Saudi women fight for control of their marital fate
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RIYADH — Women in Saudi Arabia are fighting back against tribal traditions that make them hostage to the whims of their fathers and male guardians who alone can decide who their future husbands will be.
Faced with a lifetime of being forced to remain single, an increasing number of Saudi women, many of them university graduates with good jobs, are going to court to dispute their fathers’ refusal to sign off on their marriages.
In July, a Medina court rejected a 42-year-old doctor’s petition to override her father and brothers’ refusal to allow her marriage to a surgeon she works with, because he did not belong to their tribe.
The court ruled that the father was justified, and that she was not being obedient by trying to marry someone outside the clan.
“Unfortunately we have a strange paradox in society, where young girls only 10 years old can be married, but an adult woman can be prevented from marrying for illogical reasons,” Suhaila Zainal Abidin of the National Society for Human Rights told AFP..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101005com6.html
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