MONTREAL ― Dalila Awada is studying in the hopes of one day become a school teacher, but she is loathe to take any lessons from the Quebec government’s proposed values charter.

Premier Pauline Marois’s Parti Québécois wants to adopt new rules that would instill equality of the sexes in the province, bolster the Québécois identity and underline the religious neutrality of the state by banning public servants from wearing symbols of their faith in the workplace.

Awada and other Muslim women who wear the religious headscarf in Quebec have become the focus of feminist arguments in the divisive debate.

On one side is the argument that since all religions are patriarchal, the veil is an intolerable reminder of female oppression. The other side is a more practical, pro-choice faction where the greater discrimination is forcing a woman to choose between her faith and the economic independence provided by her job.

MORE FROM THESTAR.COM

MPPS support motion on religious freedom and expression in Ontario

PQ deserves stiff pushback on values charter: Editorial

PQ has driven a wedge within its own ranks: Hébert

For the vast majority of Quebecers, including politicians and those who live in the more homogenous regions of the province, the PQ’s values charter is an abstract question about societal ideals and principles. For Awada, a 23-year-old born-and-raised Quebecer, the menace is more concrete.

“I’ll have to reconsider some of my future plans,” said the student at Université du Québec à Montréal. “For example I’d like to be a teacher . . . So, yes, this touches me and it’s upsetting because I have to put aside many of my ambitions because they may not be possible.”

Former PQ minister Louise Beaudoin has been the most outspoken Quebec feminist in support of the charter and has been advocating for years that even school students be banned from wearing religious symbols.

Quebec’s Conseil du Statut de la Femme also took the harder-line position that religious symbols should be banned across the public sector in a 2011 report

With the introduction of the PQ government’s values charter, whatever split there may have been in the women’s movement has become a sizeable fracture. It could be months still before the debate on the proposition is definitively addressed in the provincial legislature and even longer before the divide among feminists is healed.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Ask Solange Lefebvre whether a woman can advance if forced to choose between her job and her faith, even if a ban on religious clothing would only apply during work hours, and the answer is clear.

“Of course not,” says the theologian at Université de Montréal who has closely studied Quebec’s reasonable accommodation debate for years.

“What is going to guarantee the integration of all these people? Is it a ban? It’s work, it’s school, participation in societal debates while respecting the people have different religious beliefs.”

In the case of Dania Suleman, 25, it’s not even a question of integration. She is one month away from becoming a lawyer. She’s working on her Master’s degree while also working at the Montreal courthouse ― and she can debate feminist theory with ease. And she says those lawmakers who would have her remove her hijab at work are treating Muslim women like children.

Judy Rebick, the feminist author and activist, says the split in feminist viewpoints is between a more rigid line of thought inspired by French feminists, which has served as an inspiration for a segment Quebec’s women’s movement, and the more openly diverse North American women’s movement.

“My view is that a woman who wears a hijab in North America is choosing to do so usually,” she said.

Read more about: