MAKKAH, 31 May 2006 — In an alarming trend, middle aged working women in the Kingdom are being stripped of their salaries and wages by unemployed husbands, reported Al-Nadwa newspaper.

With many Saudis struggling to finds jobs, unemployed men are resorting to unethical methods of marrying hardworking women with good salaries. It seems women are being left with only two choices: Either to live as single women with their salaries and dignity intact or marry men who exploit and abuse the very foundation of love and care on which marriages are based.

Hanan Al-Hushan is a Saudi female teacher who married an unemployed man hoping things would improve after the marriage. Hanan says her husband had no qualifications and after the marriage did not even express the slightest intent to work. She said: “I was hoping that he would start looking for a job and share the responsibilities of running the house. Later I realized that I needed to double-role as both the man and woman of the house. I was paying for everything and also doing all the house work.”

Hanan said that things grew worse as her husband began to strip her of 80 percent of her salary. She added: “He also bought a car under my name and is paying for it using my salary. I really wonder when he will even begin to start taking responsibilities more seriously?” Hanan has thought about divorcing her husband but says she continues living with him for the sake of her children.

Umm Samaher, another Saudi female teacher, said that when she turned close to 35 she was getting desperate to marry. As a teacher she had a good salary and a house and so went to a matchmaker thinking that would be the best way of meeting someone suitable.

A 32-year-old man soon asked for her hand in marriage, which she immediately accepted thinking about her lonely days. Soon after, Umm Samaher found her new husband to be uneducated, unemployed and extremely greedy. “He demanded that I give him my entire salary. He would say he was the man of the house and, therefore, had a right to pay for expenses,” said Umm Samaher.

Umm Samaher added that the day-to-day costs for running the house should come from her husband’s pocket not hers. She said: “If I refuse to give him money he reminds me of my age and tells me that marrying me was the wrong decision. I’ve tried standing up against his selfishness and stop him from using me but I just can’t. He thinks of me as a goat to be financially milked.”

Like Hanan, Umm Samaher has thought about divorce but stops on account of her one child.

Another woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, tragically spent over 15 years with an unemployed abusive husband with whom she had five children. She said: “I tolerated him for over 15 years even though he was unemployed. I used to look after the house while he would take money from me. If I refused to give him anything he would beat me.”

The woman used to give the man her entire salary and even bought some land, which she registered under his name under the impression that he wanted to build a new house for the family. The woman says her husband then built a house using her money.

“One month after it was built, I received some divorce papers with a court letter evicting me from the house. This monster had married another woman and was bringing her to the very house that I had built. He has no heart and is kicking my children and I out onto the streets.”

Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abu Deya, an Islamic scholar, said that it is the duty of the husband to support his wife and meet the costs of running the house. He said that it is optional for the wife to help her husband in sharing expenses if she so wishes.

“Many unemployed men, instead of finding decent jobs, use such women to extort money for their own personal use. If the husband needs money then he should ask his wife kindly and not force her to give because she’s in no way obliged to give anything. Men should definitely have the dignity not to steal money from their wives,” said the scholar.