RIYADH, 29 February 2008 — Umm Koloud is a 41-year-old Saudi mother of six girls. She lives in a squalid apartment in Athoqbah, Eastern Province. She gets SR2,100 in social insurance every month, over half of which goes to rent. “We are living under a constant threat of eviction,” she said. “We just can’t afford SR1,100 for rent every month.”
Umm Koloud’s husband died seven months ago. She is one of Saudi Arabia’s estimated 182,403 widows, many of who scrape by with little or no support from blood relatives or in-laws.
For Saudi women the passing of a husband often means more than losing a loved one; it means beginning a phase of more responsibility, challenge and economic uncertainty. Some widows are left without relatives able to take them in or offer even modest financial support.
And because of the Saudi guardianship laws, many of these widows are caught between the rock of an indifferent extended family and the hard place of a system that prohibits them from managing many of their own affairs.
A male guardian — known as mahram, who is usually a spouse, father, brother or son — is often required to sign on behalf of women. A woman who doesn’t have anyone to be her mahram has no alternative but to become a ward of the state under the guardianship of a local Islamic court.
In most cases, however, a widow usually ends up finding a mahram within their extended families or getting re-married, in some cases as a second wife.
Saedah F., 36, got married at 19 to a man much older than her. She never graduated from high school. She’s the mother of numerous children; she didn’t say how many. When her husband passed away, the women who married him before her got most of the inheritance set aside for his wives. “My children and I haven’t inherited much,” she said.
Sociologist Ahmed Al-Hariri said that the Saudi custom of parents forcing young girls to marry older men is partly to blame for many relatively young women becoming widows. While forced marriage is forbidden in Islam, many girls find it difficult not to submit to the marriage wills and selections made by their parents.
Often marriage is viewed as a way to get out from under the wing of the parents, too, leading girls to make hasty decisions that might be contributing to Saudi Arabia’s growing divorce rate.
Like divorcees, widows are faced with the “damaged goods” stigma that causes problems with finding another husband.
Fatimah Hussan, who lives in Dammam, has a different problem that leads to similar complications: Her husband is serving 17 years in prison and has still 15 years to go.
“I have two children at home and can’t find a place to put them while I’m at work,” said Hussan, who survives in part through charity from neighbors and friends. She says her social insurance disbursements barely cover the SR11,000 she pays in rent annually.
Hussan’s only option for a mahram (other than to become a ward of the state) is a married brother who lives on the other side of the country in Najran. She said moving to Najran would be a burden on her brother who has a wife and earns a modest income. Finding work and living on her own has been difficult, she added.
For example, she said she tried working as a cook of traditional Saudi food in a kitchen of a restaurant, but the owner said he could not hire a woman. Men and women must work in segregated environments under Saudi law, an accommodation that most small businesses cannot afford to provide.
The Ministry of Social Affairs provides welfare to Saudi women who are landless, single and with at least two children. As soon as a son turns 18, however, the mother becomes his dependent and in many cases she is no longer eligible for ministry disbursement based on being a single-woman head of household.
According to Suhaylah Zain Al-Abidin, a women’s rights activist and member of the nongovernmental National Society of Human Rights (NSHR), depending on financial help is not a cure to the predicaments of these women, but rather simply a treatment of the symptoms.
“Keeping widows surviving on charity exacerbates their feeling of hopelessness,” she said. What would give them hope, she added, was to implement programs to help widows recuperate their emotional losses and to encourage them to be active members of society. Vocational and continuing education courses would be a positive step, she said.
