As Prime Minister John Howard again urges Muslim migrants to embrace "Australian values" and "treat women as equals", a UTS academic working with Muslim women in Sydney has challenged the motives for such public statements about the rights of women.

In the latest UTSpeaks public lecture Dr Christina Ho has argued that the phenomenon of conservative male public figures seemingly becoming feminists has little to do with any real concern for Muslim women.

Dr Ho delivered the eighth lecture in the 2006 UTSpeaks series – Cronulla, Conflict and Culture: How can Muslim women be heard in Australia?

"Conservative politicians and commentators are suddenly defending women's rights because this has become a way of articulating an anti-Muslim nationalism," Dr Ho said.

"According to this logic, Islam is a misogynistic religion that oppresses women. Muslim women are oppressed by being 'forced' to wear the hijab and supposedly confined to the home, while non-Muslim women are oppressed by Muslim men who rape and harass them.

"Ironically, the more our political leaders go on about protecting women's rights, the more this can undermine women's own ability to speak about their concerns.

"The more Muslim women are represented as simply victims of an oppressive culture, the less we can hear what they have to say for themselves.

"In my discussions with Muslim women in Sydney, I am struck by the strength with which they assert that their beliefs and commitments are their own – no-one is forcing them to wear a hijab, no-one is forcing traditions down their throat."

Dr Ho lectures in Social Inquiry in the UTS Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She researches migration, multiculturalism and gender and is currently working on a project in partnership with the Muslim Women Association entitled "Sanctuary and Security in Contemporary Australia: Muslim Women's Networks, 1980-2005".

She is also organising a conference at UTS in December – "Not another hijab row: New conversations on gender, race, religion and the making of communities". http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/news_events/not_another_hijab.html

The full text of her lecture is available for download (PDF 64k).