French Secularism as a 'Guarantor' of Women's Rights?:

Islam and Gender Politics in a Parisian banlieue

Jennifer Selby Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow, Islam in the West Program,

Harvard Universityjselby@mun.ca

March 6, 2008

Section One: Introduction

A. Evidence

• French media responses to secularism, particularly focused on 2004-2006 period.

• 2003 Stasi Commission Report.

• Expression by Femmes Solidaires (“Women in Solidarity”).

B. Context

- Significant shifts in immigration policy, socioeconomic stratification.

- Ethnographic data from Petit Nanterre.

- Femmes Solidaires.

http://www.art-fontenay.com/images/divers/femmessolidaires.jpg

Petit Nanterre (photograph J. Selby, March 2005).

C. Implications

1. Strips women of religious choice.

2. Placed outside the bounds of public legitimacy.

3. Creates a “pendulum effect”:

- “Distillation” of cultural and religious practices in the banlieue.

- “Traditional” women maintained through marriage partner preference for first generation North African women.

Section Two: Contemporary Laïcité and Gender Politics in France

• Differing Conceptions of Secularism.

• The French Context.

• Postcolonial North African migration.

“Tunisie, Maroc, Algérie” Petit Nanterre (photograph J. Selby, May 2006)

- Little attention paid in French media in the centenary year to gender politics and secularism.

– Exceptions: a. International Women’s Day b. European Constitution debates in 2005

Section Three: The Stasi Commission Report“Commission de réflexion sur l’application du principle de laïcité dans la République”

• Released 11 December 2003.

• Commissioned by then-President Chirac and led by Bernard Stasi and a group of twenty-three notable scholars, government officials and other experts.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-12/17/images/pic02.jpg

http://www.aidh.org/laic/Images/chirac-stasi.jpg

French Public Policy Analysis:

• Target of the interdiction: the Muslim headscarf and associated Islamic cultural tenets treating the status and actions of women.

• “Islam” as a political, areligious directive promoting non-Western, anti-woman attitudes.

• Policing Muslim women effective weapon in culture wars (see: Spivak 1988; Mani 1998; Abu-Lughod 2002; Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002).

• Veiled girls depicted as devoid of agency (see: Silverman 2004; Bowen 2007).

Section Four: Femmes Solidaires (“Women in Solidarity”)

• Name change in 1998 from Union des Femmes Françaises to Femmes Solidaires.

• Marie, the local president explains:

“We have foreign women who come by for problems with their papers sometimes despite the fact they’ve sought help through other organizations, whether it be papers generally, their social security or problems related to receiving family allowances, more often than not. Femmes Solidaires accompanies them and because we’re a well-known organization, not always, but sometimes we get results. We see women who are in miserable situations. Last year, one Maghrebian woman came by on a Saturday morning with a baby in her arms and she didn’t have milk for the baby, so the only solution we found at Femmes Solidaires was to go to the pharmacy because we needed a special kind of milk [and we bought it for her]” (Interview 5 December 2005).

Femmes Solidaires’s Positions on the Headscarf and Islam:

• Monthly national magazine Clara Magazine: “the headscarf is a symbol of sexism” (September 2004, n°85, pg.8).

• Petition against Shari’ah court in Ontario, Canada.

• Discourse of National President: politicizing the veil.

Fête des Associations (photograph J. Selby, September 2005)

Section Five: Muslim Women in the Banlieue

Children preparing for school in the former École La Fontaine in Petit Nanterre today.shantytown.(photograph courtesy of Jean Pottier, 1956) (photograph J. Selby, June 2006)

Parents protest in front of the primary school in Petit Nanterre (photograph J. Selby, June 2005): • “End insults. Respect the personnel. Angry communal agents.” • Teacher to calf: “My little rabbit, I’m not saying anything to you, but you understand me.”

Secular Debates in the Public School

Section Six: Strategies – A Growing Number of “Traditional” Women in the Banlieue

Theoretical contributions:

a. the “pendulum-effect”

b. the notion of cultural distillation

Petit Nanterre (photograph J. Selby, February 2006)

Conclusions: Being a publicly religious woman in France – critiquing laïcité

• Solidifying “traditional” gender traits, focused on religious affiliation and ethnic belonging.

• Women in particular become armatures of cultural reproduction.

• Does secularism fail to protect?