The article discusses agency of second generation veiled Turkish-Dutch Muslim students by looking at the issue of handshake. Utilising the Bourdesian conceptual tool of habitus and its accompanying concepts, we present the ways in which handshaking works for our respondents. Subsequently, we show how both not-handshaking and handshaking can lead to strategic gains. While not-handshaking becomes a positive and valued feature of their cultural capital in interactions with pious Muslim men, following the handshaking norm in Dutch social interaction is widely practiced to gain benefits. Given how they act in adaptive ways, we show how women’s agency can be defined and accounted for in two ways; both through the paradigm of ‘doing religion’ (Avishai, 2008), as well as through the paradigm of agency as defined by liberal feminism.