ISLAM AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS OF EDUCATION: MANDATORY OR FORBIDDEN

Women have been subjected to marginalization and various kinds of discrimination since ancient times, including the right of education. It was only in the late 20th century that women were allowed formal education. However, in today’s world, many rights given to women by Islam are still denied, including education. The famous hadith “acquisition of knowledge is binding on all Muslims” makes it clear that education in Islam is equally important, irrespective of the sex. However, in many other religions and cultures, there is this misconception that Islam restricts women education and many other rights. This paper will use the two authentic sources (Quran and Hadith) to review status of women education in particular and women rights in general to shed light on this controversial issue. This study will probe into the reasons behind interpretations of Islamic teachings in this context. It concludes that Islam doesn’t restrict women from getting education. It will also briefly explore the current situation of women education in Pakistan, and presents ways to improve their education standards.

Ambiguity in identification of peer-reviewed publications in the Finnish and Flemish performance-based research funding systems

In performance-based research funding systems evidence of peer review is often considered a requirement for publications to be included. Originating from the sciences, pre-publication peer review is very common in the publishing process, also in the social sciences and humanities. Sometimes, however, it is ambiguous whether a publication is peer-reviewed or not. In this contribution, we analyse the ambiguity in identifying a journal’s or publication’s peer-review status by comparing the classification of journals in Finland and Flanders, and by taking stock of Finnish authors’ reporting of peer-review status of publications. We find that ambiguity in terms of peer review status is rather common, especially in the humanities. Indeed, we find differences in peer review status in about 10 per cent of all cases, both when comparing Finland and Flanders, and when comparing author-reported and centralised identification of peer-review status.