The redefined role of the Ismaili Muslim woman through higher education and the professions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Finally, the findings indicated that their higher education and their professional status had led to a significant change in these women's roles in society. They were now active participants in society, and able to challenge the political knowledge-validation processes that had externally defined, controlled and stereotyped them in the past. This study investigates the effects of higher education among Nizari Ismaili Muslim women, and its impact on traditional cultural mores regarding gender. It explores the lives of seven professional Canadian Ismaili women of Indian descent, from a hitherto traditional society, at different stages of their acculturation, and examines how higher education has affected their roles as Muslim women in society. Stories of the lives of the women's mothers also emerge through the voices of the participants. This is a qualitative study based on the narrative analyses of women whose cultural moorings are rooted in tradition. Primary sources for data collection included texts and in-depth interviews with women who shared a common background: their Indian descent, their colonial African connection, their Islamic faith, their quest for higher education, and their diasporic experiences. The data analyses took a thematic approach as patterns of life stories and relationships began to emerge. Findings. Results of this study showed that there was no essential Islamic or Ismaili woman, even though images based on various geopolitical movements tend to suggest so. The women of this study managed to extricate themselves from an otherwise patriarchically obsessed exegesis of the Qur'an on women's rights, solely by relying on the guidance of their Imams, who, in their persuasion of Islam, hold the authority and prerogative to interpret the faith according to the times. Other important variables that were implicated in their oppression were the British and other European colonial policies of racial discrimination, especially regarding educational opportunities. Their Imams worked proactively to counteract this problem. The study also shows that the practice of their faith and its manifestations are largely private. Their adherence to it was neither anachronistic, nor incompatible with their professional lives, though its form and symbols had changed for them compared to what it was for their mothers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".