In Denmark, Muslim Women Unveil Their Ambitions

COPENHAGEN -- As a young woman, Dane Ayan Mouhoumed envied the freedom of her brother and wrote an op-ed in a Danish newspaper saying she wished she'd been born a boy. Being a girl prevented her from living freely and doing the things she wanted to do while growing up in a Danish immigrant neighborhood. But today, the 34-year-old says she is very happy to be a woman.

"I totally changed my mind," she says, flashing her white teeth in a confident smile. "Danish women with Muslim roots are very successful in Denmark. We are sprinting forward. We do well in education, get good jobs and are outspoken in the media."

Mouhoumed, whose parents are Somali, is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ethnica Magazine, which covers politics and culture. Last summer, she graduated from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. By all accounts, she's on track to a successful life.

Mouhoumed is an epitome of young Danish Muslim women who are inspired and to some extent sculpted by Scandinavian gender equality. They are taking advantage of education and career opportunities. Many of these women are challenging the patriarchal aspects of their culture and embracing Scandinavian institutions where gender equity is the norm.

In Evangelical Lutheran Denmark, Muslims are the largest religious minority, making up about 4 percent of the population. Danish immigrants with a non-Western background primarily come from five countries with majority Muslim populations: Turkey, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran and Pakistan. While Denmark has at times had a tense relationship with its Muslim minority -- Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in 2005 ignited global protests -- many young Muslim women in Denmark say they feel fortunate to live in the country.

From 2006 to 2015, the number of 20- to 24-year-old female immigrants and their descendants with a non-Western background at Danish universities went from about 3 percent to about 5 percent. The equivalent number for Danish young women is 4.3 percent, according to data from the Danish Ministry of Foreigners, Integration and Housing.

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Some Muslim women are driven students because they see university as an escape route, explained Susanne Fabricius, project coordinator from Ethnic Youth, an organization that offers counseling to young Danes. "University offers them a break from the family," she says. "They can escape duties, social control and pressure to get married, for example."

Ninety-two percent of immigrant girls and their descendants are expected to get an education beyond nine years of primary school, almost the same rate as Danish girls, according to Danish government data.

In the religious realm, too, Muslim women are asserting their independence. In February, some Danish Muslim women made inroads into what is traditionally male-dominated territory by opening Scandinavia's first female-only mosque in Copenhagen.

"Many women and young people don't attend the mosques because they feel that they enter a male-dominated patriarchic room," says Sherin Khankan, one of the two female imams who want to give Muslim women equal rights.

But education and religion are just two of the lanes where Danish women of non-Western descent, many of them Muslim, are making headway.

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One of the characteristics of the new generation is that many young women now choose their own partner, says Khaterah Parwani, a Danish citizen of Afghan descent and deputy chairwoman and judicial adviser of the Exit Circle. The organization counsels Muslim women who have experienced violence or unwanted religious social control.

"It's really an uprising against the old structures that many women choose their own mate," says Parwani, a well-known commentator. "And if they are unhappy, they leave him."

The rate of divorce is rising in Danish immigrant societies. From 2011 to 2014, divorces among immigrants and their descendants rose 34 percent from 2,029 to 3,053, according to numbers from Statistics Denmark.

While the experience of divorce can be particularly challenging for many immigrant women -- leaving them poor and physically isolated -- it also gives them a necessary escape route from unhappy marriages, says attorney Hanne Søndergaard Jensen. In 2014, Jensen wrote a report for The Danish National Centre for Social Research on divorce in immigrant families.

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"When we did the analysis of the numbers in the report, we concluded, 'We are really witnessing a small female uprising here,'" she says.

But there is still a lot of progress for immigrant women to be made, says Geeti Amiri, a blogger at the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. Amiri was born in Afghanistan but grew up in Denmark and is a Danish citizen.

"Female immigrants' success in education and their economical freedom shouldn't dwarf the fact that there are still huge problems in immigrant societies," she says. In the Muslim community in particular, she says, many still expect women to be virgins before they get married and to adhere to strict social codes. "It's obvious that men still have the upper hand."

While more female immigrants may be heading to university, not all are finishing. "There's a tendency for immigrant women and their descendants to skip studies before they are finished to a larger degree than non-immigrant Danish women, at least at vocational education," says Hans Hummelgaard, head of the Quality and Efficiency Department at the Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government Research. And the unemployment rate among immigrant women and their descendants is still much higher than among Danish women, according to data from Statistics Denmark.

But the important thing to remember, says Parwani, the commentator, is that previous barriers have been broken.

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Parwani left the Danish immigrant neighborhood where she grew up and now lives alone in Copenhagen in a light, tidy apartment, which would have been unheard of a few years back. She has a boyfriend and is about to publish a collection of essays with a leading Danish publisher.

"When I grew up, I saw the women around me living traditional roles -- cooking and servicing men," she says. "I thought, 'I'm never ever going to live like that.' I and many other women rebelled against the structural restrictions of our backgrounds. And we are going to give birth to a new generation with even more freedom than us."

Louise Stigsgaard Nissen is a journalist covering Scandinavia. She was previously based in New York, Jerusalem and Beirut and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She will publish her first novel this summer. You can find her on Twitter.