The headscarf in Europe: in the name of women's rights, are certain women being excluded?
Voxeurop
Europe has been debating the hijab for over twenty years, and the debate is especially likely to resurface during election time. In recent months, in Austria, France, Italy and even as far afield as Azerbaijan, the issue has once again become a hot topic. What does this say about our society, and what impact does it have on Muslim women?
On Monday 12 October, at least 37 people were arrested in Baku, Azerbaijan, as part of ongoing protests in solidarity with female students who wear the hijab – a headscarf worn by many Muslim women that covers the hair and neck, and sometimes the shoulders – reports OCMedia. The protests follow a decision by the government regulating school uniforms in state schools, which bans clothing that violates the principle of secularism.
Three thousand kilometres west of Baku, in Vienna, a student demonstration was held on 9 October to protest against a regulation which, from 1 September 2026, prohibits girls under the age of 14 from wearing head coverings in schools that, in the words of the regulation, “cover the head in accordance with Islamic traditions.”
In France, secondary school pupils have been taking to the streets to demand that shortcomings in the public education system be addressed. While the hijab may not feature among their demands, the issue can be found between the lines of the movement. The hijab has been banned in French schools since 2004. “When it comes to imposing a dress code, the state steps in immediately” says Soumaya Sarré, one of the leading figures in the French youth protest movement, in one of her Instagram videos. “But when it comes to ensuring normal conditions of education, it is completely absent.”
An election issue
Ahead of the 2027 presidential elections, the French far right has revived an old staple of its election campaigns: if the Rassemblement National (RN) comes to power, it will propose a referendum to ban the hijab in public spaces. The measure has featured in Marine Le Pen’s manifesto since 2012, and is as unenforceable as it is unconstitutional.
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In Spain in February 2026, Vox (far right) proposed to first ban the burqa and the niqab (clothing that fully cover women), followed by the hijab, in schools in the city of Burgos, one month ahead of the elections in Castile and León.
Italy is also due to hold elections in 2027. Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government has tabled a bill that adopts the terminology already in use in France, and proposes banning the burqa and niqab in the name of combatting Islamic “separatism”.
Relegating girls and women to the domestic sphere
In Austria, the ban was approved in 2025 by the governing coalition comprising conservatives, social democrats and liberals, as Austrian daily Der Standard explains. An appeal has been lodged with the Constitutional Court, which is due to rule on the matter in 2027. An initial attempt to ban the veil in schools in 2019 was rejected as “discriminatory” by the same court.
“My parents didn’t force me to wear it, or to take it off. I find it illogical that it’s a law now, or that my teachers can force me,” says Emina* to Der Standard. Like other pupils interviewed by the newspaper, Emina has found a workaround, in agreement with the school: wearing a hairband. Emina says she wears the headscarf for religious reasons, and to look like her mother.
Milana* and Aysha* also wear the headscarf for reasons that are not exclusively religious. In Aysha’s opinion, her mother looks particularly beautiful in a headscarf. Many girls like to wear make-up because their mother does, explains the 11-year-old, “and with the headscarf, it’s the same thing.”
“The effect of these laws, almost inevitably, is to confine women to the domestic sphere. The only context in which they can appear without any problems is in the neighbourhoods and spaces where their communities gather. It is precisely this that makes these laws counterproductive: they do nothing to improve the lives of the women concerned,” explains Hanane Karimi, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg and author of Les femmes musulmanes ne sont-elles pas des femmes? (“Are Muslim women not women?”, Hors d’atteinte, 2023), in Les Inrocks magazine.
Karimi says that her reflections began with a simple question regarding the situation in France: “How is it possible that, in the name of women’s rights, women are being excluded?”
Not about gender equality or the protection of women
In contrast to the French model, there is the United Kingdom’s 2010 Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. “On the one hand,” explains Leila, a 30-year-old Anglo-Pakistani civil servant living in London, “we have human rights advocates and feminists championing women’s rights, equality and freedom of choice; and yet, on the other hand, some of these very same people are vocal critics of the hijab, seemingly unwilling to extend that same freedom of choice to Muslim women.”
‘When we talk about Muslim women who wear the headscarf [...] they are not regarded as subjects of women’s rights. On the contrary, they are considered heretics’ – Hanane Karimi
In the UK, a person’s right to express their religious affiliation – including their clothing – is enshrined in law, in schools, public administrations and private companies. “The hijab is, after all, a simple piece of clothing worn by Muslim women, predominantly out of personal choice. This piece of head covering is a form of devotion between the wearer and their God. In my view, it is precisely this denial of freedom of choice that constitutes a form of oppression. This is not about gender equality or the protection of women; it is simply another form of control.”
Muslim women: a separate form of discrimination?
