Anthropology

France prides itself on being a Republic that embraces universal values such as equality, liberty and fraternity without regard to the gender or ethnicity of its citizens (Fernando 300). As such, France is quick to oust any society that does not follow the sames social norms as it does.  This creates an  Us  versus  Them  mentality that pits one segment of the population that is a part of French society,  Us  against another segment of the French population,  Them,  that does not fully belong although they live France, too. This is the situation that the French government, puts the head scarf wearing Muslim women in because they are trying to force other cultures that dwell within its borders to conform to its ideals even as the French government themselves do not fully embrace their own ideals of gender equality. The French government did not want to address the fact that French society still does not accept women as equals and tried to deflect attention from that by focusing on the perceived oppression of the head scarf wearing Muslim women.

France asserts that the teachings of Islam oppress women by forcing them to keep their bodies, as well as their heads, covered. According to France, the wearing of the head scarf oppresses women because it forces them to maintain a conservative nature without embracing their sexuality since much of their heads are covered. The womens beauty is then not accessible to the rest of society.

The official French stance on sexuality and sex itself is that there are no political or social ramifications from their existence. Joan Scott points out the hypocrisy of that stance, however, She states that sex has proven to be a troubling aspect of that all important cornerstone of French republicanism, individualism. She pointedly asks,  if we are all the same, why has sexual difference been such an obstacle to real equality  (155)

French society did not work to assimilate the immigrants  This is evident by the French governments decision to corralled together in one region that was dominated by substandard housing and lackluster infrastructure. This community provided for some, but not all, of the needs of its residents. The children of the immigrants were frequently singled out at the schools as being beneath those children that were perceived to be the native French (Amara 49).

The fathers of the immigrant families and traditionally head of the household, worked at their factory jobs while the mothers stayed at home (Amara 55).This is culturally acceptable by Muslims, as with many other cultures, even among those who immigrate to countries who support a more equality based social system such as France. Muslims traditionally require women to remain covered in a conservative fashion in order to not excite men and, therefore, risk her honor being compromised due to unwanted advances. 

Fadela Amara states that due in large part to her organization, some freedom from violence, as well as equality for women living in the projects, was achieved by the mid 1980s. Unfortunately, this began to change with the economic downturn experienced by France, and the world, in the early 1990s. The men of the immigrant families lost their jobs first. Because so much of their identity hinges on their jobs and their roles as breadwinners, when they lost their jobs, they also lost a significant source of their identity (Amara 62-62).
By early 2000, with most immigrant fathers absent from their families, the boys from the immigrant families began to feel oppressed by French society, and their inability to find a place within that society. They reacted by retreating from the mainstream French society, much as their fathers did before them. However, unlike their fathers who retreated to their work by day and their homes, by night, these young men, when they realized they could never obtain power like those men of non immigrant status when out in French society, instead retreated to the suburbs. There they acted as overlords, or as a sort of pimp, of the young girls and women who lived in their homes and in the surrounding ghetto neighborhoods. The job of the young men was purported to be to protect the honor of the women within the neighborhood. This gave these young men an avenue in which to exercise their power while placing limits on womens behavior and whereabouts (Amara 62-64).

Mayanthi Fernando asserts that although women such as Amara, and others like her, were successful in calling the Muslim women to action in order to overthrow their oppressive bonds, the French government has used these women to shift the focus of that oppression away from the real social problems that are so prevalent in the ghettos, such as overcrowded schools, social segregation, delinquency, unemployment, and drug and gang violence, and instead focused on those that followed the teachings of fundamental Islamics, including their oppression of women, as the problem (Mayanthi, 294), Women, and their bodies, have been exploited and manipulated throughout history. When the headscarf debate exploded in France politics, Amara first sided with allowing women to wear a headscarf when in a public venue, thinking that those women would soon realize how oppressed they were by being told they had to wear them. Upon further reflection, however, she decided that a ban of the headscarf was needed by French society in order to promote the Republic ideals of France which included equality between the sexes. Without a head scarf covering her head, a Muslim women would be able to revel in, and embrace her sexuality.

Amara became somewhat of a poster child for the French government as she was displayed as being the epitome of what a poor female from an immigrant family can accomplish when French universalism is embraced. Indeed, as Fernando points out, when placed on stage next to Muslim women who are dressed in a traditional manner, French politicians, as has been embraced throughout history, again used womens bodies as examples of the success of the Republics ideal, in the case of Amara and others like her, or the failure of not integrating, as is the case of the traditionally dressed Muslim women (Mayanthi, 298).

Joan Scott, in her essay entitled, Sexuality, notes that, in general, French feminists denounced the exhibitionist way of dressing that their society had embraced, particularly in regards to women before the controversy over the wearing of a headscarf as demeaning to women came to light. The covering of a womans body came to denote oppression so the logical foil was to adopt a more liberal approach to clothing for women. For now, less clothing seemed to equal more freedom for women while more clothing seemed to equal less. In the same vein, France seeks to present a gender equal society, and, as such, denounces the oppression that is seemingly imposed on women by the teachings of the Islamic faith

For the Muslim women who chose to wear head coverings, or otherwise dress in a more modest manner, by French standards, they were demonstrating that by their very lack of conformity to what the French had decided was the ideal for women, they were  by definition inferior and, therefore, could never be fully French  (Scott). The French governments insistence on defining women by what they wear and how they act pitted the immigrants against the government and perpetuated the  Us  versus  Them  mentality and they could not become French without becoming like everyone else.

The insistence by the Muslim women to be able to wear a headscarf, as Scott notes, brought to the forefront of politics  ...the difficulties posed by sexuality and revealed more than republicans wanted to see about the limits of their own system  of equality (154).

France used the visual of the head scarf wearing Muslim women as compared to those women of France that did not cover their heads as the reason for Muslims from being able to fully integrate into French society. For the French government, the wearing of a headscarf or veil acknowledges that women and men are different sexually and, furthermore, it makes such differences conspicuous (Scott 172). In spite of the ban on the wearing of the head scarf in public, Muslim women are not suddenly seen as equals.

Unlike the French, Muslims chose to acknowledge the differences rather than pretend that they do not exist even as both societies limit the freedoms that women can access. Hypocritically, France used the headscarf debate to bring to light the Muslim oppression of women while trying to deflect the accusations of the same type of treatment that is afforded French women by parading secular immigrant women that were to demonstrate the true nature of a French woman. The United Kingdom has a stance similar to Frances. This stance of conformity or nothing has alienated the Muslim community.