and legal sanctions. These women and their activities are labeled shameful, illegitimate or illegal. This fact hinders urban poor women’s participation in the non-traditional vocational workforce despite their skills or desire. The reinforcement of these new relations is instilled in current and future generations therefore ensuring that these new gendered practices continue and are normalized.
TRANSITIONING INTO EMPLOYMENT By controlling women’s conduct in the public sphere, the state tries to promote the idea of a model woman citizen on the basis of religious morality. 25 These moral assumptions act to suppress and confine women by using religious morality and national tradition.26 An understanding of this demonstrates how women’s entry into vocational education and employment is not only hindered by the need to conform to traditional forms of femininity but also to state-defined definitions of religious morality and modesty.
“I went around to a number of shops in the industrial area looking for a job. I got laughed at and asked if I knew of the foul language and general culture of the industrial area. I was told repeatedly that it is no place for a woman. I told them I didn’t care about the language used. I just wanted to work. One man told me I would be bad for business and that, “customers won’t come to a shop where women are working.” Another employer responded to my request for work with, “istaghfarallah” (God Forgive me/you). I responded, “Why, did I say something sinful?”27 (Selma Awad Alkareem, BGS participant)
Women participants say that it is difficult to find jobs. They often have to deal with negative reactions to their eagerness to work in a specific field. Despite being well trained, women find that employers are skeptical about their capabilities. BGS participants are aware that their training must be supplemented with more practice in the field. To this end, a number of women have made attempts to train at workshops to prove their capabilities to employers28 and to indicate their dedication to pursuing careers in their respective vocations. However, as Selma noted, “The idea of women working at open mechanic shops in particular, is met with laughter, deemed
25 Hale, S. (1999). Mothers and militias: Islamic state construction of the women citizens of Northern Sudan. Citizenship Studies, 3(3), 373-386. 26 Nugdalla, S. (2020) The Revolution Continues: Sudanese Women’s Activism. In Gender Protests, and Political Change in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan Publishing. 27
FGD, Khartoum, Women Participants, January 6th 2020
28
Ibid.
Negotiating Space: Sudanese Women’s access to Vocational Education & Employment
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