Family, Religion, and Multiculturalism: Challenging Implications on Women's Economic Behavior

Yaghoob Foroutan, Australian National University

This paper examines competing influences of religion and family characteristics in women’s economic behavior in Australia’s multicultural context. Using special tabulations of the 2001 full census data and logistic regression, multivariate analyses in this paper will reveal how important the implications of family characteristics (couple status, presence of child and age of child at home, partner’s income) and religion (Islamic affiliation) are on women’s work. The multicultural and multiethnic setting of this research also enables us to assess the notion of whether women’s (inferior) status in Islamic context is influenced by values associated with gender roles derived from religion itself as women under this investigation came from socio-culturally and economically diverse parts of the world. Furthermore, challenging implications of family and religion are explored in comparison with those characteristics highlighted in assimilation and human capital approaches (migration characteristics including duration of residence in the destination society, individual investments including education, English competence).