SHIFTING DEBATE AROUND PROPOSED HOUSING GRANTS FOR SECOND WIVES
▶ Financial support could encourage more men to take Emiratis as their second spouses,
Aproposal for the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme to extend housing grants and loans to men who take second wives could have unintended consequences, sociology and law experts say.
The proposal is one of 16 being drafted by the Federal National Council after a discussion in a February session with the Minister of Infrastructure Development, Dr Abdullah Al Nuaimi.
The issue was raised by Hamad Al Rahoomi, the second-term member from Dubai, who asked the minister about providing a housing allowance for Emiratis who wish to take a second wife.
“The recommendations also include providing assistance to first marriages,” Mr Al Rahoomi said last week.
“Our concern is family well-being and stability.”
Expensive weddings and high dowries mean men often marry foreign women as second wives. A documentary by Zayed University researchers last year estimated that on average, an Emirati wedding costs at least Dh683,000.
Financial support would make it more affordable for men to marry Emirati women, thereby reducing the number of unmarried women and increasing stability for families suffering financial pressure, Mr Al Rahoomi said.
“He will marry a second wife anyway, so why not help him to maintain a stable household by providing accommodation if he marries an Emirati woman?” he asked after the session.
“When he sees that he will have to pay for a new house if he marrries an expat woman and that the Government will support him if he marries an Emirati, then he will chose to marry an Emirati.”
Mr Al Nuaimi said the Ministry had already considered treating a housing request for a second marriage in the same way as it does for a first.
“If we are able to facilitate more Emirati men to marry Emirati women, this is a success,” Mr Al Rahoomi said. “I am not encouraging men to remarry. The point is to provide factors that will make a marriage between two nationals successful.”
Wives living in the same house can create problems, Mr Al Rahoomi said.
“Our concern is the well-being of the extended family and not that the man marries more than one woman,” he said.
‘We fell in love’
Emirati “Shamma” agreed to become a second wife but says it has been a struggle since her wedding 10 years ago.
“I agreed to marry him because we fell in love and he told me that he had a difficult relationship with his first wife and was considering divorce,” Shamma said.
Her husband did not divorce his first wife and mother of his four children.
“There are many things that I want but the one most important thing is a house,” she said. “Having a house is the most important thing for any family as it provides us with stability and security.
“Being the second wife and a mother of three, we have been living in a rented house for the past 10 years. It is a difficult situation and I feel the government should provide for those in my situation with support.”
Polygamy in the Emirates is widely believed to solve perceived problems such as “spinsterhood” and population decline.
The Emirati population in the capital has an annual growth rate of 3.9 per cent, the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD) says.
In the emirate, Emirati men outnumber the women at a ratio of 1.05 to 1, the 2016 mid-year SCAD estimates showed.
However, regarding the housing proposal, academics have warned that rather than fostering social stability, it could have the opposite effect.
“I think if the Government moves forward with this, there could be some serious unintended consequences to this policy, including a rise in divorce among the senior wives,” said Dr Nicole Bromfield, a former associate professor at UAE University’s Department of Social Work, who researched marriage and divorce in the Emirates.
‘Why should I marry an Emirati woman?’
A 2005 study by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs reported polygamy as the main cause in a third of divorce cases. The study noted that most of the men were in their sixties and marrying second wives in their twenties.
Men are not legally obliged to tell their first wives they plan to remarry. In a 2005 study by Mariam Al Shamsi and Leon Fulcher, 22 of 25 first wives who were interviewed were unaware that their husband planned to remarry.
A third of the women found out their husband had remarried when they saw their husband with a second wife, while half learned from friends or family. The study reported that 12 per cent of women became sick on hearing the news. Mothers also said that most children experienced psychological effects that harmed their education, social behaviour and self-esteem.
“Fairness between wives and families was frequently open to question,” the study concluded. “More worrying was the small amount of time fathers in polygamous families spent with their children. Society and those around the first wife expected her to be patient and not seek professional counselling.”
Dr Bromfield said the housing proposal fails to address core issues such as high dowries and financial pressure. “In casual conversations some of the male respondents were like, ‘Why should I marry an Emirati woman when I can find a beautiful woman from Morocco who’s not going to have the same demands? She’s not going to want the Dh700,000 wedding’.”
Dr Bromfield, who now works in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston, proposed other strategies to tackle the core problem.
They included a limit to financial support provided to couples from mixed marriages, capping wedding expenses or giving more support to Emirati women who want to marry foreign men.
“The issue is who the men are marrying,” Dr Bromfield said.
“If the government really wants to prevent so-called spinsterhood among Emirati women, they either need to have some rules against Emirati men marrying foreign women, like not providing them [with] financial support, or open it up for Emirati women to have the same right to marry a Muslim man from a different country.
“It’s very difficult for Emirati women to marry men from other countries because of the constraints. They don’t get the financial support and their kids don’t get citizenship until they turn 18. So why not open that up for women? I understand that a lot of the families would not be OK with that. But some might.”
The policy could lead to more stability
Naser Al Hammadi, a lawyer from Abu Dhabi who specialises in divorce and marriage, agreed that the FNC’s policy could lead to more stability in the home.
Mr Al Hammadi said that while first wives were usually well provided for in their own villas, second wives often lived in flats and this led to pressure and jealousy in the family.
“Many people are talking about this idea,” he said. “I have so many cases where the second wife says, ‘I don’t have a home’ and the husband has only given a house to the first wife. It’s a good idea for the Government to give a second home.”
Even if the second wife is not originally Emirati, her children will be and she will remain in the UAE after her husband’s death, Mr Al Hammadi said. Second wives were typically much younger than their husbands and outlived them.
“If the husband dies, where will the wife go? Some wives have been here for 50 years.”
“My advice is that the husband expects only one wife. In the past 10 years I see people who have had problems with work and time management. If you work from 8am to 4pm, what time do you have for a second wife?”
Dr Bromfield also suggested capping wedding costs.
Sheikh Zayed, the Founding Father, encouraged people to keep weddings modest, said Obaid Al Kaabi, a lawyer from Abu Dhabi.
“Sheikh Zayed flipped the table by saying spending millions on the wedding in one night does not bring social prestige,” Mr Al Kaabi said.
“He made an example and he showed that he was happy to attend a modest wedding. His attendance became more valuable than the millions people spent on fireworks and wasted food.”
This example was followed by other sheikhs, who attend mass wedding ceremonies for men.
It is expected that men will only marry a second wife when they are able to support her financially. The 2005 Ministry of Labour study attributed a rise in marriages to foreign women to the financial boom.
“My wife got scared when I got some money,” Mr Al Kaabi said. “I told her that remarriage is not for me. But normally people who have more financial capability consider enjoyment. They consider the luxuries of life.”
I have so many cases where the second wife says, ‘I don’t have a home’ NASER AL HAMMADI Lawyer