IDCPPA Research Seminar - 23rd July 2026 - Sara Parhizkari - Quantitative examination of religiosity and egalitarian values in Muslim-majority countries

You are kindly invited to the IDCPPA Research Seminar on

Thursday, 23 July 2026, 14:00 – 15:30 SAST.

CSSR Seminar Room 4.29

Robert Leslie Social Sciences Building

University of Cape Town

Please request a video link if you wish to attend online.

Speaker

Dr Sara Parhizkari

Quantitative Researcher, University of Göttingen

Quantitative examination of religiosity and egalitarian values in Muslim-majority countries

Abstract

The first part of the talk draws on my past work using World Values Survey data, examining religiosity and egalitarian values across three Muslim-majority countries spanning 2000–2020. It approaches the question through three lenses: place, comparing gender egalitarian values within provinces and between countries; politics, analysing age-cohort differences to understand how policy environments shaped attitudes; and time, tracking how religiosity and gender egalitarian values shifted across two decades of survey data.

In the second part, I am pleased to share a proposed study that builds on Professor Seekings' work on Botswana to offer a broader comparative examination of generational change in political attitudes across southern Africa. Using a pseudo-panel design built from Afrobarometer repeated cross-sectional data and applying age-period-cohort decomposition, it asks whether generational replacement across five countries – Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia – is producing greater democratic commitment or growing disillusionment with political institutions. Mozambique is examined separately as a boundary-condition case, given its distinct colonial and conflict history, opening the discussion to the broader question of how colonial legacies shape the political socialisation of successive generations.

Bio

Sara Parhizkari is a quantitative social science researcher with international experience in gender equality, migration, and evidence-based policy research. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences, with specialisation in survey design, longitudinal analysis, and gender-sensitive quantitative methodologies across diverse cultural contexts. Her research draws on large-scale cross-national datasets, including the World Values Survey, with expertise in comparative research design and cross-national measurement equivalence.