Gender differences in Islamic religiosity and gender role values

Departing from the debate about the influence of religiosity in general, and Islamic religiosity in particular, on gender role values, this contribution examines the association between religiosity and gender role values among men and women of the Turkish and Moroccan second generation in Belgium. We firstly derive a theoretical model of Islamic religiosity consisting of religious identification, (partly gender specific) religious practices and orthodox beliefs. We subsequently test whether this theoretical model is equivalent across genders and across two ethnic groups drawing on survey data from the Belgian TIES-project (The Integration of the European Second generation). In a second step, we analyse the association between Islamic religiosity and gender role values and again we examine whether there are gender and ethnic differences in this association. Taking a host of control variables into account (age, education, employment status, marital status, religious socialisation), the analysis reveals no significant ethnic differences. More importantly, we find only weak negative correlations between Islamic religiosity and more egalitarian gender values; moreover, this association is stronger for men and practically absent for women.  These results contradict the hypothesis that higher levels of Islamic religiosity necessarily go together with more traditional and less egalitarian gender role values and they highlight the importance of taking gender differences into account when analysing this question among Muslim minorities in Europe.