Negotiating Marriage, Family and Work by Dahlia Tawhid Roque

Author:Dahlia Tawhid Roque [Roque, Dahlia Tawhid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351727556
Google: h1mnDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-08-05T06:03:53+00:00

A degree to secure marriage, enhance gender equality, and prepare for motherhood

Aside from needing a university degree for asserting their middle-class status and obtaining a decent job if need be, many women stressed that having a university degree has become a prerequisite in attaining a good groom. As reviewed in the previous chapter, marriage carries great significance in the lives of young Egyptian women. Finding a suitable groom usually entailed “arranged” marriages for the majority of my sample, in the sense that these matches were the result of orchestrated meetings arranged by family members or friends. These introductions are made on the basis of traditional forms of evaluation that include the couple’s compatibility in class, economic status, family reputation and educational attainment. In the interviews, many women said that having a university degree increased their potential to find a good groom, one who possessed all the desirable characteristics that would be deemed compatible, including being highly educated. Thirty-five-year-old sociology graduate Sally noted that middle- and upper-class Egyptians increasingly believe that educating a female through to the university level provides her with greater opportunities to marry a desirable groom.

There are people in Egypt who think that a girl has to be educated and be a university graduate because when she gets interest from a potential groom, he and his family have to know that she has a degree.

Thirty-five-year-old English literature graduate Hanan gave a range of reasons for the importance of being a university graduate. She felt that the prospective groom and his family faced pressure too, as educated men should choose equally educated brides.

It’s very difficult in our culture, and within this class for parents to accept that their son, who they struggled for to put him through university, to marry a girl who has lower education. “There are many girls in Egypt; there isn’t anyone else that you liked but that [lower educated] one? Why don’t you pick a university graduate?” Every girl wants to finish university so that she has more opportunities available to her, and I won’t say that the number one opportunity is work.

These increased marital “opportunities” were reiterated by many women in the sample. Twenty-seven year-old Farida highlighted that females with university degrees have the advantage of being able to select from a pool of potential grooms of higher calibre.

It’s normal that if a man who is a university graduate is looking for a bride, then he’s not going to look for somebody lower than him, who is less educated. Why would he look for a bride who’s less than him? [Single] girls wanting to get married here are everywhere! So being a university graduate helps girls to be in that higher category and they can pick grooms who are in that higher category than those who are not university graduates.

Both married and unmarried women in the sample held this notion that men with university degrees were unwilling to marry someone with lower educational attainment. The friends of 25-year-old master’s student Malak, who had never

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