Participants at a conference on 'Islam and Women' at European Parliament headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, November 2017. Wiktor Dabkowski/Press Association. All rights reserved.
Recently, for the first time, the women’s rights committee of the European Parliament discussed the situation of Muslim women in Europe, including dress restrictions and how recent developments have undermined women’s rights. A collective of more than 100 Muslim women are responding by calling for a real European model of inclusion and pluralism that ensures everyone can have access to employment and education and that doesn’t place an extra burden on women.
According to a recent report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, nearly one in three EU member states have placed legal restrictions on Muslim women’s dress at either local or national level. In addition, bans on headscarves and other Muslim women’s dress by both businesses and public institutions have been increasingly reported in nearly half of the EU countries. This has resulted in preventing these women from accessing jobs. How can this be seriously reconciled with EU principles of non-discrimination and gender equality?
