‘In my father's house' – Gender, Islam and the construction of a gendered public sphere in Darfur, Sudan

Abstract

One of the main goals of the Islamist government of Sudan that
came to power in 1989 was to construct an Islamic public sphere.
In this project women were cast predominantly as mothers and
wives outside the public space. At the same time the emphasis on
gender segregation in public places necessitated the involvement
of women, like female teachers, to act on behalf of the government
in creating gendered Islamic public spaces. The article focuses
on single female teachers in Kebkabiya, a small town in Darfur
to examine how. They negotiated the Islamist moral discourse in
order to construct alternative female subject positions in the public
sphere. Formal education was considered a precondition for
being a good (female) Muslim. However, single female teachers
clearly defied the ideal of the married Muslim woman, as projected
by the dominant Islamist discourse. It is argued that the veil, the
mode of address, and the boarding house constituted important
conditions of this negotiation. The enactment of the identity of the
educated professional by these single female teachers exposed
the shifting and permeable nature of the boundaries of the public
sphere, which problematizes notions such as the ‘private' and
the ‘public'.


Journal for Islamic Studies Vol. 27 2007: pp. 73-115