Arab Women

For many generations, women vowed to give their all, and instead of receiving the equal treatment of love and appreciation, they were oppressed and degraded. In Egypt, a woman did not have the right to divorce herself; therefore, she had to put up with all the humiliation, mistreatment, unfairness, and inequality everyday. Today, women are celebrating the new law of "Khul'", which gives the woman the right to divorce herself with or without her oppressor's consent, but the question is: does the woman become really free?

In our parents days, women had truly suffered extremely damaging marriages, being totally helpless and with no power. Some women tried to use their parents, others used the police, and some just accepted bad marriages as their fate. In the cases where the husband treats his wife aggressively by beating and causing injuries, the woman can provide evidence by police records and hospital certificates, but men always refute these evidence by saying that the wife caused these injuries herself. Thanks to the khul' law women can finally move a step forward in gaining their rights, while moving closer to equality with men. However, we also see that many other factors still affect a woman's decision of whether or not to get a divorce, and some consequences of freely taking this decision.

In the Egyptian society, the marriage relationship is a very sacred one. It assembles between a man and a woman who are supposed to have common characteristics and their relation to be built on mutual understanding. Accordingly, almost all couples experience a happy and comfortable life in their earliest years of marriage. However, after they become accustomed to each other, the defects of each begin to appear and they may reach a point where they are unable to tolerate each other, let alone live and raise a family together. So, problems arise and lead to divorce. Yet, divorce is extremely problematic for women for several reasons. First, women's families and the society do not accept divorce easily. Second, men have the right of divorce whenever they want. Third, according to the old divorce law, women used to face many problems in courts to obtain divorce. But according to the new law khul', women will be able to obtain their freedom easily, and they will be able to face their families and society by the force of law and Islamic Shariaa.

Egyptian women wanting divorce face many problems from their families and relatives. Their families think that once the girl is married, she is responsible for her new family's problems, as she should face and solve these problems without even thinking of divorce as an option. Al-Ahram Weekly reporter Mariz Tadros refers to Wafaa as an example. Wafaa is a poor peasant, who wanted to get divorced because her husband treated her in an aggressive way, physically and emotionally. The response she got from her parents was not at all supportive. Her mother always wanted her to return to her husband and told her that: "all homes are like that. ...This is your fate." (Tadros, "By the Skin"). Also, Wafaa's father screamed, "if you do this, you are not my daughter." (Tadros, "By the Skin"). So, the divorce idea is seen as an impossible solution as it brings shame to the girl and the whole family. From society's point of view, mainly the middle and lower social