for the State to know for certain whether women “truly” choose to wear the burqa. By banning it, this element of choice is removed. Ludicrously, this situation can be seen as the mirror image of women’s position in Afghanistan during Taliban rule, where their autonomy was similarly removed in being forced to wear the burqa in public places. In both cases, women are still being told what they can and cannot wear by the State.

Furthermore, even if women are being forced to wear the burqa against their will, banning it will not help their unequal position: unless whoever is forcing them to wear it becomes miraculously enlightened and desists from continuing to do this, these women will be withdrawn from engagement with the public sphere. If these women are considered to be vulnerable, oppressed and marginalised, such as isolation from the rest of society as a measure of “forced” equality cannot ameliorate their position.

This would be a more justifiable move if French society was a bastion of gender equality in general, which is not the case. Sarkozy is employing a culturally imperialistic view of what gender equality is (i.e. the French model), without acknowledging deficits in this idea of equality in practice. If Sarkozy truly wishes to improve the lives of French Muslim women, he would do well to consider more pressing reasons for their inequality (a marginalised socio-economic position, lack of opportunity, routine discrimination in French society), and seek to solve them to progress the cause of equality.