Sultan to as a sultanate ( "). The term is distinct from king ( "), despite both referring to a sovereign ruler. The use of "sultan" is restricted to Muslim countries, where the title carries religious significance, contrasting the more secular "king", which is used in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. A feminine form of "sultan", used by Westerners, is Sultana or Sultanah and this title has been used legally for some (not all) Muslim women monarchs and sultan's mothers and chief consorts. However, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish also uses "sultan" for imperial lady, as Turkish grammar—which is influenced by Persian
Female labor force in the Muslim world economic explanation of the concentration of female labor in agriculture. Regardless of the underlying reason for high female participation in agriculture, these workers earn a lower wage than their male counterparts both within this sector and relative to workers in other sectors. This may be one reason for the wide wage gap in some majority Muslim countries. Female workers in majority Muslim nations are more concentrated in agricultural work than their counterparts in non-majority Muslim nations as well. For nations where data is available, Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, and Egypt had the highest percentage of female workers involved in