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Many Saudi women fear being relegated to spinsterhood - quarter of a man, better than none
Houston Chronicle ^ | Sept. 13, 2002, 7:48PM | DONNA ABU-NASR, AP

Posted on 09/14/2002 3:00:23 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- For Aisha Abdullah, one of 25 Saudi women getting married in a mass wedding, this was the day she would shed what in Saudi Arabia is still considered a serious stigma -- being 40 and single.

"No one can call me a spinster anymore," said the bride in her sequined cream dress. "Every time someone used to ask me why I was still unmarried, I would feel shame and embarrassment."

The mass wedding in Jiddah on Aug. 6 was organized by the Charitable Project to Assist Youths to Get Married, one of many religious groups promoting marriage by offering financial aid for wedding parties, dowries and a couple's first furniture.

As Saudi Arabia gingerly tries to tackle some of the problems that have built up during decades as a strictly Muslim state, it is turning a lot of attention to what the press calls the "spinsterhood phenomenon."

Since the notion of a single career woman barely exists in a country where women aren't even allowed to drive, marriage is still seen as the only route to true fulfillment. A woman can go to college and even work for a few years, but her life isn't considered validated until she is married and raising children.

According to a 2001 Planning Ministry study reported by the Saudi press, about 1.5 million Saudi women are over 30 and single in a population of 17 million Saudis and about 6 million expatriates. It gave no figures for the unmarried male population.

Attitudes to the unmarried are reflected in remarks such as those of Sheik Ibrahim al-Khodeiri, a Supreme Court judge, to the Al Riyadh newspaper, that "a woman has a shelf life" that lasts only as long as she can have children.

As reduced oil revenues lower living standards across the Arab world, couples are finding it harder to marry young.

Some Saudis blame women for wanting to get a university education and work for a few years, taking them past the desired marriage age of 20. Others feel that Saudi men are influenced in their notion of the ideal woman by the stars they have been seeing on satellite TV in the decade it has been legal here.

However, women say the real problem is that Saudi Arabia has gotten poorer, with an unemployment rate estimated at 20 percent and a population consisting mostly of people under 18.

"Women are being blamed to divert attention from the real problem, which is unemployment," said Hatoon al-Fassi, a historian and columnist.

Al-Fassi, like many Saudi women, objects to how single women are perceived, saying the word aanis, or spinster, "is a derogative, pejorative term."

The same word is used for unmarried men, yet "There isn't the same pressure on men to get married, no stigma," she said.

Pressure to marry comes not just from the family but from the powerful religious establishment, which fears that unmarried women might violate the Muslim ban on premarital sex.

The clergy actively encourages Saudis to marry, and some groups even remind women that Islam allows a man to have four wives at a time.

Religious leaflets left in hospital waiting rooms, at wakes and on campuses tell women to "be content with a quarter of a man instead of plummeting into the jungles of decadence."

The same message is repeated in the press and Friday prayers. On July 27, Ali bin Suleiman al-Dubeikhi wrote in the Al-Eqtisadiah daily that on men "all hopes are pinned to wipe out spinsterhood ... by taking several wives."

The writer said since Islam approves of polygamy, a woman should even help her husband find other wives.

Shorouq al-Fawwaz scoffed at the idea, writing in Al Riyadh newspaper that men take other wives not out of "noble intentions" but because they want younger women.

"Their oft-repeated excuse is that they want to help wipe out spinsterhood," she wrote. "If that were really their intention we wouldn't find women over 35 waiting in their parents' homes or second wives -- and how numerous they are -- who are below 25."

Another solution being debated is the misyar marriage -- a system permitted by some schools of Islamic thought in which the husband does not have to reveal the marriage to his family or other wives. A misyar wife usually lives in another city, and her husband visits her when he pleases.

Some female commentators are against it.

Fowziyah Abu-Khalid, a sociologist and writer, dismissed it as "a way for a man to acquire a legal mistress."

Norah A. al-Sowayan, a social counselor, said life is tough for the single Saudi woman.

"From the time she is born, she is taught that her only fulfillment as a woman comes through being a wife and a mother," she said. "Even if she has reached an advanced stage in her education, she will always be made to feel inferior because she's not married."

