‘Not for the sake of work’: Politico-religious women's spatial negotiations in Turkey and India

SynopsisIn this article we examine how two politico-religious women's groups, Islamist women from Turkey and Hindu-nationalist women from India, negotiate for space within religious belief systems that regulate gender status and relations. Using interviews and documentary data from Turkey and India we argue that Turkish Islamist and Hindu-nationalist women become “moral subjects” through work in the public space, whether paid or unpaid , because they define their work as service to community. Paradoxically, the agency in the material spaces of work is achieved only by denying the selfhood in the discursive space of religion.