What price a wedding? Officials in the United Arab Emirates have adopted a carrot-and-stick approach to discourage young Emiratis from marrying foreign nationals, blaming mixed marriages for a significant rise in regional divorce levels. Karen Thomas asks whether romance is dead.
Officials in the United Arab Emirates have adopted a carrot-and-stick approach to discourage young Emiratis from marrying foreign nationals, blaming mixed marriages for a significant rise in regional divorce levels. Karen Thomas asks whether romance is dead. Officials in the United Arab Emirates have launched new initiatives to deter young Emirati citizens from marrying non-nationals, a trend blamed for soaring divorce rates in all the Gulf states.
After a decade of inflated wedding bills and dowry demands, Emirati bachelors are increasingly unwilling to marry local women. Growing numbers of bachelors, unable to raise the six figure sums that many prospective in-laws demand and reluctant to fall into debt, have opted out by taking European, Asian or foreign Arab brides.
In response, the state has launched measures to penalise young Emiratis who marry foreigners and local families who defy the UAE’s new mood of economic austerity. At the same time, it has introduced financial incentives to persuade Emirati couples to marry each other. But there is no evidence to suggest that this carrot-and-stick approach has managed to halt the trend.
Since the 1970s oil-boom, Gulf states have seen increasing competition between prominent families seeking to out-do each others’ lavish weddings. Marriages are major social events in the Gulf states, societies that — contrary to the popular western stereotype — generally frown on ostentatious public displays of material wealth.
Keeping up with the Joneses (or the Husseins) has come under fire at a time when regional governments are promoting a new economic austerity.
But while governments have struggled to curb social spending during the last decade, wedding costs and dowries have continued to spiral upwards.
Traditionally, an Arabian woman’s dowry comprised ornate silver jewellery, but modern brides favour gold jewellery and cash sums to the traditional Arabian wedding sets. Rising gold prices have only increased young GCC bachelors’ financial worries. In status-conscious Arabian social circles, the average cost of a wedding had soared to around $100,000 by the late 1990s.
Weddings generate up to 80 per cent of the UAE’s consumer credit and statistics suggest that far from basking in newly-wedded bliss, the early years of marriage see young husbands struggling to save up to two-thirds of their income to repay their wedding loan.
Weddings generate up to 80 per cent of the UAE’s consumer credit
UAE officials have started to promote mass weddings — a common phenomenon in poor Shi’a villages in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province — as a means to cut costs. Last summer saw the first such wedding in the northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, where per capita incomes are half the UAE average.
Despite such initiatives, the marked increase in wedding and dowry costs has coincided with a steep increase in divorce rates in all Arabian Gulf states, leading some officials to conclude that the trends are linked.
Divorce rates stand at 25 per cent in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, 29 per cent in Kuwait and 40 per cent in the UAE. Anecdotal evidence suggests that modern Arabian women are less willing than their mothers’ generation to tolerate unhappy marriages and are initiating a growing proportion of divorces.
The role of the mahr (dowry) in Islamic marriages has sometimes been interpreted as a bride-price. To many Muslims, it is purely symbolic, just as white dresses, diamond engagement rings and gold wedding bands are symbols in traditional Western marriages.
The sum agreed between the bridegroom’s family and the bride’s parents should be paid to the bride herself. In many cases, the dowry is an insurance policy, payable to the woman in full if her husband remarries, or in the event of divorce.
A sceptical woman might conclude that the larger her dowry, the greater her chances of financial independence should the marriage turn sour.
Eight years ago, UAE ruler Sheikh Zayed launched a $68 million Marriage Fund to encourage Emirati youths to marry local women. The fund, which donates cash to deserving bachelors to cover wedding and dowry costs, expects to receive 8,000 applications this year.
But there is evidence to suggest that such financial incentives will not reverse rising divorce rates in the Gulf states, and may even be compounding the problem.
