The right to Half: Inside the fight for women’s share of matrimonial money
My mother never worked. She had no source of income. She gave up her job at my father’s request because he believed, like many men in Egypt, that there was no need for his wife to work as long as he could provide for the family.
After 28 years of marriage, my father divorced my mother. Only then did she realize that her legal entitlements amounted to an allowance/nafaqa and a nuptial settlement/mu’akhar sadaq of 3,000 Egyptian pounds (about $60). That amount might have been acceptable in 1996, but nowadays under the current inflation, it’s totally insufficient.
My mother’s experience was mirrored by the character played by actress Rogena in the Ramadan drama Hesbet Omri/ My Life’s Worth, written by Mahmoud Ezzat and directed by Mai Mamdouh.
Like my mother, Rogena’s character Hend ends up on the street after a minor dispute with her husband of 25 years. She starts a quest for her legal entitlements, pushing for the implementation of “haqq al-kadd wa al-si’ayah”, an adequate share in the matrimonial money. This principle asserts a woman’s right, upon divorce, to half of her husband’s wealth and assets that she helped to amass during the marriage.
Understanding haqq al-kadd wa al-si’ayah
According to Al-Azhar’s online Global Fatwa Center, women’s entitlement to recompense for her toil and efforts—known in Arabic as ḥaqq al-kadd wa al-si‘aya—is rooted in Islamic jurisprudence. The concept is based on legal principles protecting financial rights and recognizing women’s economic independence, deriving from the Quranic verse “For men is a share of what they have earned, and for women is a share of what they have earned” (Surat An-Nisa: 32).
One of the most cited historical precedents is a ruling by Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, granting a widow a share in the wealth her husband had jointly amassed. Only then would the assets be divided among other inheritors. His ruling has been followed by numerous judges and jurists down the ages, particularly within the Maliki school, one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam.
The principle is applied in various Islamic countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Malaysia. In Egypt, head of Al-Azhar Dr. Ahmed El-Tayeb has previously called for the necessity of safeguarding a wife’s right to an equitable share in her husband’s wealth. His revival of this fatwa on al-kadd wa al-si‘ayah stems from the increased participation of women in contributing to their husbands’ wealth and their entry into the labor market.
In the year following this statement, El-Tayeb reiterated his call to revive this fatwa in the closing statement of Al-Azhar’s conference on renewing religious discourse, held in January 2020. However, these appeals have yet to gain traction in practice.
Full-time labor at home
Policies of impoverishment and indebtedness that have contributed to Egypt’s economic instability have eroded the myth of the male breadwinner. Women entering the workforce have also transformed gender roles within families, fostering new dynamics rooted in shared economic responsibilities.
According to Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, women are the sole breadwinner in about 20% of households and contribute to household income in many others.
But women who choose—or are pressured—to remain at home are no less active. In reality, they work full-time without vacation days, retirement pensions, or end-of-service compensation. Their unpaid, invisible labor remains socially undervalued.
This care work includes looking after children and adults, housework, and other unpaid work in service of wider society. Such “voluntary” labor is among the tasks traditionally assigned to women under the gendered assumption that they are “natural caregivers” endowed with “inherited domestic skills”.
The International Labour Organization reports that women globally spend four times more hours on unpaid care work than men. Even women with full-time jobs outside the home often bear the full burden of domestic responsibilities as well.
In this way, care work is an indirect yet essential contributor to capital accumulation. Paid labor outside the home is not possible without someone—usually a woman—doing the unpaid labor inside it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81ujbt7fcRUIf my mother hadn’t nagged…
As part of social roles in traditional Egyptian households, the father is expected to provide financially, while the mother juggles multiple responsibilities. In addition to caregiving and childbearing, she is usually the household’s de facto financial manager. This includes budgeting the family’s limited income and stretching it to cover monthly expenses.
Mothers shoulder the burden of “making do.” Sometimes, that means resorting to nagging their husbands to meet needs they may otherwise ignore. If it weren’t for my mother’s nagging, we wouldn’t have attended language schools. We wouldn’t have moved from a small flat in a family building to an independent apartment, and later, to a larger one worth millions of pounds. Today, after the divorce, my mother is locked out, and her contributions are not legally recognized.
What happened to my mother is not unique. Women who raise claims to marital wealth are often met with ridicule and hostility. When a feminist initiative posted online about the equitable division of marital assets, the comments were flooded with mockery: “So you want to live off men?”; “Feminist freeloaders”; “Women are a burden on men and society”; “Stop begging already”; “This is just exploitation and theft.”
Towards a more-just law
A draft law entitled “Towards a More Just Family Law,” proposed by women’s rights groups and submitted to Parliament, includes a clause that would allow for the division of joint marital gains—if stipulated in the marriage contract.
“After community consultations, we included the clause as an optional condition that couples could choose to add to their marriage contracts,” said Gawaher Eltaher, a lawyer at the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights/ECWR and one of the drafters of the bill. She explained that the clause was not made mandatory due to widespread societal resistance at the time.
Any attempt to address women’s rights within the family structure is met with rejection. That resistance stems from a fear of losing control—acknowledging a woman’s right to shared wealth implies genuine partnership, not dependence.
This dynamic was reflected in a line from Hesbet Omri, when Hend’s lawyer (played by Mahmoud El-Bezzawy) responded to her inquiry about her right to the joint marital assets by asking “Do you want us to speak reasonably or talk fantasy?”
According to the show’s writer, Mahmoud Ezzat, the line was inspired by conversations he had with official institutions while developing the script. “One such institution focuses specifically on women’s rights supported the idea but saw it as unrealistic,” Ezzat told Al Manassa. He added that they ultimately preferred to remain neutral on a topic they considered controversial.
Contrary to expectations, Minister of Endowments Usama Alazhary expressed support during a preparatory meeting with director Mai Mamdouh. He welcomed the concept but voiced concern about the time it would take for such a change to be realized. “Other institutions dismissed the idea as ‘too Western,’ but ended up expressing enthusiasm in the end,” Ezzat said.
The sensitivity around women’s rights
Women who assert their religious and legal rights—such as al-kadd wa al-si‘ayah—are often met with silence. No one wants to address the issue. The same holds true for women who are denied their rightful inheritance, especially in Upper Egypt, where they are often barred from owning land. What we see is not a theological issue, but rather systemic economic violence, rooted in culture and state apparatus that refuse to recognize women’s rights.
To break this silence, MP Nashwa El-Deeb plans to introduce the “More Just Family Law” bill in the upcoming parliamentary session. She cites the call of Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam to revive al-kadd wa al-si‘ayah as her basis but admits she doesn’t know how Parliament will receive the proposal.
Of course, I stood by my mother. After confrontations and negotiations, I helped her reclaim part of her rights: a small apartment we owned and some household furniture. She might have been lucky for her father is alive, her children supported her decision to divorce, and even helped her secure her rights. But how many women remain trapped in abusive marriages because they have nowhere else to go?
A woman’s life spent in nurturing her family is neither seen nor valued, and even if she took a job and contributed her salary to the household income, how can she possibly prove it?
We urgently need legal reforms that recognize women’s decades-long contributions to their families.