ING wishes women worldwide a happy Women’s History Month. While ING is not a women’s organization, we were founded by a woman, and most ING affiliates were initiated and continue to be run by women. Therefore it gives us great pleasure to share the accomplishments and progress of Muslim women, which we will be highlighting throughout this month.

As we begin this month, Muslim women have recently achieved some exciting milestones, and society has been showing a new acceptance of women in hijab. Just this week, a student in hijab was featured on Stanford’s home page, shown above.

This Sunday, a woman in hijab took part for the first time in the Oscars, when University of Michigan film student Zainab Abdul-Nabi, was chosen as one of six college students to join “Team Oscar.” Her video was selected by Oscar producers and the Academy as part of a video and essay competition open to U.S. college students.

Last week, soccer’s international rule-making body, FIFA, officially gave permission for players to wear religious head coverings during games, opening the door not only to Muslim women, but Sikhs wearing turbans and Jews hearing kippahs.

And in Minnesota, St. Paul Police admitted the first Somali female officer to the department on Saturday, making it the first department in the state of Minnesota to hire a Somali woman to work on their force, and one of only a few across the nation that allow hijab on the job. This milestone is one that Police Chief Tom Smith hopes will inspire other Somali women to become police officers.

With such an auspicious start to this month, we look forward to highlighting the achievements of Muslim women in our subsequent notes as we continue to describe their role and accomplishments.

To learn more about this topic, we offer educators our presentation on Muslim Women Beyond the Stereotypes as well as our online curriculum on the topic.