Feminists

That isn't to say that the western world doesn't impose some very ugly and unhealthy standards for women to meet. They have a point there, but using the hijab to deal with that is like needing a new doorway installed in a wall and using a bazooka to create one.

There is disagreement among a number of third wave feminists on this. I am not sure a hijab can be truly empowering. Naomi Wolf, who I otherwise tend to agree with, had this to say http://bigthink.com/ideas/14391

Wolf: I did write a piece in which I said that Westerners should be aware of being presumptuous in assuming they know that a Hijab means oppression to a women wearing it, and where did I get that from, I got it from feminists in the Muslim world saying again and again things like, you know, what we have much worse problems than this, you know, it’s much more urgent that they’re burning, you know, brides or that, you know, we’re facing [forced clitoridectomies] like you Westerners are so preoccupied with wearing a head scarf.
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I mean, there are other ways of looking at how other people see us, and even if we don’t agree with those ways, I do think that it’s a very important time to be engaged in an open dialog with this, you know, with the Muslim world and be open to hearing, you know, Muslim women’s own interpretations of what the Hijab means for them. Are there many other Muslim women who think it’s very oppressive? Absolutely and I remember saying in the piece that that is true, of course, yeah.