The woman who stays at home is the woman who has a real full-time job to do. This is a fact that must not be forgotten. It should not be forgotten either that society needs some women to do certain specialized jobs, such as teaching.
However, I will mention three important facts in order to prove that working women have their advantages and disadvantages.
Working women and their children
It has been proved that the children of working women are afflicted by many contingencies. The medical magazine Hexagon stated in 1978 that most hospitals in America and Europe reported cases of children who were the victims of physical abuse at the hands of their working mothers.
In 1967, British hospitals received more than 6500 children who were physically abused by their mothers. 20 percent of these children died because of the injuries sustained, while others suffered permanent physical and mental disabilities like blindness and deafness.
Every year, hundreds of working mothers’ children are afflicted with impotency, severe mental retardation, and paralysis, because of hard physical discipline. The report poses the following question: “Are they mothers or monsters?” The report concludes by stating that these mothers suffer critical mental crises that lead them to hit their children in such a cruel manner that leads them to suffer permanent disabilities.
The report adds that most of these mothers are not criminals by nature, but being obliged to work makes them behave in this manner as they return home exhausted, then face their children who do not stop crying, so they lose their temper, and start hitting the child.
Another study that was conducted by Mona Yoonus on a random sample of 110 working women, in order to know the effects of women working on the child’s health, revealed the following:
· Women said that they had no other option but to leave their children with someone who would not take care of them or love them like they would. This means that the mother leaves her child with the servant.
· They also stated that they could not breastfeed their children or help them with their studies.
· They added that they feel very tired when they are pregnant, refrain from discussing matters that the children are interested in and may leave their children at home when they are sick.
The negative effects of working women on their husbands
The study conducted by Mona Yoonus also revealed that 84 percent of women admitted that their husbands feel angry because they may be at home while the wife is at work, while 42 percent stated that their husbands feel irritated when they talk about their problems at work. 67 percent stated that their husbands get annoyed when women defend their competence at work, while 23 percent said, “My husband feels sad when I leave him at home while he is sick to go to my work.” 22 percent stated that their husbands feel worried because of their inclination to put off my pregnancy because of my work, while 12 percent indicated that their husbands feel angry when they wish to have an essential opinion in important family affairs. 9 percent said that their husbands feel angry if they asked them to help with the household chores. Thus, this is a fact that both men and women should realize.
Finally, I would like to ask, “Do women work to save money, do they work for the sake of Islam, or for the sake of Muslims and their families?” Studies prove contrary to this: working women are usually consumers.
In 1411 AH, the newspaper “Al-Muslimoon” (issue number 302) published a report on a women's conference that was held in Canada with the participation of more than fifty states worldwide. The conference discussed the issue of violence against women and economic equality between men and women. It revealed that women represent two thirds of the labor force all over the world (67 percent), while they only own one percent of the property of the world!