Behind the hijab: Australasian optometry today
Shereen Kassir

Behind the hijab: Australasian optometry today

June 25, 2019 Layal Naji

Aboriginal women’s right activist Lilla Watson once said, ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.’

This was one of the earliest recorded stands for intersectionality, a framework that supports the belief that all aspects of social identity, such as gender, ethnic background, religion and class, are woven together. But until ‘context specific’ enquiries are made and evaluated, inequities within these social determinants remain.

Being an Australian optometrist of Iraqi descent and a woman, and in-light of the recent atrocities in Christchurch, I wanted to examine how these social determinants are viewed in optometry in our part of the world. So, I discussed this conundrum with four female colleagues, all Australian, all young Muslim women of colour (WOC), to reveal a little of what it is like to be them, the changing attitudes towards Muslim WOC in optometry and what still needs to be improved upon.

THE PANEL

Shereen Kassir - Shereen graduated from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2014. She was awarded a Summer Vacation Research Scholarship allowing her to assist with research into the properties of retinal cells in retinitis pigmentosa at the Centre for Eye Health. Her final year honours research project studied the effect of peripheral refraction on detection ability in high myopes. She currently divides her time between locuming and her Instagram/YouTube blog where she shares her journeys in optometry, fashion and motherhood with an audience of nearly 10,000 followers.

Homma Ebrahimi - Homma also graduated from UNSW in 2014 and is now a Specsavers store director, running a busy practice and improving access to eye care in her community through her involvement with the Newtown Asylum Seeker Centre.

Heba Raad – Heba graduated in 2015, has undertaken research into how to improve asylum seekers’ access to eye care and healthcare, and is a practising optometrist with special interest in dry eye management and shared care in ocular pathology.

Samiha Islam – Samiha is a final year optometry student at UNSW undertaking placements at various locations within Australia and New Zealand.

FROM THEIR EXPERIENCE…

What’s your experience of being an Australasian Muslim WOC in optometry?

Heba: As an Arab, Muslim and female optometrist, I’ve had patients mistake me for the optometrists’ wife or, better yet, ask me when the ‘doctor’ was coming after I’ve finished the eye test. I’ve had patients assume I have an inability to speak English and then looked shocked when I speak eloquently, and I’ve had patients who think it’s appropriate to ask me, ‘where are you from?’ during the consultation. I reply, ‘Australia, mate’. They respond: ‘No... but where are you from?’

‘Uh... Australia...’

‘But originally... where are you FROM?’

‘If you mean what my heritage is, I’m Lebanese. Otherwise I’m a shrimp-on-the-barbie kinda Aussie!’

While funny and trivial seeming situations, this has still left me on the receiving end of racism, prejudice and misogyny in the workplace.

Homma: In my earliest days of optometry practice I had some unsavoury experiences. One practice I worked in had four female Muslim employees (myself included), two with a hijab and two without. One response we got to our non-anonymous feedback form, where we asked our patients if there was something we could do to improve, was, ‘Yes. I know it is discriminating but too many Muslims working there.’ I was really taken aback by the confidence of the patient to say something so offensive and discriminatory. Another experience I had, was when I approached a patient for testing and they exclaimed to my colleague, ‘I’m not going in with her. It’s written in her books, people like her will kill me!’ This was, of course, an outlier experience; the person was irrational and ignorant, but it was difficult to shake off the heaviness from my shoulders for the rest of the day.

Samiha: While doing one of my placements, I encountered an elderly female who asked me many questions about Islam, mainly surrounding her preconceived ideas about Muslim women in general. She asked me whether I only see female patients and was very surprised when I said, ‘no’. My response was, ‘I see and welcome whoever comes to me, whether it be male or female, and I have no problem with it. I take a lot of pride in the job I do.’

She also asked me if I had any educated females in my family and again was very surprised by my response which was, ‘Yes. There are many educated females in my family such as my sister who is a vet, my cousin who is a doctor, my aunt who has an MBA and my grandmother who worked as a secretary in the government until she retired.’

After our brief conversation, however, it seemed like her view towards Muslim women had changed.

Shereen: Yes, being a WOC and Muslim puts you in a strange intersection where you face naive ignorance from both a traditional village-type school of thought - such as being asked by people of my ethnic background, if I am a receptionist - and from being the ‘unknown’, where people feel it’s appropriate to ask about my marriage rights and religious beliefs in the workplace. I’ve also experienced assumptions about my upbringing and the education level of my family, and been asked if I have to be chaperoned by my husband outside. 

