In Bangladesh, due to economic growth and greater access to education, more girls and women are veiling, even as they are also more likely to be in school or employed. Some scholars identify this trend of women appearing both “more modern” and “more religious” as paradoxical. On the basis of 114 in-depth interviews with Bangladeshi migrant workers (n = 57) in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore, and South Korea and their wives (n = 57) in rural Bangladesh, I claim that Muslim women in middle-class Bengali families who veil are cultivating symbolic boundaries guided by an accountability structure of middle-class religiosity and gender conservatism. The increasing tendency of middle-class Muslim women to appear both “more modern” and “more religious” can be explained by examining the role that veiling plays in signaling class status through conspicuous consumption, moral superiority, and respectable femininity, differentiating them from lower class women. I conclude that “doing gender” through veiling must be understood as also “doing middle-class difference” in Bengali Muslim families in rural Bangladesh.

在孟加拉国，由于经济增长和受教育机会的增加，越来越多的女孩和妇女戴上面纱，即使她们也更有可能上学或就业。一些学者认为这种女性“更现代”和“更虔诚”的趋势是自相矛盾的。 基于对沙特阿拉伯、卡塔尔、新加坡和韩国的孟加拉国移民工人（n = 57）及其妻子（ n = 57）在孟加拉国农村，我声称孟加拉中产阶级家庭中的穆斯林妇女蒙着面纱正在培养象征性的界限，这种界限是由中产阶级宗教信仰和性别保守主义的问责结构引导的。穆斯林中产阶级女性越来越倾向于“更现代”和“更虔诚”，这可以通过考察面纱在通过炫耀性消费、道德优越感和受人尊敬的女性气质来表明阶级地位中所起的作用来解释，将她们与低等阶层区分开来。阶级妇女。我的结论是，在孟加拉国农村的孟加拉穆斯林家庭中，通过戴面纱“做性别”也必须被理解为“做中产阶级差异”。