27-year-old makes history as first hijab-wearing senator in Australia

Fatima Payman. (Image credit: www.walabor.org.au)

A 27-year-old woman has made history in Australia by becoming the country's first hijab-wearing senator.

Fatima Payman, the daughter of refugees from Afghanistan, represents West Australia. She is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Payman has a record of working for young people from culturally diverse communities. She also speaks for the working-class community, to which she belongs. Her father worked as a tax driver and a kitchen hand to support his family.

It was Payman's father who encouraged her to enter politics. But even he thought that she did not have a chance in Australia, and instead suggested  she go back to Afghanistan to improve people’s lives there, the BBC reported.

Her father is no more. After her senate election, Payman's mother told her in tears that he would have been so proud of her.

Payman describes herself as a progressive representative of modern Australia. "I do not want to be judged because I wear a scarf on my head," she told the BBC. "I am as Australian as they (other senators) are.”

The young senator said she is aware that people have high hopes for her.

She aspires to see a day when MPs and senators wearing a hijab will not make headlines.

"I won’t judge someone wearing boardies and flip-flops across the street. I don’t expect people to judge me for wearing my scarf," she said in her first parliament speech last week, according to the Guardian.

Payman added that wearing a hijab was her choice. "I want young girls who decide to wear the hijab to do it with pride and to do it with the knowledge that they have the right to wear it," she said.