The Yale Globalist - Marriage in Crisis

Marriage in Crisis

Wednesday, 21 January 2009 | Rahim Sayani

For young Egyptians, the typically extravagant wedding ceremony has become a prohibitive expense (Flickr).

Speak to Fatima about Arabic literature and you will find a happy, young Egyptian woman who is passionate about her profession. Under her enthusiastic facade, however, lie years of personal suffering. At age 16, Fatima lost her father and, with him, all sources of income to support herself and her family. So at the age of 28, when she met Abdul, she consented to marry him. “Even though he was divorced, he was rich, had a nice apartment in Cairo, and had a good job,” Fatima explained. “He was a way to secure myself financially for the future. He was a catch.”

Like many of her peers, Fatima did not have the luxury of marrying for love. For young Egyptians today, marriage is luxury enough. Marriages in Egypt are extravagant, costly celebrations, and increasingly, people simply cannot afford to tie the knot. Facing a plummeting economy and little prospect for employment, young Egyptians are delaying marriage, creating what many have termed Egypt’s “marriage crisis.” The crisis of this bachelor generation goes beyond romance, revealing and reinforcing Egypt’s current economic and social problems.

In Middle Eastern culture, before marriage can take place, fiancés must fulfill individual obligations that add to the overall cost. “The man has the responsibility to secure an owned apartment,” explained Yasmin Khattab, Arabic teaching fellow at Yale University. The groom must furnish the apartment and provide a dowry at the time of marriage, along with gifts of gold and silk for the bride and her family. According to research conducted by diane Singerman, associate professor at American University’s School of Government and Public Affairs, the average cost of an Egyptian marriage in the late 1990s was $6,000. More recently, the cost of marriage was measured as equal to 43 months’ salary of the groom and his father combined—a significant expenditure in a country where average per capita income is around $1,500. Given Egypt’s faltering economy, young men have enough trouble finding decent jobs to support themselves, let alone a marriage and a family.

The challenges are not simply economic. Unmarried “youth” of Egypt are stuck in limbo between childhood and adulthood, as Egyptian culture considers marriage the official turning point for becoming an adult. Some believe this position has negative psychological repercussions on unmarried youth, stunting their participation in the social sphere. Some assert that the resultant depression young men face may be a contributing factor in the rise of extremist groups in Egypt.

The frustration of bachelorhood is exacerbated by a taboo on dating. “Marriage is the only legitimate and honorable way to interact with the opposite sex,” said Singerman. This social standard is the primary reason marriage is so important in Egypt— it is the only mechanism for lawful and acceptable sexual freedom. “Lack of sexual activity can lead to aggression in the street,” claimed Rania El-Shabassy, a research scholar from the University of Cairo currently at Yale.

While rising extremism and street aggression cannot be empirically attributed to the marriage crisis, it is clear that the young

generation’s matrimonial delay has ramifications for the entire country. Some urge the government to take an active role in alleviating the financial woes of unmarried youth by creating jobs or regulating the housing market. While the government has responded with inaction, other groups have stepped in. NGOs such as the Karam al-Islam stage mass weddings to encourage marriage and subsidize its cost. Marrying over 2,300 couples in 2007 alone, the agency gives financial support during the ceremony—supplying even wedding dresses and lingerie if needed—as well as afterward, providing for needs ranging from housing and clothing to help finding employment.

In the long run, a revitalization of the economy would create jobs and enable individuals to independently afford matrimony. Meanwhile, individual Egyptians adjust in their own ways. “Parents of girls are seeing the problems and asking for less money as a dowry,” said El-Shabassy. “In some cases they are buying their daughter a house.”

El-Shabassy sees this as a step forward for Egypt, a positive byproduct of the nationwide marriage crisis. “The good thing is that fixed norms have been shaken. It’s happening— people are yielding to these new ideas and the new conditions,” she said. “The time for change has come.”

Rahim Sayani is a freshman in Berkeley College.

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