Law Enables Women to End Marriages Without Consent of Spouses

At 32, Waffaa Mosaad Gabr is a woman with a problem. She feels emotionally abandoned in her 14-year marriage and displaced in her household since her husband invited another woman to move in last June as his second wife.

Her husband even persuaded the illiterate Gabr to sign a document saying that she consented to his new marriage, she says.

Gabr asked for a divorce repeatedly during the past three years. But her 38-year-old husband, a farmer in the Nile Delta village of Segin al Kom, refused. Absent any proof that he was abusing her, Gabr had no recourse under Egyptian law but to stay with him.

Now that has changed. A controversial law concerning marriage and divorce that was enacted Jan. 27 is providing a window of hope for Gabr and tens of thousands of other Egyptian women in similar plights. Two days after the law’s passage, Gabr became the first woman to sue for divorce under a section that permits a woman to leave her spouse even if he objects.

The section is one of several small changes meant to partially redress male domination in the legal system, in particular as it deals with divorce and other family law issues.

The amended law, nine years in the making, sparked an unusually lively and widespread debate inside and outside parliament, in part because it touched so many sensitive social issues. Religious traditionalists and liberals weighed in on the reforms, which a majority of Egyptians agreed should be in keeping with Sharia, or Islamic law.

To women such as Gabr, the law represents an incremental step forward. On the other hand, it falls far short of satisfying the country’s more articulate advocates of women’s rights, who believe that women and men should have equal rights in marriage.

“This law will not do anything,” complained Nadia Halim Soliman, a social researcher. “It’s just an illusion that there is change.”

The reform has benefited Gabr because it enshrines an old Islamic legal concept called khul, which roughly translates as “to sacrifice oneself.” In essence, it means that, for the first time, a woman in Egypt is able to divorce her husband on her own initiative if she is willing to return her dowry and free her spouse from financial obligations.

For instance, if Gabr gets her divorce, she will return the equivalent of $300, which her husband paid as a dowry, and will agree to receive no alimony. However, she will still be entitled to support payments for their three children; such payments are not affected under the new law.

To Soliman, the bargain is insulting. “How can a woman be asked to pay back the dowry in order to buy her freedom?” she asked. “Are we slaves?”

Family law attorney Nazli Sherbiny, on the other hand, sees improvements. One is that the courts will for the first time accept divorce petitions from women married the urfi way--that is, a marriage entered into by a man and a woman and recognized by their community but never registered with the government. In practice, women married in this Islam-sanctioned manner often are abandoned and cannot ever marry again lest they be accused of bigamy.

Now at least, the women will be able to divorce, although they still are not entitled to alimony, child support or other benefits accorded in some cases to women whose marriages are registered, Sherbiny said.

For human rights activists, the biggest disappointment in the reform is the government’s failure to amend a provision of existing law that in effect allows a husband to veto travel by his wife outside the country. A system remains in place in which interior police can stop a woman at the airport if they have been notified that she lacks her husband’s permission to leave.

The government backed down on the issue in the face of harsh criticism from traditionalists, who said the proposed change would undermine the precept in the Koran that men are the guardians of women. Critics raised the specter of a tidal wave of women fleeing abroad to escape maternal and marital obligations.

Zeinab Radwan, dean of the faculty of Islamic studies at Cairo University, was among those arguing that a correct interpretation of the religion upholds women’s freedoms. “The right to travel is like the right to education and the right to work,” Radwan said in Al Ahram, a leading Cairo newspaper. “It is a constitutional right and a right guaranteed in Islam.”

But Soliman took a pessimistic view: “If the mentality of the society is molded by men with conservative, static minds who hide behind the umbrella of religion, then no law can help us.”