Many of our homes are locked under the effect of fire under the ashes, frozen conflicts, spiritual detachment between the spouses and a mechanical motion of life that is devoid of love, affection and tranquility.
The woman makes many concessions to keep the marital life going and the man throws the conflicts behind his back and preoccupies himself with his professional and material ambitions.
In our homes, there are patient and desperate wives, and we want these to be the homes of women who choose patience willingly and with feelings of contentment. This guarantees that they would not feel that they are being subjected to oppression that expands and turns into a bomb that could explode and destroy the house in a flash. This also guarantees that they would obtain the reward of great patience; the patience of worship and fine intention, not that of being forced and helpless.
The Family’s Welfare Comes First
Sumayyah Mustafa, a teacher, refuses the two terms of tolerance and concession together and believes that the whole thing should be governed by the family’s welfare not “my right” and “your right” but the right of the family, even if there are no children.
Dignity Not Vanity
Ihsaan Muhammad, an employee, says that preserving dignity is something that is extremely important between the spouses, but this should be done in an intelligent and polite way. For instance, if the wife’s reaction to her husband’s behavior is the same as his is to hers, he may get used to humiliating and oppressing her. The arrogance of some women is the reason for their being oppressed as the husband insists on humiliating her. Thus, even if she succeeds in her rebellion she is the loser.
Hanaa’ Rifaa‘i, an employee, says that man is like the sea and woman like a bridge, meaning, the shore or a barrier. Regardless of her education, work, or independence, she needs to make her husband feel that she is in dire need of him, especially if she is working. If she does not do this, she would make her husband indifferent to her and he would not feel her presence or absence.
No Tolerance or Concession
Su‘aad Muhammad, a supervisor in a kindergarten, says, “There should be no tolerance or concession but a third thing, which is understanding. Concession is considered as a postponement of the problems that would explode one day like a volcano. Also, the one who is always tolerant will one day get fed up because of the severe pressure.
Choice and Management
Safaa’ Husayn, a teacher, says, “I think that offering concessions by any of the two spouses is not necessarily for the benefit of the family. Also, the working woman needs, more than any other woman, organized thinking in dealing with her husband to manage her life for she is, in reality, the one who is directing the family.”
Huda Al-Wakeel, a kindergarten manager, says, “The woman’s feeling that she is oppressed, persecuted and overburdened and that she is the one who usually offers sacrifices, complicates things between her and her husband. If she could only be patient willingly, endure with love and let everything proceed naturally, she will gain the love and affection of her husband and will find him helping her. She will be held in high esteem and will represent the soundest opinion in the life of her family.
A Wide Gap
Dr. Wafaa’ Mas‘ood, a psychology professor in Helwan University, thinks that the relationship between the husband and wife should be governed by a positive attitude, interaction and intelligence. However, she thinks that the degree of the woman’s awareness, her education and her work stand as stumbling blocks in the way of this positive attitude and make it unbalanced. This is strange to a great extent. The reason behind this is that the awareness of rights has not come to effect yet as it is still written on paper only and the flow of the feminist movement in asking for laws was quicker than the movement of the society in understanding and realizing these rights; not only among men but also among women. Even if the woman becomes a faculty dean, she will still measure her success or failure in life according to her success in marriage. The educated man and the one who works and has a career still prefers a wife who is not highly educated. The percentage of divorce is still high among female university professors and this causes many of them to offer concessions as they would prefer offering concessions to being divorced or spinsters. This causes many psychological problems for the wife and these have destructive effects on the family.
Causes and Solutions
Dr. Muhammad ‘Abd Rabbuh, a sociology professor in the faculty of the Arts, Zagazig University, is inclined to support the idea of subduing personal ambition for the sake of preserving the family’s welfare. This is not restricted to one party and it relies primarily on the level and kind of values that each of the spouses has. It basically relies on the woman’s values and whether she has a predisposition to tolerance or conflict.
Dr. Muhammad criticizes the absence of field social studies regarding the realistic effect that results from the calls for women's emancipation and the idea of equality with men and the way that television deals with these issues. He believes that the way to deal with these issues increases the problems. In fact, women’s rebellion against their husbands is provocative and makes the other party readily reject the woman more than it benefits her, as in their rejection of issuing the Personal Affairs law. Because of this law, many young men abstained from marriage as they were afraid that their wives would take everything if they ever divorced. Even in the mildest of arguments, the woman would readily remind her husband that it is the wife who is legally entitled to the marital home in case of divorce.
The matter is no longer restricted to the relationship between the wife and her husband, but it went beyond this to the relation between the sister and her brothers. Now, sisters are rebellious and do not want to serve their brothers. In France, there is a Ministry for Women’s Affairs that is responsible for all women's affairs, not only for sending calls for equality and freedom but it teaches them how to ask for their rights and how to fulfill their duties. In Japan, they teach the girl at university how to respect her husband and how to look after her house. They even teach her how to arrange flowers.
Dr. Muhammad thinks that we should be objective because the woman is not oppressed all the time, but she sometimes plays a significant role in complicating her life and escalating her problems.
When we talk about rights and guarantees, we sometimes forget the human and moral rights and guarantees. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging woman’s material rights, but if moral rights are missing, all other guarantees would have no value. Unfortunately, this is something that is not clear for many people, even parents. In a field study on the issue of the marital furniture inventory, it appeared that parents insist on this more than other things that are more important like the husband’s morals and the girl’s acceptance of him.
Many marriages fail in the first few months. In spite of the continuous enlightenment about women’s rights and the laws that have been issued to ensure them, we still hear stories of women who travel abroad to work and keep sending all their savings to their husbands then find out that they used their money to marry other women. Thus, we lack a long term strategy of upbringing in order to raise and enlighten the youth. This strategy should primarily depend on religion, studies and theories. The calls for women’s rights in the Islamic world spring from the fact that many young men became unreliable and can not protect their wives and families. This is something that makes many women yearn for the feeling of security.