http://www.timesofoman.com/feature_inner.asp?fid=163
Women find veil limits job choice
Reuters
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:35:55 PM Oman Time
Nawal Hamadeh (C), the superintendent of three charter schools
that she helped start, gives some of her staff a pre-school orientation while
wearing her Muslim hijab as they get ready for the new school year in Dearborn,
Michigan, August 20, 2007. (Reuters)
DUBAI -- Aysha Obeid couldn't get a job as a shop assistant in Dubai
because of the veil that covered her face, exposing only her eyes to the
outside world. So to improve her employment prospects, Obeid stopped wearing
the veil.
"No one takes women with niqab in the retail sector," said Obeid, 22.
While women who cover up for their faith may expect problems getting some
kinds of work outside the Muslim world, those in the region also say they have
trouble getting jobs -- particularly ones requiring them to interact with the
public.
It is common to see Emirati women in the workplace, most wearing elegant
robes and head coverings, but those wearing the niqab which leaves only the
eyes uncovered are rarely seen in front offices.
"Women in niqabs do not sit at the counter. They take administrative
jobs," said Abdullah Naser, a manager at a Dubai post office. "Clients need to
know who they are talking to."
Face veils have been a hot political issue in many countries over the
rights of wearers to attend schools in secular societies or become policewomen,
teachers or other jobs that involve interacting with the public.
They are particularly common in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and
Saudi Arabia where many women cover their faces in public, driven by
conservative traditions and powerful clerics who advise that Muslim women must
wear the niqab.
In Dubai, the most modern emirate where multinationals keep their
regional hubs and expatriate non-Muslims make up a large proportion of the
population, women who wear the niqab find it hard to get jobs.
"Some companies have a policy preventing women from wearing their niqab
during work hours, such as banks for example," said Nora al-Bidour, public
relations manager at Tanmia. The niqab has also caused controversy in Egypt,
the most populous Arab country, where an increasing number of women are wearing
the veil. In June, a court ruled that a U.S.-accredited university was wrong to
bar a female scholar who wears a face veil.
In the United States, Saima Azfar, an immigrant from Pakistan, plans to
wear her niqab when she interviews for jobs once she passes her medical board
exams in Chicago.
"There are Muslim women doctors I know who went through the licensing
process here," explains Azfar, 34. "They told me that if you have the talent,
then nobody will deny you a job for wearing a veil."
Zerqa Abid says her niqab has not curtailed her career. Now a
communications and marketing consultant, Abid worked as a news editor for U.S.
broadcaster NBC and ran a TV station in Pakistan.
"I have proven to people that a covered woman can do whatever she wants,
can be successful, can be a career woman," she says.
While she does meet curiosity and confusion among her colleagues, Abid,
38, says that American laws allow her the freedom to work and wear niqab, with
an important drawback. "I am still not welcome on the screen because of my face
cover," she adds.
In the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, the niqab is a
rarity. Even in the staunchly Muslim province of Aceh, where women are required
to wear headscarves in public as part of sharia, or Islamic law, the niqab can
hardly be seen.
Siti Nurlaila, a Muslim activist who abandoned her niqab a few years ago,
said in Indonesia the niqab was worn mostly by a tiny group of Muslims who
follow Wahhabism, an austere form of Sunni Islam as practiced in Saudi Arabia.
"In Indonesia, the general public see people who wear the niqab as
strange and people often tell their children to avoid us, or even say that we
are criminals," she said.
"Even my teacher who inspired me to wear the niqab has stopped wearing
it," she said.
In Turkey, wearing a simple headscarf is a struggle for women who are
banned from covering their heads at work in public sector jobs under the
country's secular laws and are
discouraged from doing so in the private sector as well.
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