Fewer than 7 percent of Saudi women work. A woman needs permission from a male guardian to go to school, get a job or travel.

Her life is subject to the interpretations of the sharia, or Islamic law by religious scholars -- always male.

Abu-Khalid, the sociologist, said a lot of attention is given to the subject of marriage instead of to women's more serious demands, such as a say in decision-making and equal job and educational opportunities.

She said one problem is that matchmaking hasn't kept up with the times. Couples can now meet more easily over the phone or Internet, but a Saudi man still relies on his mother to choose his bride, and she is unlikely to accept a match made over a cell phone.

"Even though a woman these days is more educated than her mother and grandmother, the marriage arrangement is still the same," said Abu-Khalid.

Meanwhile, as Saudi families have migrated to cities and large clans have fragmented, it has become harder to keep matchmaking within the tribe, "So even the traditional way of arranging marriage has become difficult," Abu-Khalid said.

Back at the mass wedding in a hall on a large exhibition ground, where 40-year-old Aisha Abdullah married a 32-year-old security official, the men and women celebrated separately.

Five thousand female guests waited to congratulate the brides, the rhythmic beat of a tambourine rising above their chatter.

Gazing at the guests from a waiting room, Ilham Arab said she would have been unable to marry without the charity's help.

She was only 22 and still at college, but said: "I would have been upset if I had not been able to get married."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: shelflife
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1 posted on 09/14/2002 3:00:24 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
But regardless of their polygamous marriages, males and females are born in approximately equal numbers, no? So what's up with the excess men? Too poor to pay the bride price or just not interested?
2 posted on 09/14/2002 3:25:42 AM PDT by Salman
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
I don't know if they care. In Egypt, 97% of women are given female circumcisions. I'm not sure of the percentage in Saudi Arabia, but I imagine it's pretty high.
3 posted on 09/14/2002 3:30:54 AM PDT by Arthur Wildfire! March
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To: Salman
I heard a rumor about what the surplus men do, just a rumor. Guess I won't repeat it.
4 posted on 09/14/2002 3:32:01 AM PDT by Arthur Wildfire! March
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
bump for later reading
5 posted on 09/14/2002 3:56:43 AM PDT by Greeklawyer
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Been there, seen it. When asked about the plight of women, the "educated" Saudi men always had some feeble explanation - along the lines of "for the good and protection of the women – or the women really prefer it this way". However, it was really a sight to see “their” women rush to the john and change into “hip” Western clothing as soon as the airliner cleared Saudi air space.
6 posted on 09/14/2002 4:10:41 AM PDT by RAY
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
In Saudi Arabia, the social pressure on women
is to get married and have children.

In the US, the social pressure on women is to have a
career.

Social pressure works.

That's why Islam is winning. Muslims are arriving in
ever greater numbers in the US and Europe while
the birth rate for European and American whites
is too low to sustain their population.




7 posted on 09/14/2002 4:38:23 AM PDT by wotan
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Dear God, I am glad to be an American.
8 posted on 09/14/2002 4:40:42 AM PDT by NYpeanut
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To: Salman
The liberal press needs to take off the eye shades. The valued sexual "property" in Saudi Arabia is a boy prior to the age of puberty. Boy Buggering is the prefered sexual outlet -- women are considered dirty -- worthy only for procreation. Women bleed, as the Rolling Stones liked to point out -- so in this Muslim world, they are dirty. A little boy is a precious fruit -- too bad the Catholic Priests hadn't discovered Saudi Arabia. Their Muslim brethern would have welcomed their "boy love" society.
9 posted on 09/14/2002 4:45:58 AM PDT by jrlc
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To: wotan
Hope you have on your asbestos suit ! .....And you are correct ; a society that does not want children will become extinct.
10 posted on 09/14/2002 4:58:14 AM PDT by hoosierham
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Apparently, a free camel is more interesting to the young Saudi men than a dowried wife.
11 posted on 09/14/2002 5:07:34 AM PDT by wattsmag2
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To: hoosierham
I once met a muslim and his two wives here in the states. all were educated and all worked in the states. They were devout to their faith and happy to be living in the states.

