writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

The second finding of this study is concerned with the ways in which the participants understand
their local challenges through the frameworks of needed‐empowerment and needed‐normalcy in
London. After discussing personal stories, all participants were asked the same two questions: In the
next 5‐10 years, what would you like to see most improved in the lives of young Muslim women
living in London; and, do you have anything else to add to this discussion of everyday life as a young
Muslim woman living in London. Together, these questions elicited answers which have been
grouped under the headings of needed‐empowerment and needed‐normalcy. While the participants
were almost unanimous in their responses to these two questions, they each emphasized different
aspects of the needed‐empowerment and needed‐normalcy spectrum of ideas.
The first component is concerned with needed empowerment within the female Muslim
community living in London. Anne and Alex both specified the need for internal confidence and self
empowerment, with Alex suggesting that, “If Muslim girls could realize that the fact that they’re
Muslim doesn’t hold them back in any way, in a sense it adds a lot of value to everything that they
can do [...] if they can believe in themselves more that would be absolutely incredible.” Additionally,
suggestions offered by the participants all centered on the need to begin from within the diverse
community, including education on the calibre of historical Muslim women; interacting with different
social circles and taking advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of London; and what Sam called
creating a unique, empowered environment where, “There doesn’t need to be a discourse for what
your identity is. There doesn’t need to be a justification of what your identity is. You are just a young
Muslim person in a British society just like another person is and you remain true to your faith.”
The second component is concerned with needed normalcy. As Sarah explains, “I think sometimes
as a category Muslim women are treated as this exotic, far removed, group of people, doing their
thing, but really we're ordinary and we have the same concerns that most women do.” Other
participants, including Emily, hoped that one day having faith would not seem a crazy or irrational
thing, adding that she hoped the average Londoner would not assume that someone is or is not
Muslim just based on how they may look or sound. This emphasized need for normalcy speaks
volumes on the social disorientation that some young Muslim women in London feel. Somewhere
between full members of British society and full members of Islam, this needed‐normalcy that the
participants refer to is an indication that there still exists a divide between the two societies.
If collected on a larger scale than this study, answers to these types of vision‐led questions could
produce a collection of strong potential solutions with implicit explanations of current local problems
and challenges, straight from the group in question. As opposed to generalized and excessively
simplistic awe‐inducing headlines that many Londoners see in local newspapers, there could instead
be genuine and in‐depth efforts to speak to local self‐identifying Muslim women of different
socioeconomic situations and age groups who are willing to share particular aspects of their everyday
lives with an understanding researcher.
Finding Voice
The final finding of this study is concerned with the platform for discussion between the
researcher and the participants, which is based on shared as well as different experiences. I started
out by wanting to curate and retell the women’s everyday stories, but quickly realized that a better
approach is to acknowledge the shared platform of meaning making that occurred with the
participants and my role in representing my interpretation of their stories. I found myself somewhere
between being an insider researcher, sharing the same gender and similar age, socioeconomic
situation, and religious views, and an outsider researcher in not having lived in London for more than
nine months at the time of the interviews. As I approached this study with the motivation of giving
voice to a group of women who I thought were not particularly heard in society, I found that not only
is this group of women visible in the larger London society, but that my positionality as a researcher
does not inherently entitle me to be the giver of voice to anyone at all, no matter how much of an
insider researcher I might be. This dilemma of giving voice is thoroughly discussed in the literature
and I found Linda Alcoff’s ideas reflected throughout this study: representations are not based on
discoveries retold of and about the participants, they are mediated and are the product of
interpretation (Alcoff, 1991). Therefore, providing a platform for discussion and storytelling became
the main focus of the study.
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