Description
Muslim women from China’s third largest minority group, the Hui, face ‘cultural conflict’ between party-state discourses of Han-dominated modernisation, heavily promoted through the state education system, and community Islamic traditions, which include limited education and early marriage for girls. A conceptual link may be drawn between differential educational outcomes, internalisation of religious-cultural norms, and community perceptions of the value of state schooling. This qualitative study of two Hui communities of differing economic development in Ningxia province will draw on interviews with girls, parents, imams and officials, as well as Hui women at university in provincial capital Yinchuan and national capital Beijing, to examine experiences and views of state education; how students and their families navigate intersecting forms of cultural conflict for ethnic and religious minorities and for women; and how these together influence female educational experiences and outcomes. Throughout, young Hui women’s agency and voice in negotiating their educational trajectories with families, communities and schools will be emphasised, in a way thus far missing from the mostly Western- and male-dominated scholarship on China’s Islamic minorities. Data will be thematically and comparatively analysed, generating insights of use in the culturally sensitive promotion of female empowerment and educational equity among China’s Muslim communities and beyond.
