MULTICULTURAL MANNERS : Muslim Gender Roles Unveiled

Carol teaches English as a Second Language. Her latest class is all women, except for one 72-year-old man who enrolls with his wife.

At the end of the first meeting, two of the women ask Carol if there will be other men in the class. Carol says she doesn’t know. The two women leave, never to return.

What went wrong?

The two women were from Yemen. Their conservative Muslim culture prevents them from attending class if men are present. The women followed other strict rules, including covering their heads in public, wearing dresses with long sleeves and not entering stores that had only male shopkeepers.

To accommodate the large Yemenite community, the school eventually created classes just for women, who wanted to learn English to speak to their children’s teachers, to communicate with doctors and to overcome their fear of answering the telephone.

Rule: In Muslim cultures, strict rules govern interactions between males and females.