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The economy of religious merit: women and ajr in Algeria

Women's participation and visibility in the Algerian labour force is extremely low. One cultural mechanism to keep women's work out of view is to classify certain types of activities of women not as work, and their remuneration not as wages. This article analyses such a process of reclassification by looking into the gendered meanings and practices of ajr, reward from Allah, and its economic effects for women in an Algerian town. It is argued that reference to ajr has not only spiritual but also economic functions in that it effectively excludes certain types of women's work from the formal economy, makes it invisible in national statistics and brings it in line with dominant gender notions which define woman as domestic, not employed, not paid and not professional.