Recent research among European Muslims finds that adolescent Muslim girls make more in-group friends and fewer out-group friends than Muslim boys. Researchers have suggested this to reflect gendered endogamy norms that complicate Muslim girls' out-group friendships, but a test of this explanation is missing. In this study, we investigate the role of endogamy norms while also considering potential alternative explanations, such as religiosity, experiences of discrimination, exposure to in- and out-group members in everyday life, and other gendered religious norms like chastity norms. In two samples of Muslim youth in Germany (N = 611, age 16-25, and N = 629, age 18-19), we find that gendered endogamy norms account for one-half of the gender gap in Muslim youths' in-group friendship-making. The impact of endogamy norms persists when factoring in alternative explanations. In addition, gendered chastity norms and exposure to in-group members contribute to Muslim girls’ stronger tendency to make in-group friends, but to a lesser extent than endogamy norms. Our results consistently point to endogamy norms as the main mechanism behind gendered friendship-making among Muslim youth.
Kretschmer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.