Who suppresses female sexuality? An examination of support for Islamic veiling in a secular Muslim democracy as a function of sex and offspring sex

Abstract

Whether it is men or women who suppress female sexuality has important implications for understanding gendered relations, ultimately providing insight into one widespread cause of female disadvantage. The question of which sex suppresses female sexuality more avidly, however, neglects that our interests are never ambiguously masculine or feminine; each of us has a combination of male and female kin which alters how much of our future fitness derive from each sex. Here we exploit a nationally representative sample of 600 Tunisians to test whether support for Islamic veiling-a proxy for female sexual suppression-is more common amongst one sex than the other, and is affected by the relative sex of one's offspring (i.e., the number of sons relative to daughters). We find that men are more supportive of Islamic veiling than women, but women with more sons are more supportive of veiling and more likely to wear veils than women with fewer sons. All effects were robust to the inclusion of religiosity, which was weaker amongst men and unrelated to the number of sons a woman had. The number of daughters affected neither religiosity nor support for veiling, but did increase women's likelihood of wearing contemporary, fashionable Tunisian veils compared with no head covering. We further found that men were more religious if they had more sons. Overall, these findings highlight that far from being the fixed strategy of one sex or the other, female sexual suppression manifests facultatively to promote one's reproductive interests directly or indirectly by creating conditions beneficial to one's descendent kin. These results show that both men and women can suppress female sexuality, although the function in either case appears more closely aligned with male rather than female interests.

Further investigation of the effects of wearing the hijab: Perception of female facial attractiveness by Emirati Muslim men living in their native Muslim country

“…We argue that this pattern of effects is not consistent with influences of anti-Islamic feeling or cultural endogamy and a major influence occurs because being fully covered by the hijab occludes external features, especially the hair and parts of the head and face, which normally contribute to perceiving human facial attractiveness. Thus, while wearing the hijab may sometimes be motivated by a cultural desire to suppress female attractiveness to men (e.g., [7][8][9]), these new findings suggest that not all hijab wearing serves this purpose, and that female facial attractiveness, even for practising Muslim men living in their native Muslim country, is not reduced simply by wearing this garment. From the findings we report, slight changes to the positioning of the hijab can produce perceptions of facial attractiveness that are no lower than when no hijab is worn, and this has interesting implications for when the hijab is worn to reduce the attractiveness of women to men.…”

Economic inequality drives female sexualization

“…The point here is that norms promoting the subordination and consequential sexualization of women cannot really be posed as an alternative explanation to that of the need for women to be competitive in the presence of highly unequal potential mates. It is more likely that norms of how to compete may coevolve with individuals' (often conflicting) interests, as indeed the authors have explored elsewhere (8). For this reason, studies in the future might profitably operationalize distinct dimensions of gender inequality, such as religious or social norms.…”

In the context of romantic attraction, beautification can increase assertiveness in women

“…Equating beautification or self-sexualization with low agency may also reflect the cultural suppression of female sexuality, an ever-present albeit culturally variable phenomenon that sanctions women's sexual self-expression more heavily than men's. Although the drivers of the cultural suppression of female sexuality remain controversial [52][53][54], evidence supports the idea that competition between women can encourage them to suppress the sexuality and attractiveness-enhancing efforts of other women. Derogating such women as cultural dupes, who misunderstand female agency and how they are perceived by others, may thus function to reduce the occurrence of competition amongst women by elevating anxiety in potential competitors.…”