Abstract: Muslim women wearing simple headscarves (hijab) have been at the center of intense public scrutiny for several decades in many European countries, and they experience widespread ordinary forms of gendered and racialized discrimination. This study of veiled Muslim women’s reported experiences of stigmatization in France and Switzerland identifies types of interactions that are conceptualized as pedagogies of coloniality. These interactions follow similar scripts in which interlocutors, who are members of the majority group, ask hijabi women to unveil or to veil differently even though it is not legally required in the context of the interaction. This presentation will explore the intersection and articulation of sexism and Islamophobia, as well as class and age, as necessary components enabling the negotiations to submit and discipline veiled Muslim women. It will detail the various processes of otherization at play, and the hierarchies that these interactions attempt to enforce and maintain, including between women.

Bio: Eléonore Lépinard is Professor in gender studies at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne. Her main areas of research are in the fields of feminist movements and theory, gender and law, intersectionality, and gender and political representation. Her second monograph, Feminist Trouble: Intersectional Politics in Post-Secular Times (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores the reconfigurations of feminist movements in France and Québec in the context of debates on Islamic veiling and femonationalism. She is also the author; in French, of a monograph on the French parity reform (L'égalité introuvable: les féministes, la parité et la République, Presses de Sciences po, 2007), of an introduction to feminist theories (Les théories en études de genre, with Marylène Lieber, La Découverte 2020), and of two cross-over books for a larger public: Pour l’intersectionnalité (with Sarah Mazouz, 2021) and Féminisme (2024), both published with Anamosa Press. She is also the co-editor of a comparative volume on gender quotas in Europe, Transforming Gender Citizenship. The irresistible rise of gender quotas in Europe (with Ruth Rubio-Marin, Cambridge University Press, 2018), and another one on how social movements address and practice intersectionality - Intersectionality in feminist and queer movements: challenging privileges (with Elizabeth Evans, Routledge 2020).

Global France Seminar, sponsored by Lit@MIT, French+, WGS, Global Languages 
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