haifa | Arranged marriages among Arab women are on the decline, and young Arab women have more freedom today on the marriage front.
A new study conducted at the University of Haifa found significant differences between the young Arab family in contemporary Israel and the conservative Arab family of pre-state Israel.
“Almost 86 percent of women in the first generation had parents who had been involved to a large extent in choosing a spouse, in comparison to 52 percent of the second generation and about 13 percent of the third generation,” noted Nasreen Haj Yahia Abu Ahmad of the School of Social Work, who carried out the study under the guidance of professor Yoav Lavee.
The study findings suggest that changes have occurred in various areas — from the method of engagement, parental involvement in the choosing of the spouse, and the character of meetings with the spouse in the process of engagement. The study included 537 Arab women, half of them Muslim and half of them Christian, from 179 different families and from three generations.
Among many explanations for the changes, the researcher suggested one reason: “The more a woman finds herself intensely exposed to the Jewish population, the more her views and behavior will be less traditional.”
Also, “young women in Arab society are more educated than their mothers and their grandmothers and are more likely to be employed outside the house,” explained Abu Ahmad.
The traditional arranged Arab marriage was common among the first generation (39 percent), but has become less common among the second generation (10 percent), and among the third generation it has almost completely disappeared.
Also, many Arab women now meet their grooms before engagement. The researcher noted a significant decrease in matchmaking and getting to know the spouse only after engagement: In the first generation, matchmaking occurred about 51 percent of the time, while it occurs approximately 18 percent of the time in the third generation.
Additionally, the University of Haifa study found that the youngest generation was getting married at an older age. Women from the first generation married on average at age 16, while the second generation married at 19, and the current generation married at age 21 on average.
Married young women reported that the division of labor with their partner was more shared than with their parents: Husbands took on some of the tasks associated with running the house and taking care of the children.
The study findings challenge the stereotype of Arab women as weak, inferior, dependent and confined within traditional patterns that are resistant to change. This description doesn’t reflect the reality of Arab women’s lives in Israel.
“The gloomy picture of the pseudo-depressing situation of the Arab woman and description of her as submissive and dependent to the male and subordinate to him is not correct,” said Abu Ahmad.