Date & Time: 2 December 2015 16.00
Venue: Amsterdam REC (exact location)
On 2 December 2015 Dutch historian Margreet van Es (University of Oslo) will give a lecture about her PhD research. She compared seven minority organisations in the Netherlands with seven minority organisations in Norway. The organisations varied from secular to religious and from women-only to gender-mixed. She studied the organisation’s archive material and interviewed active women to find out how these organisations depicted their members and the position of women in Islam between 1975 and 2010.
Title
The stigma of being oppressed. Self-representations by women with a Muslim background in minority organisations in Norway and the Netherlands 1975-2010
Abstract:
Women with a Muslim background are often met with prejudices and stereotypes – regardless of whether they are religious or not. The most well-known stereotype is that of the “oppressed Muslim woman”. In public debate, oppression of Muslim minority women is repeatedly linked to Islam. How have these widespread perceptions of Islam and Muslim women affected the ways in which women with a Muslim background represent themselves to the outside world? Have they internalised and confirmed certain stereotypes, or have they actively tried to debunk them? Which strategies have they applied to subvert the dominant image of the “oppressed Muslim woman”? To what extent did they succeed? And how have these attempts affected the histories of different minority organisations in which women with a Muslim background have been active?
You are cordially invited to attend this lecture. Please send an email to Martijn de Koning if you will attend: m.j.m.dekoning@uva.nl
