Abstract
The literature from the Middle East and North Africa holds that many youth get stuck in a phase of “wait adulthood” while they struggle to afford the housing, furniture, appliances, celebrations, and jewelry considered necessary to establish a new marital union. In semi-structured interviews with 66 urban Egyptian men and women who were engaged to be married, I found that many marriages were postponed when young couples were unable to make the matrimonial transactions required by custom. However, I argue that normative barriers are no less important than material barriers to marriage in this context. Matrimonial transactions could not be reduced or forgone because they communicated important meanings related to class and gender. The celebrations and home visits that accompanied a new union involved conspicuous consumption, and actors strove to reproduce the material behaviors that predominated in their social class in order to secure a favorable position in the hierarchy of new couples. Matrimonial transactions were sharply gendered, and adherence to matrimonial norms and the ritualized situations that came with them signaled actors’ dedication to ideals of masculinity and femininity and the unequal roles they would occupy within marriage, at the same time that matrimonial exchanges built in safeguards for women within marriage. Young couples were keenly aware that failure to live up to the material standards of their social circles would be met with loss of face and negative judgements about their personal qualities, making such outlays appear to be compulsory rather than optional. At the same time, conforming to matrimonial customs resulted in greater symbolic capital, or social prestige.
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Notes
The average duration of engagements in Egypt in 2006 was 15 months, and in 2012 it was 14 months (Salem 2015).
This vignette illustrates how the marriage of daughters is often prioritized over the marriage of sons in Egypt. This has to do with the cultural definition of marriage as the only legitimate venue for the expression of sexuality, a preoccupation with the preservation of unmarried women’s chastity, and the stigma of singlehood for women beyond a certain age.
I use the terms normative and norms to refer to shared ideals that guide social actors’ conduct, rather than typical behaviors actually enacted by social actors.
The same study shows that unfavorable labor market experiences (such as unemployment and low wages) have no effect on Egyptian women’s marriage timing (Salem 2016b).
Although Islamic tradition requires that grooms provide a prompt dower (mahr), all my Muslim respondents reported that they circumvented this by recording a symbolic sum of 25 piasters in their marriage contracts. Among those who adhere to this tradition, the prompt dower is given by the groom to the bride and used by her to outfit the marital home. The bride’s side typically hosts and pays for most expenses associated with the upholstery celebration (described in greater detail in the results section), which marks the transfer of the newlyweds’ furniture and other goods to the conjugal home. The larger henna celebration is often held the night before the wedding and involves the application of henna to the bride’s skin. This celebration can be hosted by the bride’s or the groom’s family; however, the majority of the costs are borne by the groom. Both the upholstery and henna celebrations can be held in the hosts’ home, but more commonly take place in the street in front of the hosts’ home. The ceremony in which Muslim couples sign the marriage contract, or the katb el kitab, is usually a smaller affair than the henna. It is usually hosted by the bride’s side, but the groom must pay for all expenses, including the fee of the marriage registrar or ma’zoun.
It is possible that the increased availability of these amenities has meant lower prices for couples marrying today compared to past generations. The extant literature does not include analyses of time trends in the cost of modern appliances. We do know, however, that real wages have declined over a 20-year period (Said 2009), suggesting that the affordability of modern amenities has likely decreased or stayed the same.
Rao, for instance, notes that in one area of rural India the total cost of marriage is equivalent to the expenditures of a household for an entire year (1993). Zhang and Chang find that in Taiwan, the average dowry constitutes about 6 months’ earnings for men or 10 months’ earnings for women, while bride-prices constitute approximately 3 months’ earnings for men and 6 months’ earnings for women (1999).
The questionnaire consisted of an asset list including the items television, video or DVD player, fan, air-conditioner, water heater, washer, and car. Respondents were selected into the sample if their natal household owned assets corresponding to those owned by the middle third of the wealth distribution, according to the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey. Measures of household wealth are a commonly used proxy for socioeconomic status in developing countries, and in Egypt, several large-scale surveys, such as the Demographic and Health Survey and the Egypt Labor Market Panel survey, rely on asset lists to determine household wealth.
Christians constitute between 8 and 15% of Egypt’s population, so they are underrepresented in this study. This can be attributed to our reliance on snowball sampling methods.
600 EGP was equivalent to approximately $107 USD at the time of the interview.
Parents (and for brides, brothers) often bought matrimonial goods for their engaged children. Brides tended to command greater contributions from family members, and family members often started amassing items for the bride’s gihaz in her teenage years. In addition, brides and (less frequently) grooms sometimes received gifts of matrimonial goods from other relatives during their engagements.
Bride’s fathers usually hold grooms accountable for commitments made in negotiations. In recognition of the hardship young people experience in financing marriage, respondents reported that some bride’s fathers gave the groom leeway by agreeing to extend the engagement. In some instances, brides explained that their fathers would want the same leniency to be applied to their sons, who were destined to marry and face the same challenges someday.
This description is derived from both the respondents’ narratives and my conversations with key informants.
The muakhar is a sum of money to which Muslim wives are entitled after divorce or the husband’s death.
Min el ibra lilsarookh or “from the pin to the rocket” was a well-known mantra of the era of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, when the government emphasized self-sufficiency. The state aimed to manufacture all needs domestically, from the simplest items to the most technologically advanced, to reduce dependence on the West.
Differences between matrimonial customs in Cairo and Al-Minya exist but are minimal. In Cairo, some grooms reported bearing the cost of the refrigerator and the children’s bedroom was a point of negotiation, which was rare in Al-Minya. Unlike Al-Minya, in Cairo the cost of upholstery, rugs, and curtains was almost always assigned to the bride. Unlike Al-Minya, where the bride’s gold was an important component of marriage costs, in Cairo most couples simply bought three rings for the bride and the shabka engagement party was a small family affair. The upholstery celebration was bigger in Cairo than in Al-Minya, and henna and wedding celebrations were more often held in the street in Cairo.
My description of celebrations and visits to the homes of newlyweds are derived from the respondents’ narratives and conversations with key informants.
All the respondents interviewed stated that in the future, the wife would stop working either after marriage or after childbearing. This suggests that once married, respondents planned to follow a gendered division of labor where wives were responsible for domestic work and childcare.
Respondents referred to these payments as a masroof, literally an “allowance,” the same word used for the monthly allowance given by Egyptian husbands to their wives to cover household expenses. This practice, however, was relatively rare among the middle-class couples I interviewed.
This resonates with the Islamic principle of kafa’a, or equal status between marriage partners, which is usually gauged by drawing comparisons between the wealth or occupation of the groom and the bride’s father (Hasso 2011).
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Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the role of Amal Refaat in conducting the Al-Minya-based interviews for this study, and the assistance of Randa Bahnasy in recruiting the Cairo-based respondents. The data collection for this study was supported by a grant from Princeton University’s Department of Sociology, and the article manuscript benefitted from helpful comments from Paola Bohorquez, Paul DiMaggio, Ann Mullen, Elizabeth Thompson, Marta Tienda, and Viviana Zelizer.
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Salem, R. Matrimonial Transactions and the Enactment of Class and Gender Difference Among Egyptian Youth. Qual Sociol 41, 399–421 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9393-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9393-z