Gendering Islamic Religiosity in the Second Generation

Abstract

Departing from the debate about the importance of gender ideology in the integration of Muslim minorities in Western Europe, this article studies the association between Islamic religiosity and gender ideology among second-generation Turkish and Moroccan men and women in Belgium. Islamic religiosity is conceptualized as consisting of religious identification, (partly gender-specific) religious practices, and belief orthodoxy. The comparability of this model across genders and national origin groups is tested with recently collected survey data. The association between Islamic religiosity and gender ideology is analyzed with regard to gender and ethnic differences. Taking a number of control variables into account, the analysis reveals no significant differences between national origin groups. More importantly, Islamic religiosity is found to be only weakly negatively associated with gender egalitarianism; this association is somewhat stronger for men than for women. These results challenge the alleged strong connection between Islamic religiosity and traditional gender ideology and highlight the importance of taking gender differences into account when studying religiosity among Muslim minorities in Europe.