“Benevolent Patriarchy”: Palestinian Women between “Ideal” and “Reality”
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: In this article polygyny is used to illustrate how the ideal of benevolent patriarchy and the “good” Muslim man as the benevolent patriarch tends to create a discrepancy between the legal and the moral in Islamic legislation as well as in Islamic discourse. The study is based on fieldwork in the West Bank in 2011 when 49 Islamist and Islamic-oriented women were interviewed. The main finding of this study is that Islamist women tend to accept the Islamic gender system as the divine will, and they also accept its legal expression, Personal Status Law. However, there is a little awareness of the lack of legal consequences for men who do not behave according to the moral code, which is not explicitly but only implicitly assumed in the law.
Author: Anne Sofie Roald
Institutions: Malmö University, Chr. Michelsen Institute
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2256430443