Legalizing polygamy

What if polygamy were legalized in a country say like Canada? What would be the result?

Polygamy is close to universally frowned upon in western countries like Canada. But not so long ago homosexuality was as well. And there is what some have called serial monogamy in the west (the great increase in divorce rates), and the liberalization of heterosexual relationships outside of marriage, or even long term relationships. It's conceivable, then that polygamy would become mainstream and operate in an open society where individuals have freedom to make their own choices.

Alternatively, what if polygamy only finds a niche where it already lives? Even though it's illegal polygamy is practiced in Canada, and the U.S. It crops up in cults and is given a religious imprimatur. And it's always polygynous marriages, one man with several wives. These are societies that close themselves off from the world and construct codes and practices that perpetuate polygyny. Like teenage boys being exiled from the community. Child brides. Denying girls an education that would make leaving more attractive. Parents, particularly fathers, determining who their daughters will marry. A system of institutions, values, brainwashing and beliefs is created to keep women in check. Add to this that men are physically stronger. It's curious of course that women in these cult societies very often defend them. I won't pretend to understand that, but we do know that many of us have a tendency to defend what we have lived especially if we have been taught that there is evil outside your community and your community is under siege. And of course by their very nature kinship ties reach across these communities.

Other things being equal women interested in monogamy gain from polygyny because it gives them greater bargaining power -- if a man can take several wives, unmarried men be competing over fewer women, and give them a better deal in life. But other things are not equal. If polygamy were to be legalized there no reason to believe that in the open society polygyny would be greater than polyandry. At the same time we can expect to see a growth in closed societies were polygyny that subjugates women is practiced.

This post was inspired by a recent article in the Globe & Mail:

a professor testified Tuesday at a landmark court case examining Canada’s ban on multiple marriages.

Shoshana Grossbard, an expert in the economics of marriage from San Diego State University, said allowing men to have multiple wives inevitably leads to a reduced supply of women, increasing demand.

But rather than making women more valuable in such communities, she said, that scarcity encourages men in polygamous societies to exert control over them to ensure they have access to the limited supply.

Addendum. The Vancouver Sun has more on Grossbard's testimony:

Economist Shoshana Grossbard admits she was naive when she did her doctoral thesis on polygamy more than 30 years ago at the University of Chicago. Then, she believed that a simple supply-and-demand analysis would explain the economics of polygamous societies. Besides, she says, "I thought it was cool to say that polygamy might be advantageous to women and repeat what Gary Becker (her thesis adviser and Nobel laureate) has said."
...
Grossbard can't prove it. But the economist says it only makes sense that wealthy, well-educated polygamists might prefer living in Canada to Nigeria or even South Africa - where the president himself has five wives.

And if there is an influx due to immigration or an increase due to inclination, Grossbard is certain there will be pressure to accept the kinds of cultural practices and institutions she has observed in other polygynous societies.

Additional practices associated with polygyny are also discussed in the article.

Adhl: a form of slavery

AP:

Year after year, the 42-year-old Saudi surgeon remains single, against her will. Her father keeps turning down marriage proposals, and her hefty salary keeps going directly to his bank account.

The surgeon in the holy city of Medina knows her father, also her male guardian, is violating Islamic law by forcibly keeping her single, a practice known as "adhl." So she has sued him in court, with questionable success.

Adhl cases reflect the many challenges facing single women in Saudi Arabia. But what has changed is that more women are now coming forward with their cases to the media and the law. Dozens of women have challenged their guardians in court over adhl, and one has even set up a Facebook group for victims of the practice.

The backlash comes as Saudi Arabia has just secured a seat on the governing board of the new United Nations Women's Rights Council — a move many activists have decried because of the desert kingdom's poor record on treatment of women. Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Hawaidar describes male guardianship as "a form of slavery."

I've recently been looking over US census reports from the 1800s. The census included slaves (why count them: because they counted as 3/5 of a white man for the purposes of apportioning representation in the US House of Representatives). In those records slaves are counted as part of the household of whites. Often you see a notation that the slave is hired to someone else. The slave holder gets paid, not the slave. Slaves have no personal freedom. Their guardian (the slave holder) provides for them.

Just as the US laws courts perpetuated the institution of slavery, Saudi Sharia are letting down Saudi women. Adhl is not legal under Sharia law, but conservative judges fail to enforce the law.

American Bedu has more.

