Heidi Nichols Haddad
Gender Roles in the Muslim World:
A Value Difference between Men and Women?
I. Introduction
Samuel Huntington (1993) in his seminal work, The Clash of Civilizations, envisions
future conflict between the Christian West and the Muslim and Orthodox East occurring not
along nation-state territorial lines, but along cultural lines. For Huntington (1993), culture means
political values that include separation of religion and state, rule of law, and protection of
individual and group rights. The lack of these political values in the Muslim world creates a
friction which could eventually evolve into a fault line of conflict. Inglehart and Norris (2003),
however, reexamined Huntington’s theory and suggest that future conflict may occur because of
social values, not political values. They posit that gender equality and sexual liberation represent
the future loci of cultural conflict. For them, gender equality does not exclusively mean the
treatment of women within the society, but that the treatment of women represents society’s
larger values of tolerance and equality. “A society’s commitment to gender equality and sexual
liberation proves time and time again to be the most reliable indicator of how strongly that
society supports principles of tolerance and egalitarianism” (Inglehart and Norris 2003, 8).
Therefore, if gender equality represents the fault line upon which future conflicts may occur, it is
imperative to further understand gender equality in Muslim countries.
Gender equality as a whole, can and has been measured.
However, gender equality is
complex and involves gender norms, individual identity, structural limitations, and personal
agency. In order to better understand gender equality, it is important to study gender roles,
which can be defined as societal norms that delineate the roles of men and women within
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See Inglehart and Norris’ Rising Tide for a gender equality index based upon survey research of the World Values
Survey.
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