Dr Robina Mohammad
South Asian Studies Programme
National University of Singapore
sasrm@nus.edu.sg
Returning to study as a mature student at 30, Robina graduated in 1995 in Geography from the University of Reading (UK), where her thesis focused on issues of identity amongst British Asians. In 1996, she completed a Masters in Geography at the University of Bristol, followed by a PhD at King's College London in 2002. Robina's doctoral dissertation looked at political transformations and gender politics in Spain. Her current post-doctoral fellowship at the South Asian Studies Programme will look at questions of the body, beauty and processes of globalisation in India through a focus on Bollywood.
Marking the Nation - Women's Dress, Visibility and Presence: Reflections From the Lives of British Pakistani Muslim in the UK
In this paper I draw on an empirical study of a working class British Pakistani Muslim group to examine the role of dress and the female body in the assertion of a distinctive group identity. I show how identity construction processes, that draw on and relate to global Islamisation projects, target women's bodies to mark the identity or border of the group. Women's sexuality is made central to group identity. Women's bodies are understood as endangering their own sexual purity that is key to marriage and the formation of Muslim families. Spaces that are, masculine and/or Western, particularly when they are also public and transparent intensify the threat from women's bodies to their sexual purity. These are places which not only bring women into proximity with unrelated men but make women's bodies more visible to them, acting as 'bait' to stimulate sexual desire in men. Dress plays an important role in countering the dangers emanating from women's bodies/sexuality but also marks group identity. At the same time young women draw on forms of dress as a means to resist the group's regulation of their bodies.
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