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Women’s Place and Displacement in theMuslim Family: Realities rom the Twenty-frstCentury
Kamala Chandrakirana 
The world in the twenty-rst century is one propelled by unprecedentedlevels o inormation fow and movement o peoples, creating newchallenges, opportunities and aspirations, and generating orces orchange which are oten uncontrollable and mostly irreversible. Nopart o the world is let untouched. Men, women and children are allaected—albeit, in dierent ways—and they are all actively taking partin the whirlwinds o this new century world, voluntarily or involuntarily,or better or or worse.The orces o change are at times contradictory while consistentlymultidirectional. While more and more people experience wealth andprosperity, poverty and war remain widespread and continue to beunresolved. In spite o all this, or because o it, the twenty-rst centuryglobal community has strengthened its commitment to reedom, humandignity, equality, justice, peace and the eradication o poverty, as stateddenitively by world leaders at the birth o this new century through theMillennium Declaration in 2000.
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The Muslim world has never been isolated rom the progress andchallenges aced by humankind and, at times, has been one o its mostinfuential orces. The realities o everyday lives o Muslim women andmen—and the shape o Muslim amilies—are responses to these globalchallenges. It has thereore become imperative to take stock o the waysin which global orces o the twenty-rst century have aected, shaped,and even changed the many aces o the Muslim amily. A reimagining
 
Wanted: Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family 
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o the Muslim amily should be as much rooted in the stark realities otoday, as it is inspired by the visionary values o Islam.This paper uses existing global data
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to paint a preliminary broadstroke picture o the lived realities o Muslim women today and capturethe changing dynamics o the Muslim amily in the twenty-rst century.Available case studies demonstrate the challenges women today acewithin Muslim amilies and societies, and show how women and wholenations have come together to overcome these challenges by makinglegal and policy breakthroughs to better guarantee justice and equalityor all. All in all, these realities compel us to acknowledge that genderequality and justice in the Muslim amily have become undeniablenecessities and that, through enlightened political leadership, vibrantdemocratic processes, and the hard struggles o Muslim women andtheir allies, their attainment is possible.
I. Muslim Women Making a Living in the GlobalEconomy
 In the past ten years, 200 million more women have joined the labourorce, bringing the total number o employed women worldwide to 1.2billion.
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In the process, the types o work women engage in have becomemore diversied: rom primarily agricultural work, which was the mainsource o employment or women ten years ago, to the multiacetedservice sector which now employs almost hal o all working women.
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 Among these numbers are women rom the Muslim world. While thereis a wide gaping hole in statistics specically on Muslim women, we cannevertheless begin to construct some general trends rom existing globaldata on women’s lives overall.There is huge interregional variance among Muslim womenworldwide, o course. For instance, according to the International Labour
 
Women’s Place and Displacement in the Muslim Family 
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Organisation (ILO), South-East Asian women—o which a large proportionare Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Philippines and SouthernThailand—have been among the most active participants in the labourorce throughout the past decade, maintaining the third highest positionglobally, ater East Asia and sub-Saharan Arica. By contrast, women inNorth Arica and the Middle East—most o whom are Muslims—havethe lowest rates o labour participation in the world.
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It is worth noting,however, that between 1990 and 2003 the Arab region witnessed agreater increase in women’s share o economic activity (at more than sixtimes the global rate) than what took place in all other regions o world;that is, women’s share o economic activity increased by 19 per cent ascompared to the 3 per cent increase or the world as a whole.
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 Acknowledging variations and specicities rom region to region, itis nevertheless an undeniable reality that more and more Muslim womenare playing an active part in the labour orce and the economy. In manycases, these Muslim women do so by moving back and orth acrossnational borders. Indeed, women overall are increasingly becoming anintegral part o the growing global movement o peoples, constitutingalmost hal o all international migrants worldwide. According to theUnited Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),
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this means 95 millionwomen are crossing international borders, not even counting the manywho move rom one part o their own country to another. In Asia, withmore than hal o the world’s Muslim population, the number o womenmigrating rom their home countries has surpassed that o males.
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InIndonesia, where about 176 million Muslims live, women constitutedalmost 80 per cent o all migrants leaving the country, between 2000 and2003, to work. UNFPA explains, in their State o the World PopulationReport 2006, that
Migrant women move to marry, rejoin migrant husbands and amilyor to work. They are domestic workers, cleaners, caretakers o the
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