We should not be so quick to condem the what the article is stating. After all, did not a study come out and state after 28, female fertility goes way down? How is having hirer illigitimacy better than having a desire to be legitimatly married?

Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones. OR

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
12 posted on 09/14/2002 5:10:53 AM PDT by Greeklawyer
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Meanwhile, as Saudi families have migrated to cities and large clans have fragmented, it has become harder to keep matchmaking within the tribe, "So even the traditional way of arranging marriage has become difficult," Abu-Khalid said.

It's getting harder for them to marry first cousins. That's not such a bad thing. Saudi Arabia has very high rates of rare inherited diseases. These are due to thousands of years of marrying close relatvies.

13 posted on 09/14/2002 5:26:50 AM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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To: jrlc
Forty years ago when I was in the U.S. Air Force, our men retuning from service in islamic lands spoke often of the sodomites they had seen there. Boy love in islamic states was in high gear. The Saudi kings prefered ten year old boys to girls. One king could only have (rape) sex with a virgin girl or young boys. An article in a magazine in the eighties asked how much of the millions the U.S. was sending the saudi family of rulers, went to purchase the children the "royal" family was abuseing!!!!
14 posted on 09/14/2002 5:31:46 AM PDT by Lewite
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
... the rhythmic beat of a tambourine rising above their chatter

Ah, reminds me of my daughter's wedding. The high pitched shreiking over the banging of tambourines...

15 posted on 09/14/2002 5:36:19 AM PDT by ItsJeff
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To: Greeklawyer
What glass houses ?

It is a scientific fact that if a species (culture) does not produce new individuals that it will die out. Where did I write in favor of illegitamcy ? or even against polygamy ?

As for the Saudi women's complaint that the men desired younger 2nd wives, this does makes sense if more children are desired. While the 40 year old lady may be a charming helpmate, the ruthless facts of nature mean she is much less likely to have babies than a 20 year old. I suppose that if the Saudi man married the older woman second (or third) she would then complain it was only to secure a fulltime babysitter and helper for the younger mother(s) !

It would probably be safer and easier to dance drunken in a minefield than try to placate four spouses !!!!

16 posted on 09/14/2002 5:39:42 AM PDT by hoosierham
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To: hoosierham
I appologize, perhaps I should not have linked my response to your post. I had no intention of offending. I only wished to point out that the United States has its own problems with single women and illegitimacy. It is wrong to criticize on society for wanting marriage and implying praise for United States' society with a high amount of single mothers and out of wedlock births.

With career women postponing birth to the late thirties, there is a kernel (all be it a small kernel) to having a family earlier is better for a woman it that she will be more likely to get pregnant.

Again I did not intend to offend, I only wished to contribute to the thread.



17 posted on 09/14/2002 5:54:46 AM PDT by Greeklawyer
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To: Salman
Polygamy is allowed by Islam because in a warrior culture, very few men live long enough to procreate. The practice started when the holy wars decimated the male population of the Arab world to the point where there were roughly four women to each man.
18 posted on 09/14/2002 6:08:41 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
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To: wotan
That's why Islam is winning. Muslims are arriving in ever greater numbers in the US and Europe while the birth rate for European and American whites is too low to sustain their population.


A serious problem which gets no publicity because it goes against the credo of the NOW/NARAL supporters.

Canada and the longest unprotected border in the world are now a threat to the US because their SOLE population increase is from third world immigration and the LARGE numbers of children that these immigrants are having after they reach Canada. Because of the extreme emphasis on multiculturalism, these people have NO feelings for the traditional Western Values.

Recipe for disaster, IMO!
19 posted on 09/14/2002 6:10:29 AM PDT by maica
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To: maica
After a recent visit I was quite shocked. Canada has definitly mangaged to produce a seperate but equal culture. There are neighborhoods which are openly marketed as ethnic. If that type of real estate herding was done in the us the real estate agent would be in violation of the fair housing act.
20 posted on 09/14/2002 7:46:43 AM PDT by Greeklawyer
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