'Disturbing': Shashi Tharoor on reports flagging Saudi returnees’ gender bias

Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 24
Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor has responded to a social-media post highlighting a World Bank study that found return migrants to Kerala from Saudi Arabia tended to hold more conservative attitudes towards gender-based violence and more extreme views concerning physical violence against women.

“These are disturbing reports,” Tharoor said in his response, warning that the findings raised questions about the influence of conservative social attitudes acquired overseas.

Tharoor said Kerala had long been home to a liberal, progressive practice of Islam, which he said was fully in tune with the coexistence and communal harmony prevalent across the state.

He also pointed to Kerala’s record of educating Muslim girls and women to the same levels as boys and men.

“The import of conservative and even reactionary attitudes and customs from abroad, as suggested by this report, is fundamentally at variance with what Kerala has long been about,” he said, calling for serious introspection and internal discussion within the Muslim community.

The post to which Tharoor responded referred to findings from a World Bank study examining whether migration to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries had influenced gender norms among return migrants in Kerala.

The study found a marked difference between returnees from Saudi Arabia and those returning from the Gulf region as a whole.

Compared with people who had no migration experience, returnees from Saudi Arabia displayed attitudes towards gender-based violence that were three standard deviations more conservative.

The study's findings also indicate more conservative attitudes regarding the perpetration of physical violence against women among Saudi returnees compared with those with no migration experience.

Interestingly, the broader category of migrants returning from the Gulf showed the opposite pattern.

The research, conducted under the World Bank's Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice, examines the social consequences of migration beyond the substantial economic benefits generated by Gulf remittances.

The researchers caution that the findings establish an association rather than proving that migration to Saudi Arabia itself causes conservative attitudes.

But the study's findings, and Tharoor's response to the post drawing attention to them, have opened a potentially sensitive conversation in Kerala about the social and cultural influence of Gulf migration and whether attitudes acquired abroad are being carried back into the state.