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Hijab in the water! Muslim women and participation in aquatic leisure activities in New Zealand: an intersectional approach

ABSTRACT Academic and policy research point to the low participation rate of Muslim women in leisure and physical activities in several Western nations and often linked the issue to their gendered subordination to patriarchal Islamic guidelines. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, online observation and self-directed photography, I challenge this view that Muslim women constitute a homogenous group who withdraw from leisure and sports merely because of religious and gender obligations. This paper aims to explore the ways Muslim women take to (non) participation in aquatic leisure activities (ALA) at the crossroads of their religious, gender, migrant and cultural identities with wider relations of power. Employing cultural geographers’ reading of ’intersectionality’, this study points to the diverse ways that Muslim women negotiate their multiple identities and the intersecting structures that shape their ALA. This article contributes to further an understanding of religious and cultural diversities among Muslim women. Muslim women’s leisure participation as spatial processes constructed through entanglements of religion and gender, with several social identifications including, cultural and migrant identities. The results show that Muslim women’s ALA are informed by intersecting power relations operating across different, yet interconnected, scales of Muslim women’s bodies, their community, families and wider society.