Women’s dislike of polygyny is similar to men’s resistance to their role as providers. As I discussed in this post women don’t have any power to stop a man from marrying again. That is, polygamy (restricted conditional polygyny as dictated by Islam) is 100% the domain of a man to choose to engage in, or not.
This is not dissimilar to a woman’s right to be provided for. This is a right that is 100% within the domain of the woman to demand or forgo (to any degree), the husband has no power to force her to work or contribute to their household expenses, it is solely his responsibility to take care of her.
Not long along I will admit my bias; I split a lot of ink encouraging women not to forgo their right to be provided for. To essentially be merciless to the plight of modern men, the modern economy, and the modern social upbringing of men. I was harsh in my stance —if God says you can do it, it is an eternal command! It must be done! When men would push back I’d take their concerns as pathetic excuses to not fulfill the rights of women. It took a very long time until I had even an ounce of sympathy for men finding it difficult to fulfill this role. But I was eventually moved when a man shared with me his devastation when his “full partner” decided abruptly to stop working, suddenly the financial burden was completely on him to shoulder and she seemed to have no mercy on how drastically this shift affected him —it’s my right! She essentially combatted.
I didn’t change my stance but it made me soften my outlook. This right that is a blessing for us as women is a legitimate hardship for men. We can hold onto our rights while still acknowledging the hardships of being a full provider in the 21st century.
The exact opposite can be said for my approach to polygamy discourse. I was fully sympathetic to women who disliked polygamy, and all the excuses I didn’t allow men to “get away with” I readily applied to women —it’s too hard in modernity, we’re not socialized to accept it, etc. Every excuse I didn’t accept for men not providing for their wives I accepted for women not interested in (accepting) polygamy.
While my stance hasn’t changed —since both of these rights remain rights in Islam, I began to recognize my bias and the bias of many others when we discussed these issues. Depending on which ‘side’ of the issue we were on we were more apt to emphasize rights or hardships, if nothing else could be said we can at least recognize our self-interested biases (1) and our limitations in approaching either topic holistically.
It’s also worth considering that perhaps both topics rile up one gender or the other because they are areas in which one party has complete say and the other does not, i.e. they are gendered rights. And this poses a larger problem within a society where we’ve been socialized to believe that justice = equality. Accepting gendered rights forces us into a conundrum that we are not equipped to face. We repeat the verse as Muslims that says men and women are dissimilar, but do we truly believe it? When we try to finagle our way around gender-specific laws, have we truly accepted that men and women are different? That justice doesn’t mean equality? That men and women get to move through the world differently in some fundamental ways that don’t align with our Western notions of fairness?
Perhaps the pushback from women to men’s right to marry more than once and the pushback from men to women’s right to maintenance points to more fundamental issues that we’d do well to explore with greater sincerity and less reactivity, and Allah knows best.
1. I don’t believe being pro-polygamy is anti-women or stressing men’s duty to provide is anti-men, but that is clearly the way many of us experience these topics. Women in monogamy and those who identify themselves with that role may see polygamy as only a loss to them but women as a group benefit from the increased quality and quantity of men they choose from by being able to consider both single men and men with less than 4 wives as potential suitors. Men benefit from being providers in numerous ways; it pushes them to excel on a higher level financially, it gives them pride in freeing their wives from having to work, it increases their independence, it gives them a distinct role within the family, and other benefits too numerous to list here. To be clear neither being monogamous nor sharing finances is an issue when agreed on by both parties but it is worthwhile to note the benefits to both genders in situations that seem to only benefit one gender. And Allah knows best.
Photo by Ali Karimiboroujeni on Unsplash
Related:
- Polygamy; Expectations and Boundaries. (Re)building the Black Muslim Family. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU5_rh4KIq8
- Polygamy Doesn’t Need Your Defense https://bythefigandtheolive.com/notindefense/
Part of the proble that we have is the emphasisis on legalism in our marriage discourse. There is no question that the education about rights and responsibilities in Islam is well intentioned, and meant to educate us and make us feel of being Muslim. I think an untinetnioned side effect seems to be that there is an increased sense of entitlement. Ths sense of entitlement was always a problem for men in South Asian culture, and probably Arab culture too. We’ve reached a stage where women are saying that theyy’ve had it, and will no longer put up with what they saw their mothers, aunts or grandmothers put up with.So the sense of entitlement from our(mostly informal) education about our rights is a new thing, a way to hit back against the self entitlement of our brothers. Naturally, this is new to our brothers who were used to relationship where women served and obeyed the men in our lives without question. The new polygany whereby brothers hit back by guilting sisters into accpeting polgany might be a form of backlash. Nautrally, sisters don’t like it. An arrognat entitled brother is bad in marriage no matter how many wives he has or joes about having. Incidentally, is joking about marriage allowed in the Sunnah? By joking about marriage, I mean specifically brothers joking about polygany, and bragging about planning to marry four wives.Aisha
Also, I thought that polygany was an allowance not a right. Yes, polygany is allowed in Islam, women have no right to object if it’s what their husband wants. But in Prophet Mahammad (sws)’s own time, women in Medina were independent, and their marriages were monagamous. Ghese characteristics were understood to be customary practices. As I understand it, the Prophet did not insist on changing thier practices. He didn’t even marry any madini women himself, b/c he understood that polygany would be difficult for Madini women and their families to accept. It’s not a righteous act ofr a man to take a wife secretly or over the objections of a woman raised in a monagamous family or socity even if it’s technically legal. By contrast, a man is supposed to provide for his wife/ wives even when they have their own incomes. The only way to lessen or forgo the burden of financial provision is for him (and possibly his family), and her )and her family) to sit down together and negotiate a contract in which everyone is perfectly honest and clear about what they can/wil and can’t/won’t do. That’s what the purpose of a nikkah contract is supposed to be. Granted that the culture surrounding nikkah contracts in some cultures makes this really hard. Having said that, having one half, having one third, ore one fourth a provider is financially speaking, not the same as monagamous. If a man marries more wives, he is increasing the number of dependents that he has, and thus decreasing the amount of tiem/ money for all of them. In a context like the Unted states, where polygany illiegal and financial difficult, wouldn’t their be an expectation of wives working or contributing financially in some way so that provicer/ housewife doesn’t actually fit the polygamous family of today.