The Sexual Division of Labor According to Islam

The division of daily work and labor has been changing regularly and constantly from gender to gender with men and women doing different domestic and non-domestic work with the cooperation of one another. The work, in this process, is given to people based on their gender. Many believe that gender and age present the oldest labor division patterns. Furthermore, evidence shows that religious institutions which help form and restructure cultural norms, social law and conducts have a very significant impact on consolidation of sexual attitudes and roles. Islam also has a special worldview in this regard. It concedes the biological differences of men and women as well as the occupational preferences as a consequence of those differences. However, Islam also considers the difference in the adopted occupations by both men and women to be as influenced by predominant cultural situation. In this study conducted through document analysis method, effort has been made to examine Islam's perspective about sexual division of labor.