Markets in everything: faking it

BBC:

The contraption is seen as a cheap and simple alternative to hymen repair surgery, which is carried out in secret by some clinics in the Middle East. It is produced in China and has already become available in other parts of the Arab world. The device is reported to be on sale in Syria for $15. Professor Bayoumi, a scholar at the prestigious al-Azhar University, said it undermined the moral deterrent of fornication, which he described as a crime and one of the cardinal sins in Islam. Members of parliament in Egypt have also called for banning import of the item.

Inter-sect marriages on the rise in Iraq

AP:

Muhanad Talib, a Sunni Muslim, married his Shiite bride because she was a "suitable woman" for him. It also didn't hurt that their vows made them eligible for a $2,000 payout from the government.

Talib and his wife are among more than 1,700 newlywed couples who have accepted cash from a government program that encourages Sunnis and Shiites to tie the knot.
...
As security has improved, Iraqis are returning to their homes in mixed neighborhoods and spending more time at offices, universities and other places where they meet their future spouses, said Shiite cleric Sayyid Ahmed Hirz al-Yasiri in Baghdad's Shiite stronghold of Sadr City.

"There was a time when families were reluctant to consent to such marriages because of concerns created by certain conservative people from both sects," he said. "That is over now and things are getting back to normal, like they were before the fall of Baghdad. In the past two months, I married 40 to 50 Sunnis, including 20 mixed weddings."

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the pointer.

Divorce UAE style

Can anyone explain to me why the url for this article ends in "/SPORT"?
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090126/NATIONAL/247209707/1138/SPORT

The National:

There are no official statistics on divorce in the UAE. The GWU [General Women’s Union] has approached the Judicial Department to begin gathering figures, as well as the main reasons cited when married couples split.

A spokeswoman for the Judicial Department said the authority was in the process of compiling the data. According to the UN’s statistics division, the number of divorces in the country rose 13 per cent, to 12,974 a year, from 2002 to 2004.

It's not stated, but I believe these numbers refer to Emiratis only. Emiratis make up about 1 million of the 5 million residents of the UAE.

As to the reasons:

First:

Dr Sayegh [Dr Fatma Sayegh, a professor specialising in woman’s issues at UAE University in Al Ain], who has conducted several studies on divorce in the UAE, said many couples were married too young and did not fully understanding its significance.

Second:

Tony Maalouli, a divorce lawyer and the managing director of Dubai-based ProConsult Advocates, said he thought the high number of expatriates in the Emirates, with different values and lifestyles, had created problems.

“If there’s a lot of exposure to other nations and other ways of life, then this can put extra strain on the marriage,” Mr Maalouli said.

Third:

One reason the number of divorces is high in the Arab world may be the ease with which a man can divorce under Shariah law. If a man says, “I divorce thee” to his wife once, the couple have a three-month separation in which to reconcile their differences. But if a man says the phrase three times it indicates a final, irrevocable separation.

Too often, that is a move taken rashly, said Sheikh Abdul Rahman Ammoura, a mufti with the fatwa call centre.

Fourth:

Many of the problems young married couples face are exacerbated by the fact that they don’t know each other well before getting married, the GWU official said.

Fifth:

[Dr Sayegh said,] “They need to change this spend, spend, spend mentality. There is more to marriage than being provided for and things aren’t always easy. Both sides go in with very high expectations and then divorce for small reasons.”

Related: Earlier Emirates Economist article here.

Like a virgin

IHT

The plight of the rejected bride persuaded the Montpellier student to go ahead with the surgery.

She insisted that she had never had intercourse and said that she had discovered her hymen was torn only when she tried to obtain a certificate of virginity to present to her boyfriend and his family.

She said she had bled after an accident on a horse when she was 10.
...
[F]or the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, she had a "hymenoplasty," a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.

"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery Thursday. "Right now, virginity is more important to me than life."

As Europe's Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women find themselves caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents' and grandparents' generations.

That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.

"If you're a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage," said Hicham Mouallem, a doctor in London who performs the surgery. "So if you're looking to marry a Muslim and don't want to have problems, you'll try to recapture your virginity."
...
"Who am I to judge?" asked Marc Abecassis, the plastic surgeon who restored the Montpellier student's hymen. "I have colleagues in the United States whose patients do this as a Valentine's present to their husbands. What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don't have a choice if they want to find serenity - and husbands."

That sentence, "I have colleagues in the United States whose patients do this as a Valentine's present to their husbands": yuck.

See my post on the black market for hymen restoration in the UAE.

