Author: Jennifer Ehrlich
Publication: The Christian Science
Monitor
Date: June 7, 2004
URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0607/p07s02-woeu.html
When Miriam Bouzid was 9, her parents
asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her answer shocked them:
a pilot.
"My mother told me, 'You have a
strange way of thinking. That's a man's job. You have to choose something
else,' " Ms. Bouzid recalls.
Her ambition was foreign to her
parents, who had moved to Belgium from Morocco in the 1960s as part of
a wave of "guest workers" who ended up staying. But at 32, Bouzid is only
a few flight hours away from becoming the first Moroccan-Belgian woman
to become a professional pilot.
Educated, motivated, and multilingual,
she is part of an emerging group of young Muslim women who are outpacing
their male counterparts in making the transition into mainstream European
society, the workplace, and even political office.
Their success is a hopeful sign
that new generations of women may break the cycle of unemployment and poverty
prevalent among Europe's migrant populations. What many find troubling
is that young Muslim men are not making similar gains.
"Some firms feel that they are a
progressive firm if they hire migrant women - but not the men," says Rachida
Mohout, a Moroccan-Belgian teacher in Mechelen, Belgium. "The future is
getting better for girls who further their education but for boys it is
getting worse - they get fewer chances in school and in work."
The gender gap in integration begins
in the family. In Belgium's Turkish and Moroccan Muslim communities, boys
typically enjoy relative freedom to come and go, while girls are often
restricted to the home. As a result, girls often study hard - and find
themselves on a family-approved route to independence, says Christiane
Timmerman at the University of Antwerp's Research Centre for Equal Opportunities.
"Girls know from that start that
if they want more independent living, and they want to have a greater role
in public life, education is their only way out," says Ms. Timmerman. "Boys
have all the freedom they want in the public sphere so they don't have
to do anything to get there."
When boys reach high school, they
drop out more frequently amid anti-intellectual peer pressure, or shift
to vocational schools that prepare them for a shrinking number of jobs
in Belgium's service economy. Their lack of interest may be rooted partly
in perceptions of young Muslim men as responsible for crime and violence,
a view that can carry over into treatment at school. Although it is illegal,
Ms. Mohout says many schools are beginning to reject male Muslim students
who are perceived as a problem. They are sent into the remedial education
systems instead.
"There is so much frustration among
the boys because they feel they are being treated differently from Belgian
boys - blamed more often for problems and viewed as criminals," says Mohout.
"It creates a vicious circle."
Muslim girls, while they have more
incentive to study, still face social and family pressures. Even Bouzid's
route to becoming a pilot was not direct. At her family's urging, she agreed
to an arranged marriage at age 16 to a Moroccan man she later learned had
married her to secure Belgian residency. Bouzid dropped out of school and
became an assembly-line auto worker. She spent six years mired in Belgian
courts before getting a divorce, then took adult education classes to finish
high school and pursue the advanced science degree needed for pilot training.
"A lot of it depends on your own
attitude - you can't expect presents to arrive at your door," says Bouzid.
"You have to have a goal in life, but if you say, I am Muslim, I wear a
headscarf, I will never get anywhere, then you really won't."
Still, young migrant women who are
friendly, educated, fluent in European languages, and not overtly religious,
are more easily accepted into European schools and workplaces than men.
"What makes integration more difficult is that Westerners often start with
a negative attitude towards Mediterranean Muslim men, but the attitude
toward women is that we pity them," says Timmerman.
In most European countries, ethnic
minorities have at least double the unemployment rate of natives. As a
result, many countries have started new migrant integration programs focusing
on language and job skills. But the current generation of young migrant
men who are are out of work receives less government attention.
