Is feminism relevant to British Muslim women?

We refuse to make an honest assessment of the problems as well as the successes of Western feminism

The invasion may be abstract, but it is none the less shocking for that. David Blunkett has burst unannounced into peaceful living rooms up and down the country and berated unsuspecting mothers because they're not, in the privacy of their own homes, communicating with their children in quite the manner he thinks they ought to be.

Alarming as this sort of unexpected encounter must be anyway, it can only have been made all the more upsetting because the women in question surely wouldn't have been able to understand a word the Home Secretary was saying. Were matters helped by the sight of Tony Blair grinning and nodding encouragingly from behind Mr Blunkett's elbow? Or did this merely add to the impression – not so very unrealistic – that this must be a major international incident directly linked to the plans and wishes of George Bush?

Anyway, no wonder everyone at all concerned has reacted to the onslaught with rising hysteria. It's the rude intrusion into private life that is the frightener. The nation has already been extensively briefed, after all, on how Mr Blunkett wants all immigrants arriving in Britain to attend English classes. And really, there are no compelling arguments against such a move.

Refusing to co-operate, at least in principle, would be like insisting in Sainsbury's that you wanted the 25-per-cent-extra-free taken out of the can right now, and let the rest of the queue go hang. Of course speaking the language of your adopted country is sensible, while not speaking it necessarily imposes limits on life.

Not everyone sees things that way, as it happens. But one thing is certain. It's not so much the learning of English that has inspired this new wave of righteous outrage as the impertinent advice on exactly when and to whom she should be spoke. Mr Blunkett should look on the bright side and console himself that his integration project continues apace. If an Englishman's home is his castle, then the third of Asian families who are feeling the edge of Mr Blunkett's tongue are every inch his fellow citizens.

Except it is not the men Mr Blunkett is concerned about. Just as the West is considerably more impatient for Afghan women to throw off their burqas than they are themselves, he is ultra-keen for British Muslim women to throw off the confining swaddles of home and family and engage a bit more with the wider issues of this corner of the Western world.

Unfortunately, though, many of these women, for reasons that no doubt seem legitimate enough to them, are fairly reluctant to be championed in this way. Which may suggest that, once they are familiar with communication in the English tongue, they are just as likely to join the chorus telling Mr Blunkett to mind his own business than to thank him nicely for introducing them so forcefully to the idea that the personal is political.

And who is to say, categorically, that they are entirely misguided? Not, it turns out, that beacon of female liberation, the Cosmo girl – who you might have expected to have made a fuss. She, or 51 per cent of her number anyway, claims in new research to feel "bored or hopeless" when she thinks about the future. Only 3 per cent of 1,001 women questioned in the survey considered work to be the most important thing in their lives, while 78 per cent of the 20-35 year-olds cited family as a source of happiness.

The editor of Cosmopolitan, Lorraine Candy, said the results surprised her at first. Then she came to a conclusion: "It was because they were strong and independent that they were unhappy. The very independence and equality our mums fought for has made us believe we have to do everything single-handedly."

And those women who are doing everything single-handedly, how is it for them? An analysis of 100 pieces of research carried out over the past 20 years suggests that it is pretty difficult for them. Women bringing up families alone appear to have children with a higher chance of death as babies and a greater likelihood of unemployment, homelessness or imprisonment as adults.

These children are also more at risk of poverty, poor health, unhappiness and poor performance at school, sexual or physical abuse, running away from home, heavy drinking and smoking, drug-taking, falling into crime, early sex, sexually transmitted infections and teenage parenthood. Children without fathers are twice as likely to be in low-income homes.

Such grim news is a godsend to the traditional-values mob, who sidestep the fact that the same children might be just as miserably unhappy if an abusive two-parent household had managed to stay the course and suggest that such simple and simplistic remedies as tax breaks for married couples would transform society.

But at the same time I do think there is something in their accusations – there is something unhealthy in the political neglect that greets all bad news about the life chances of the children of single parents. The right silences the centre-left by banging on about the evils of political correctness, pandering to the ideas of feminism and the "alternative" lifestyle, which leads the centre-left to insist that the way in which families are run is not the state's concern (unless, of course, they're trying to shave a few bob off the benefits bill).

And, indeed, the invasiveness of Mr Blunkett's most recent pronouncements on one particular (and non-feminist) alternative lifestyle tend to suggest that there is something in this. How can it be that parenting issues are given such a wide berth in general terms, but can be addressed so critically and so personally when it comes to Muslim families?

I think this little episode shines a bright light on two important and connected shibboleths that the Western liberal élite seems barely aware that it holds. One is the degree to which we focus on gender issues alone when allowing ourselves to vocalise what is actually a far more generalised distrust of Islam. The other is our refusal to stand back and make an honest assessment of the problems as well as successes of Western feminism.

As far as the former is concerned, I am increasingly aware that I have read and heard educated Muslim women going on and on about how non-fundamentalist Islam is good for women in ways that Western feminism is not, and never, never, really believed them. Since they keep on having to make the same points again and again, I think I can assume that I'm not the only one who has been dismissing all they have to say out of hand.

As for the latter, I think perhaps there's an even tighter herd instinct busily denying all experience that doesn't chime with the personal. There's no doubt that feminism has been good for the middle classes, including the political ones – with many couples reaping the benefits of two incomes. Tony Blair's own family, after all, is an example of the successful post-feminist unit.

But of the more vulnerable, feminism has demanded a degree of independence that is, under tougher circumstances, hard to cope with. When Muslim women, from behind their chadors, perhaps even from behind their interpreters, keep taking the time to insist that not all aspects of female liberation in the West are necessarily appealing to them, it might be worth thinking about such viewpoints a bit more deeply.

d.orr@independent.co.uk