Although this sometimes feels like a burden where I have to have an additional dimension of patience and provide a layman’s explanation for what I seemingly represent, I have learnt to see this aspect of my job as a gateway for change and self-awareness for my patients. Being confronted with what they have asked me can often act as a mirror for helping people realise the potentially negative impact of their questions and remarks.


How have things changed for Muslim WOC in optometry?

Shereen: A few years ago, I attended a conference where a practice director was looking for an optometrist to hire and mentor. I enquired about the role and he said he didn’t think I would be suitable due to the majority Caucasian demographic of his practice. Even though this was only a few years ago, the changing climate of our culture, politics and our demographics, means for something like this to happen now would probably be a stretch.

There is an increasing population of migrant Australians and New Zealanders who don’t have European backgrounds, which is growing at a faster rate than Caucasian Australian and New Zealanders. The increased buying power of women and people of ethnic backgrounds means there’s also a commercial logic to having different cultural competencies within a practice. It’s also recognised that the inequities in healthcare [for the treatment of] minorities exist partially because of cultural factors. So, in this sense, I feel there is more room for someone like me now, and I’ve had many positive experiences with other WOC through my social media platforms as they’ve reached out to me for support, to share their experience or to give me encouragement.

Samiha: As a final year optometry student at the UNSW clinic, I have encountered patients who have walked into the clinic with a certain view about Muslim women and walked out with a different view. People nowadays may still have certain preconceived notions, but they are open to change, and I’m happy when I know I was responsible for breaking down social stigmas regarding Islam.

During one contact lens clinic, for example, an elderly Englishman was under the impression the hijab is oppressive. He asked me whether I chose to wear it or am I forced to wear it. I explained the hijab is an integral part of my identity and I willingly chose to wear it. ‘For me, the hijab is just as important as wearing pants!’ I said. He found my analogy funny and was further surprised when I touched his eyelid for eversion, which obviously involves physical contact. I told him to ‘Thank God’ that I did evert his eyelids because he had CLPC (contact lens-associated papillary conjunctivitis) which was responsible for his uncomfortable eyes. He was very grateful when I explained what CLPC was and how to manage it.

Shereen: I too have had a transformational eye exam experience. At the time of the Lindt Café siege (where Man Haron Monis, an extremist Iranian-born refugee and Australian citizen, took hostages at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney), I had a 50-year-old Caucasian male patient tell me, ‘If anyone bothers you about your hijab let me know’. This simple sentiment was his moving demonstration of solidarity.

Where is there still room for improvement within our industry?

Homma: In my previous example (above), the patient was not turned away for his discriminatory behaviour but was passed on to a different optometrist within the practice. I think that was the thing that affected me the most. I felt humiliated. As part of a practice’s cultural competence and for it to be a safe and fair workplace for all, employers need to draw boundaries, even with patients, when discrimination or racist behaviour takes places.

Heba: The colour of my skin, what I choose to wear and the scarf on my head do not define my ability to provide exceptional optometric services. I hope I live to see a day where these are not prejudiced indicators of my personal, professional character.

IN CONCLUSION

The panel described many similar experiences about patients today who were open and willing to change their preconceived ideas about Muslim women through the course of an eye exam, especially after seeing the ladies’ competence, level of care and assertions in action.

I have seen a transitional shift as well between patients saying, I’m ‘one of the good ones’, after observing my level of care, eye for detail or sense of humour during a consult, to one where patients will tell me about other Muslims they have met in their life who are also lovely people!

On a sad yet hopeful note, the widespread solidarity many Australians and New Zealanders showed after the Christchurch attack is testament to this evolution. This might be related to the greater exposure people have to Muslims. Perhaps, in part, this is also due to the more open identification in mainstream media of people like Muslim pop star, Dua Lipa; ballerina, Stephanie Kurlow; drag queen, Mercedes Iman Diamond; and activists, like the wonderful Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Karman, a Yemeni journalist, politician and human rights activist who co-founded the group, Women Journalists Without Chains, in 2005. A hijab-wearing martial arts instructor and physician Dr Ryhana Dawood features alongside supermodel Cara Delevingne in the latest Puma women’s campaign, and international hijabi model Halima Aden, has just become the first model to grace the pages of Sports Illustrated in a burkini!

So, it is a good time for Muslim WOC and, indeed, all minorities, to be in practice, and there is a growing sense of change and optimism, but we still need to ensure all workplaces continue to promote diversity and have appropriate frameworks in place to support all their employees against prejudice and discrimination.

Australian-based optometrist Layal Naji is a junior visiting research fellow and clinical supervisor at the University of New South Wales and co-founder of the outreach optometry clinic at the Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown, Sydney.