Women should be free to wear the burqa

Fred Nile, Cori Bernardi, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the ultra-nationalist Northern League in Italy are hardly champions of women's rights.

But they all have an interest in distracting increasingly angry people who see their savings and jobs disappear, and their services, pensions and pay cut - all in the name of "progress". These politicians seek to channel people's anger against the Muslim minority.

If these politicians were indeed interested in women's rights, wouldn't they be pushing for equal pay, reproductive freedom, more services and equal marriage rights?

And if they were really interested in stopping women from having to wear the burqa wouldn't they be stopping, instead of supporting, the 10-year-long war Afghanistan where women's rights are going from bad to worse?

Wouldn't they be calling a halt to support for the corrupt Afghan president's deal-making with the same fundamentalists who force women to wear burqas in Afghanistan?

But what about those so-called feminists who support the burqa ban?

Journalist Virginia Haussegger is wrong. She is either wittingly or unwittingly assisting the far right in its Islamophobic campaign. And she is loose with the truth when she quotes Afghan feminist Malalai Joya in her defence.

Malalai Joya is not a supporter of the burqa, but she has made it very clear that neither does she support the West bringing in a ban. She says the West's focus on the burqa is misplaced and serves to trivialise the war against the people of Afghanistan in which women bear the brunt of that disaster.

So, what next?

Feminists have fought long and hard against the state determining what we should, and what we should not wear. Let's not make an exception for a tiny number of women who already have to live in a society where anti-Muslim prejudice is so rife.

Self-determination is key. The state can and should do a lot more to assist in acceptance of diversity: education, the teaching of different languages, real resources into welfare and employment opportunities with equal pay are the key drivers in this emancipation for women.

Laws already exist to stop those physically coercing women into wearing burqas. The social, psychological and religious pressures to wear certain things and behave in certain ways certainly exists. But anyone who thinks that simply by passing a law that pressure will go is naive.