Women Between a Rock and a Hard Place: State Neutrality vs. EU Anti-Discrimination Mandates in the German Headscarf Debate

Although it guarantees individual religious freedom and the inviolability of “human dignity,” the German Basic Law also infers the principle ofstate neutralityregarding the exercise of religious freedom in public life and civil service domains. TheLänder(states), however, enjoy substantial discretion in matters of religion and education, which has led to major divisions as to whetherMuslimas(Muslim women) can wear headscarves aspublicemployees. In 2006 Berlin adopted its own Neutrality Law (Berliner Neutralitätsgesetz) prohibiting religious attire among teachers, judges, and police. Within weeks, the city-state's first anti-discrimination officer was overwhelmed with new discrimination cases involving private sector employers as well. This essay examines the tensions and paradoxes inherent in Berlin's efforts to uphold religious “neutrality” among civil servants while also meeting the requirements of Germany's General Equal Treatment Act and three recent EU Directives 2000/43/EC, 2000/78/EC, and 2002/73/EG), addressing race, religion and equal treatment in employment, respectively. This article argues that the Neutrality Law not only violates national and supranational anti-discrimination regulations but that local officials are actually drawing upon the latter to undermine the enforcement of their own statute, in the hope that it will be repealed.

‘Is the Headscarf Oppressive or Emancipatory?’ Field Notes from the Multicultural Debate

This essay examines the discursive contours of the multicultural debate in Europe, and the ways in which it is cast in gendered terms. It does so by investigating one particular albeit highly contentious issue, notably the headscarf controversy. In recent years, this sartorial practice has turned into an important object of debate and controversy in various Western European countries, often structured around the question ‘is the headscarf oppressive or emancipatory?’. Rather than engaging substantially with this question, or with the various meanings or significations of hijab as a sartorial practice, we seek to reflect upon the performative effects of this question, and do so more specifically in the Belgian context. What kind of imaginaries does the headscarf debate in general, and this question in particular, limit or shape? And what kinds of speeches and actions does it enable or conceal? We argue that the headscarf debate is functional to the constitution of a specific idea of ‘neutrality’ on the one hand, and of an ‘emancipated gender identity’ (agency) on the other, which is primarily grasped in liberal and secular terms (through the language of ‘rights’). More than simply tracing the performative effects of this discussion, we also try to account for the possibilities of overcoming these discursive conditionalities and the capacity of rendering other forms of agency intelligible.