Kuwati men would be banned from marrying attractive maid-servants under proposal

Kuwait Times

Nawal Al-Muqaihit, a third district candidate said that if she was elected to Parliament she would submit a proposal forbidding Kuwaiti men from employing attractive maid-servants. She noted that the frequency of Kuwaitis marrying maids have risen and the government should pay attention to this loss of Kuwaiti identity. Al-Muqaihit remarked that Filipinos and Sri Lankans top the list. She added that Kuwaitis have now become in-laws to people in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Divorce

It's said that 46% of marriages in the UAE end in divorce. I'm not confident in that number. Like many numbers thrown around in the UAE it's not clear what the statistical foundation is, or even what it is purporting to measure.

According to Justin Wolfers, for first marriages of US women married 1985 to 1989, 33.4% of these ended before the 15th anniversary. And some marriages end because of death not divorce.

More:

the divorce rate in the United States is currently at its lowest level in twenty-five years, and has fallen nearly every year since 1979. The number of divorces per thousand marriages has now fallen by 27 percent since the peak in 1979. The latest data suggest that the divorce rate for 2007 will be even lower still. And our own analysis of the stability of marriages suggests that those married in the 1990’s appear to be less likely to divorce than those married in the 1980’s, who in turn are less likely to divorce than those married in the 1970’s. As such, the divorce rate seems likely to continue to decline for some time yet.

Surprised that the divorce rate in the US is lower than the UAE? I don't doubt that the divorce rate in the UAE is high, but there's no way to determine whether is that high, short of having better data on the UAE. Poor data invites theoretical speculation. Is the divorce rate in the UAE high because it's affordable? Because the matching process is poor? Because families interfere?

One take away from this comparison is that the US isn't as morally inferior to the UAE as it might appear. But do note that falling divorce rates in the US are attributed to falling marriage rates, and marriage at a later age. Those most likely to divorce have become less likely to marry. And there are more couples enjoying the benefits of marriage before marriage - whether or not they ever marry.

Spinsterhood, Dowries, and Completeness

Xpress (the tabloid insert to Gulf News):

Up to 50 per cent of Emirati women face Maryam’s fate [spinsterhood], says Eman Abdullah, president of the International Women’s Cultural Forum in Dubai.
...
What compounds the problem is that more Emirati men are coupling up with non-Emirati women to avoid the skyrocketing cost of marrying their compatriots, according to Eman Abdullah. This diminishes Emirati women’s chances of getting life partners from within the population.

Legally, Emirati women are allowed to marry foreigners, but UAE traditions discourage them from marrying expats – only 500 Emirati women married expat men in the last seven years, according to a recent forum.
...
Khalfan Al Mhriz, Family Counsellor at the Dubai Courts, said one solution is for women to be willing to be taken as a second wife. "Being considered a second wife has its own complications. They think it opens doors for family troubles, clashes and jealousy between the wives," he added. Al Mhriz added that society must accept the fact that women are becoming more independent and better educated, with no need to rely on a man.

Raya Al Mhrzi, a sociologist in Abu Dhabi’s Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Department and a member of the Marriage Fund, blamed fairy-tale ideas about marriage. Women, she said, have become too demanding, and high dowries, lavish ceremonies, clothes and jewellery become prohibitive. The Institute for International Research, a UAE think-tank, puts the average cost of a wedding ceremony in the UAE at Dh300,000
...
Ahmad Al Qubaisi, a leading Islamic scholar in Dubai, said: "The concept of spinster does not exist in Islam. The Arabic word aanes is used to refer to a female camel who has reached old age. Muslim women can get married at any time regardless of age. However, Islam encourages early marriage as a way to complete half of his/her religious duties." Al Qubaisi said that getting married and having children is both a pleasure and a duty that completes one’s womanhood.
...
Dr Mohammad Wafeek Eid, a psychiatrist at Al Musa Medical Centre in Dubai, said most spinsters suffer from anxiety, depression and multiple psychosomatic complaints, including headaches, epigastric disturbances, abdominal gases and discomfort. "They tend to be suspicious and they make those around them uncomfortable. They are somehow viewed as abnormal because they do not go through motherhood – spinsters are the object of social pity. They feel they are unfulfilled, incomplete," he said.
...
Eman Abdullah, president of the International Women’s Cultural Forum in Dubai, said spinsterhood is a "dangerous" phenomenon. It waters down the Arabic language, destroys local customs and traditions and creates an unstable and unhealthy family life, she said.

I am skeptical that up to 50% of Emirati women are spinsters - but don't disagree that spinsterhood is common. I am skeptical, too, of the statement that most Emirati spinsters suffer from multiple psychosomatic complaints. The article also fails to mention that the children of Emirati women married to non-Emiratis are not citizens, but those of Emirati men married to non-Emiratis are.