In 2024, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published a report on Islamophobia in 13 EU countries. According to the FRA’s data, 50% of Muslims in the EU experience discrimination in their daily lives. Among the issues highlighted by the FRA is that of religious dress: women whose clothing is recognisably Muslim face more discrimination than those who do not wear such clothing, particularly when looking for work (45% compared with 31%). This figure rises to 58% for young women (aged 16–24) who wear religious dress.
In France, women are particularly vulnerable to Islamophobic acts: according to the Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe (CCIE), they accounted for 81.5% of the victims in reports recorded by the organisation in 2023. This percentage stood at 80% in 2025. These figures are cited in the 2025 report by the French feminist and anti-racist organisation Lallab.
“The dehumanisation of Muslim women – who are supposedly not ‘women like any others’ – is deeply ingrained in the French collective consciousness. Muslim women are said to be victims of sexist beliefs from which they need to be liberated. They are not considered capable of acting for themselves or of making decisions regarding their own wellbeing,” they write.
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Nora* is a 23-year-old lawyer who lives in the Paris region. She tells that, for her, the issue of the headscarf in France “is nothing more than a communications strategy designed to divert public attention. When the headscarf is discussed, the last person to be heard – and, above all, the last person to be listened to – is the very woman who wears it.” For Nora, the debate is “frustrating. Time and energy are wasted discussing how a section of the population dresses, when there are more serious and important problems to address”.
“When we talk about Muslim women who wear the headscarf,” explains sociologist Hanane Karimi, “they are not regarded as subjects of women’s rights. On the contrary, they are considered heretics.”
Karimi cites the reflections of thinkers such as Angela Davis who have criticised US feminism – historically led by white, middle-class women –for often neglecting or marginalising the experiences of black and working-class women (see Women, Race & Class, 1981).
The headscarf and “hegemonic femininity”
“Women’s rights, as understood in Europe and France, mean emancipated women, an image of women in miniskirts.” This, explains Karimi, is “a model of values that are not neutral”, but which have a “colonial, imperial, patriarchal history.”
In her research, Karimi took as her starting point the concept of “hegemonic femininity” (previously developed by Patricia Hill Collins), which she analyses from a political perspective. “In contrast to this hegemonic femininity,” Karimi says, “there is heretical femininity. These are trans women, poor women, plus-size women, imprisoned women: all those women who are not deemed worthy of attention, who are marginalised and stigmatised. This also includes Muslim women who wear the headscarf and are subject to repressive policies.”
From a sociological perspective, Karimi points to a particularly interesting paradox that arises concerning Muslim women. “They are criticised for embodying a hegemonic femininity” within the group to which they supposedly belong (modest, devout woman—everything that, from the outside, might be associated with the concept in question). At the same time, however, they are cast in “an image of heretical femininity”. Thus, the political class accuses these women of “threatening our values” or “women’s rights”…
‘The problem for these people isn’t the piece of fabric, but who is wearing it’ – Nora
In France, the debate is particularly heated. In addition to the issue of the headscarf in schools, the country has debated banning on the burkini, the abaya in schools, or the headscarf in sport (Amnesty International has denounced the latter proposal as “discriminatory”).
“The problem for these people isn’t the piece of fabric, but who is wearing it,” says Nora. “After all, Islam isn’t the only religion in which people cover their hair. I’m thinking of nuns, Sikhs and married Orthodox Jewish women.”
The struggle of Iranian women – a valid counterpoint?
Among the arguments in this debate, supporters of the ban often cite the example of the struggle of Iranian women, particularly following the horrific death of Jina Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested and beaten by the morality police for refusing to wear the compulsory headscarf. Is this a valid counterpoint?
For lawyer and activist Chirinne Ardakani, writing in the French feminist magazine La Déferlante, “Mahsa Amini and the thousands of victims of Iran’s military theocracy have been killed twice: first by the regime in Tehran, and then again in the West, under the weight of narratives that have stripped them of their struggle against totalitarian oppression, continually emptying it of its substance.”
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According to Ardakani, “to conflate the rejection of compulsory headscarves under a theocracy that practises gender apartheid through discriminatory laws and practices with the wearing of the veil in France, where women enjoy – in theory at least – freedom of worship, freedom of expression and the right to control their own bodies, amounts to intellectual fraud of the highest order.”
What impact do these debates have on people’s lives? “It makes me feel a great deal of anxiety,” says Nora, “especially regarding my future. I wonder if one day I will have to leave my country, because it no longer wants me. [...] I am aware that wearing a headscarf does not benefit me socially. Professionally speaking, many doors are closed to me. [...] A Muslim woman who wears a headscarf does not necessarily aspire to shut herself away at home, yet society ends up stifling the ambitions of the woman who wears it.”