One senior Kuwaiti official argues that government grants are making matters worse. In an interview with the Khaleej Times, the Counselling Services Department official said he had witnessed cases where men applying for Kuwaiti Marriage Fund grants had then filed for divorce with indecent haste, splitting the cash with their ex-wives.
Having highlighted incentives to promote marriage when it launched, the UAE Marriage Fund is increasingly adopting a policing role. In March, officials unveiled plans for compulsory health tests for brides whose husbands had applied to the fund.
Officials will refuse to award funds, and may even try to forbid the marriage, if the bride refuses to be tested or tests positive for certain un-named diseases. There are no plans to test male nationals, who enjoy greater freedom to socialise than their female counterparts.
By contrast, neighbouring Bahrain offers voluntary blood tests, family planning and pre-marital counselling to engaged couples. Bahrain, which has a high incidence of sickle cell anaemia, also runs a full and frank Aids education programme in schools and health centres targeting both men and women.
Jamal Al Bah, head of the UAE Marriage Fund, has said that families will be fined up to $136,000 if they stage lavish weddings that defy the new austerity and has also ordered brides’ parents to curb their dowry demands. In 1998, the UAE introduced a new marriage law that restricted dowries to less than $10,000.
The UAE has discussed implementing an overt ban on marriages to foreign nationals. Laws in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Qatar make it difficult for men to marry foreign women, although Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain have taken a more relaxed approach.
Emirati women seem, increasingly, to be the target of new government restrictions. One proposal being discussed is a review of UAE citizenship law. At present, any child born to an Emirati parent is automatically considered a UAE citizen, but new proposals would limit that right to children born to Emirati fathers.
The proposal has far-reaching implications, because an Emirati woman divorcing a foreign husband would find it almost impossible to win custody of her children — in the event of the court ruling granting custody to the wife, her children could, technically, be stateless.
While young men are under pressure to find work and start saving towards their wedding as early as they can, young women are free to concentrate on their education. Some 65 per cent of all GCC university graduates are women, with many actively delaying marriage to focus on their studies.
As recently as the 1980s, most Arabian women were married by their late teens. Today, the average woman is more likely to marry aged 22-24. Attitudes to marriage have changed radically in a single generation. Teachers and youth workers report that female students are increasingly reluctant to marry: many young Emirati women find their male counterparts conservative and argue that foreign men make more considerate husbands.
“When my female students talk about marriage, it amazes me how cynical they are,” said a Dubai-based teacher. “They say they would rather never marry at all than marry a man who expects them to lead the same kind of life as their mother’s.
“And they often say they want to marry a non-national. Nor do they want to be second wives; they want to be the first wife, full stop.”
Improved education, access to media and overseas travel are factors which have influenced young women’s expectations.
As recently as the 1980s, most Arabian women were married by their late teens
Most girls pursue their studies with their families’ wholehearted blessing, although some middle-class parents see education as a means to a more affluent husband, rather than the passport to an independent career. Many students hope to combine a home life with a career.
“Some students may not want a career, but they want a good education, because having a good education will make them better mothers and therefore this benefits the family as a whole,” says Judy Turk, dean of communication and media studies at Dubai’s single-sex Zayed University.
It is still rare for an Arabian woman to reject marriage and motherhood outright —despite the scare stories, some undoubtedly generated by conservatives, about a new generation of unmarriageable, work-oriented spinsters — but many believe that their domestic responsibilities are perfectly compatible with a stimulating professional career.
However, the government is sending mixed messages to young Emirati women. On the one hand, Arabisation initiatives call on young men and women to fulfill their national duty and make an economic contribution to society; on the other hand, the Marriage Fund is promoting the notion that women should settle down with a suitable — if highly conservative — Emirati boy.
It may take another generation to resolve this dilemma. “Many [female] students argue it is better for the country if they get an education, so that they can work to help the country,” Mrs Turk says.
“These young women have heard Sheikh Zayed talking about Emiratisation and the need for the young people of this country to run not just the government, but also the private sector, and there is an element of nationalism, of ‘taking our country back from the foreigners’.”
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