A Secret Dubai Bouquet

The Emirates Economist has been away from the blogging dashboard of late. Here are some recent items by Secret Dubai that cover interests of mine:

- Spinsterhood or second-wifedom? An easy decision for educated Emirati women in Sharjah.

- No longer will motorists be forced to sit behind white Nissan Sunnies doing 40kmph in the fast lane of Sheikh Zayed road, beads swinging from their rear view mirrors.

Indian Marriage Market :: Freexhange/economist.com

Quote:

Given the growing scarcity of women, how can the parents of boys continue to demand such high fees? I would suspect that the practice will, in fact, abate eventually, but probably not soon enough to prevent millions more girls being aborted. The other interesting economic fact to emerge from the article is that it is actually rich families who are most likely to do this.... This makes sense; in a poor country, ultrasounds are a luxury.

There are some things that economists cannot explain.

In the UAE the tradition amongst nationals is that men pay the dowry. Families demand very high dowries, so high that there is a spinster problem - a high proportion of women who never marry. The men can take foreign brides, and many do. As they say, de gustabus non disputandum. But I'm still puzzled.

The value of an intact hymen :: Gulf News

I read this morning in Gulf News about the black market for hymen restoration in the UAE. The price is Dh10,000. It is illegal for an unmarried woman to have her hymen surgically restored, but not illegal for a married woman to do so. Why a married woman would want such surgery I couldn't tell you, but it does give cover for the clinics that offer these procedures.

Why an unmarried woman would want the procedure is easy to explain: this culture highly values virginity in a bride and uses an intact hymen as the test. Vaginal intercourse, however, is not the only way the hymens are broken. An unintended consequence of the high value of a hymen is that girls avoid sports and other exercise. The GN article makes it sound as if only girls who are not vaginal virgins would want the procedure -- false, of course.

Secret Dubai has also posted on the story. She is wrong, though, in concluding that hymen restoration will make the value of an intact hymen zero. It will, though, mean that girls who have been raped will no longer be unmarriageable. That is, as long as: their identities are not made public, they can afford the surgery, the authorities do not crack down on the black market, and mothers of the husband-to-be do not insist on an invasive inspection to determine whether there has been surgery.

There is a way, actually, that Secret Dubai could be right. That is if the ready availability of hymen restoration changes behavior and more women engage in premarital sex. Then having an intact hymen would prove very little about whether you were a virgin or not.

GN has a companion piece entitled, 'If cosmetic operation is to deceive someone it is a crime', which explains why hymen restoration is regarded as a religious crime.

What about breast augmentation (deception of fertility) or nose jobs (deception of beauty of future children)? These are legal in the UAE.

Spinsterhood, American Style :: CJR Daily

Recently I noted that The New York Times had a copycat article of a Times article on the declining proportion of women who are in the state of matrimony. The NYT article attracted considerable attention in the blogosphere. And the NYT later ran a more substantive article, perhaps responding to criticism of the first article.

Gal Beckerman crystalized the criticism of many:

[T]here is nothing that will turn our faces red faster than a story that lazily slaps together a few anecdotes, buffered by a minor statistic, and then presents itself as important news. Especially when the "trend" masks a much more complex and dark reality.
. . .
The article, to no one's great surprise, hinting as it does at the problems of sex and love, was the number one most emailed today (or as Gawker, in its inimitable style, put it this afternoon, "Also, 91% Of Women Are Now E-Mailing Spinster Article To Their Single Friends.")

Leaving aside what struck us as strange methodology (like the fact that the survey counted anyone over the age of fifteen as a woman), there was something else disturbing about the piece. It had a tone of exuberance that spun the numbers as an unambiguously positive piece of progress for women.
. . .
the Times, of all papers -- having run groundbreaking series on both race and class -- should realize that a phenomenon that might bode well for middle-class white women might be absolutely disastrous for poor black women.

Apparently, though, we are the only ones to see it like this. Because apart from a tossed-off paragraph that reminds us that, buried within these statistics, seventy percent of African-American women are single, there is nothing to indicate how the epidemic of single parentage in the black community contributes to this statistic. We imagine -- though aren't told -- that many of these women are raising children alone and being dragged deeper into poverty because of their unmarried status.

Instead the rest of the article is completely about those middle class white women who insist they have chosen to be without ball and chain.

Here's what marriage looks like from the black American woman's perspective. One thing to keep in mind: all women are making choices, not just white women. And many women are choosing to live without a spouse because they, and any children, are better off that way.

Emirati women want to choose husband as educated as themselves

Gulf News today:

Abu Dhabi: Sixty-three per cent of UAE national men favour traditional marriages, while 71 per cent of UAE national women prefer to choose their husbands themselves, according to a recent study conducted by university students on the issue of marriage.

