Religious women in a secular Muslim nation: The case of contemporary Turkey

This study aims to examine Turkish religious women's attitudes toward gender with respect to family, education, the workplace, and politics. Turkey makes an interesting case for studying the links between religion and perceptions about women's social opportunities. As a modern secular state with a predominantly Muslim population, Turkey is a "torn nation" situated at the crossroads of the Clash of Civilizations. Using data from the 2001 wave of the World Values Survey, it is hypothesized that devout Muslim women will exhibit more traditional attitudes about women's social opportunities across these institutional contexts than their less religious counterparts. Regression analyses reveal that religiosity strongly promotes gender traditionalism among Turkish women, particularly with respect to attitudes toward wives' obedience to their husbands. The study concludes by identifying the implications of these findings and recommending directions for future research.