Hijabi Discrimination In Nigeria Makes Navigating The Workplace Difficult for Muslim Women - Minority Africa
Toluwani Omotesho
March 13, 2024
But first, in Afghanistan, there has been an increase in the number of suicides among girls and women who have been restricted from pursuing education due to the Taliban ban.
In May 2021, the Taliban seized rule for the second time in Afghanistan and, four months later, placed stringent bans on the education and freedom of women. They closed down schools and banned girls and women from high school and tertiary education. Women are also prohibited from appearing in places like parks, gyms, or public areas without a male chaperone. Unfortunately, this is a repeat of 1996 when the Taliban first rose to power. Their regime was marked with severe restrictions on human rights and oppression, particularly for women and girls, before being overthrown by US-backed forces in 2001.
The recent restrictions faced by Afghan girls and women are pushing many to suicide using everyday household items such as rat poisons, fertilizers, cleaning fluid, and chemicals. The Taliban, however, has disregarded this growing situation, stating in an official statement by the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that suicide rates in women have fallen since they came into power, contrary to multiple reports from UN experts and doctors.
Presently, many families are seeking ways to continue girls’ education despite the Taliban’s ban, while others are looking for opportunities to flee the country, but this is proving to be particularly difficult with the recent Pakistan clampdown on undocumented Afghan migrants.
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https://youtu.be/7-dwl3ATxmQ?feature=shared
“Despite the barriers”: The Nigerian journalists trying to change an ableist media landscape
In 2018, Gbenga Ogundare, a veteran journalist, started a news media platform, Equality Reporters, following the discrimination he faced after he lost his sight. Before going blind from complications arising from glaucoma in 2009, Ogundare says he used to be treated with respect by his colleagues and the people he encountered along his professional journey. In the end, he had to resign and forge his path.
“Living with a disability in Nigeria often means a sentence to a lifetime of stigma and discrimination, including employment inequality,” he says. “And personally, I suffered from these forms of negative social stereotypes the moment I lost my sight.”
Precarious work environments continue to put journalists living with disabilities in a hard-to-navigate position. Equality Reporters primarily focuses on stories about people with disabilities. The platform also presents a safe space for all reporters, living with or without a disability, to practice their profession without discrimination. For Ogundare, who has been practicing journalism for the last 20 years, barriers are meant to be a leverage to greater exploits.
Hijabi Discrimination In Nigeria Makes Navigating The Workplace Difficult for Muslim Women
The hijabi places Muslim women under scrutiny within the workplace and creates harmful, toxic work environments.
Every Muslim woman who wears a hijab, headscarf, or any form of clothing that covers her hair has, at some point or the other, had to deal with passive-aggressive comments about their headwear. Often, the comments veer into being incredibly cruel and unsavory. Workplaces are meant to be free from personal biases and prejudice. Still, many Muslim women have been stripped of access to jobs or economic opportunities based on their visible dedication to their faith.
The image of a Muslim woman, especially a woman of color, in a hijab, sometimes referred to as ‘hijabis,’ is viewed through the lens of oppression. Harmful stereotypes and lack of proper representation in many media strongly influence the oppression of hijabis.
Professional hijabi Muslim women are wrongfully perceived as subservient and devoid of full agency over their lives and careers. In Nigeria, where women are already a minority, a Muslim woman who devoutly wears her hijab faces double scrutiny and significant discrimination. Hijabis in professional spaces have confessed to the feeling of either being patronized, heavily scrutinized, or a sense of erasure.
Married to my rapist: The Indian women saying no
Behind the closed doors of bedrooms across India, the anachronistic opinions of a 17th-century jurist still guide the rules of sex between husband and wife.
Englishman Matthew Hale famously considered women to become their husband’s possession in marriage, a belief written into English common law, exported to the colonies, and later abandoned over centuries in many countries – but not in India. Here, it’s not a crime for a man to force sex or sexual acts on his wife as long as she is over 18.
It’s almost impossible to know what happens inside marital homes in the world’s most populous country and the intimate discussions that may or may not occur before either party initiates sex. But experts say India’s patriarchal society demands certain behavior from wives, and often that means a wife must comply with her husband’s wishes, whether she’s a willing partner or not.
Campaigners have been trying to change the law for years, but they say they’re up against conservatives who argue that state interference could destroy the tradition of marriage in India.
LGBTQ+ rights in Africa 2023: Progress and setbacks
Across Africa, while court verdicts ensured rights for LGBTQ+ people in Kenya and Namibia, countries such as Uganda and Ghana doubled down on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The year began with 32 of 54 African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people, according to rights group Human Dignity Trust. Going into 2024, that number is down to 31.
Here are the significant updates from 2023.
The island country’s highest court decriminalized same-sex relations, striking down a colonial-era law dating back to 1898.
: The east African country’s Supreme Court in February affirmed the right of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to register as NGOs. Following the ruling, opposition member of parliament Peter Kaluma presented a bill to parliament in May that would effectively undo the Supreme Court’s decision by limiting LGBTQ+ people’s rights of assembly, expression, and demonstration. The bill is still in parliament and has not yet been passed.
The Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriages conducted outside the southern African country. In October, arguments were heard by Namibia’s Supreme Court in a case challenging the constitutionality of laws banning sodomy and related offenses. The court will deliver a judgment in May 2024.
“Female stupidity at its best. They all need to die.”: Violent and sexualised hate speech targeting women approved for publication by social media platforms
In an age of the ‘manosphere’ where women are under constant threat from misogynistic attacks online, our investigation shows test adverts containing extreme hate against women are approved for publication by Facebook, TikTok, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
Imagine going to work and being told you “deserve a bullet in the head” or that you are “a thing, a bitch, a lying bitch.” Imagine how you’d feel if these threats targeted those closest to you, including your children. These are real-life examples of hate speech attacks on social media faced by women journalists for simply doing their jobs. This is part of a terrifying global trend, seeing online violence against women journalists spilling offline. Large social media corporations, which are hosts to these horrific incidents, have hate speech policies designed to protect users. In light of this, we set out to test how good they are at enforcing these policies and detecting misogynistic hate speech on their platforms.
Our investigation: Testing social media platforms’ detection of misogynistic hate speech
Families find ways around Taliban restrictions on girls’ education
The Islamic Emirate recently announced that it has managed to open 200 new schools across the country since it returned to power in 2021. Despite this, the fact remains that 1.2 million girls and women are unable to access formal education as a direct result of Taliban policies.
At 22, Mariam* still only holds a high school diploma. Unable to attend university in Afghanistan physically, she is working towards an online degree from the University of the People, a free US-accredited virtual university. This allows her to partly circumvent the limitations the Islamic Emirate has placed upon her, but studying from home has been far from easy.
Every night, around 9pm, as her family settles in, Mariam prepares to begin studying by drinking her first cup of coffee. She spends the next several hours trying to keep up with the university’s 100,000 students across the globe. It’s a tiring process, full of setbacks, but she feels she has no choice.
A full two years since the restrictions were announced, Afghan families are losing hope that the Islamic Emirate will live up to its promises of reopening high schools and universities.
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