Competing determinants of women's work: ethnicity, religion and culture

Giving the central focus to 'religious affiliation' which 'was once at the forefront of demographic research' (McQuillan 2004: 25), this paper examines the association between religion and women's employment. Generally speaking, gender characteristics such as high fertility and low employment level for Muslim women in both intra-country and worldwide comparisons have been asserted in an extensive literature. The context, method and comparison groups of this study provide the opportunity to examine the long-standing debate as to whether religion per se or other determinants explain such gender characteristics in Islamic settings. Using logistic regression and the multicultural context of Australia containing a substantially diverse ethnic composition of Muslims throughout the world, this paper highlights Muslim/non-Muslim employment differentials. The paper also analyses the employment level of Muslim women across the regions of origin representing various contexts in order to provide empirical evidence to examine the above debate