The study was conducted by Salwa Fouad, Khowla Ahmad and Lamia Ahmad, communication and media sciences students at Zayed University, as part of their graduation project, reported Notes which is published today.
. . .
Students surveyed 200 Emiratis and visited the Abu Dhabi Courts to gather statistics and literature.

The study showed that about 70 per cent of UAE nationals get married for religious reasons. It also indicated that 63 per cent of Emirati women refuse to marry a man with a poorer education than them.

However, 74 per cent of UAE national men said that they would marry women of higher education standards. It also showed that "being religious" was the number one quality men and women look for in a spouse.

Eighty per cent of women and 76 per cent of men agreed that dowry is not an indication of the bride's position and value. This is particularly relevant considering the expensive wedding parties and dowries that are part of UAE national weddings.

Considering that "National females constituted 71.2 per cent of national higher education graduates in the academic year 2002-03 and 68.6 per cent in 2003-04" the reluctance of women to marry men with less education could explain many concerns in the UAE:

- spinsterhood,
- the size of dowries, that is brides prices (to offset lack of education)
- national men marrying nonnationals,
- small number of children per woman (small relative to public policy aims), and
- the "demographic imbalance" (the euphemism for the large proportion of the population which is non-national).

Unmarried women outnumber married in US

Two weeks ago: Unmarried women outnumber married in UK. Today the turn goes to women in the US -- only 49% have a spouse present.

The New York Times:

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom.

In addition, marriage rates among black women remain low. Only about 30 percent of black women are living with a spouse, according to the Census Bureau, compared with about 49 percent of Hispanic women, 55 percent of non-Hispanic white women and more than 60 percent of Asian women.
. . .
Over all, a larger share of men are married and living with their spouse — about 53 percent compared with 49 percent among women.

“Since women continue to outlive men, they have reached the nonmarital tipping point* — more nonmarried than married,” Dr. Frey said. “This suggests that most girls growing up today can look forward to spending more of their lives outside of a traditional marriage.”

In UAE it is common for men to be living without a spouse present. That's due to all the nonnational male labor present. Those with low income are not permitted to bring their families. A substantial portion who are allowed to choose to be temporarily separated, leaving spouse and children at home.

*Is this a proper use of tipping point? The article does not describe a social epidemic. Perhaps the notion is as more women demonstrate they can be happy living alone other women will become infected with the notion that living alone would be best for them as well.

A Royal Emirati Whose Career Fuels Young Women’s Dreams :: NYT

Quote:

THE United Arab Emirates have one of the fastest growing economies in the Middle East, and also have one of the most open societies in the Persian Gulf. Women are afforded many freedoms and are encouraged to work and take part in public life. But ultimately this is a traditional society for local women, where marriage and family are still central in a woman’s life, where the law favors men in issues of family and where many women opt for reliable government jobs or simply choose to stay at home.

But with the outside world crashing into Emirati homes, and divorce rates on the rise, women must be better prepared to take care of themselves than their mothers’ generation, Sheika Lubna and other women here argue.

As a woman who challenged all the societal rules in the 1970s, working her way up the ranks as a computer engineer, then a chief executive and a government minister, she has sought to prove to women here that they, too, must begin assuming a greater role in public life.

Her family is the ruling family of the emirate of Sharjah, the emirate neighboring Dubai; her uncle is the ruler. As royalty, she faced even more traditional demands than most. Moreover, she never really needed to work, and if she chose to, she could have opted for a low-key job in a ceremonial role or as a bureaucrat.

She chose the hard way, however. When other women were staying home in the late 1970s, Sheika Lubna left for California to study computer engineering, becoming one of the first Emirati women to travel abroad for study.
. . .
After decades of pushing the barriers in a region where women have traditionally been kept out of the public sphere, Sheika Lubna now towers as one of the country’s most influential women. She is the first woman here to be a minister, but no less important, she is the minister of economy and planning, a particularly important position in a nation that is a major oil producer and relies so heavily on foreign investment, and where the economy continues to boom.

On any given day, she may be shuttling between world capitals to sign trade agreements, or between cities in the Emirates to garner support for her policies, or to lend support for a cause. She has pushed for the deregulation of cross-border trade while answering calls for greater oversight over the investment sector and stumping for foreign investment in her country.

But throughout, she has remained conscious of her role in chipping away at the restrictions women face in this region.

West Bank Weddings Losing Some of Their Bling :: WaPo

Quote:

BANI NAIM, West Bank -- Of the many troubles that the economic slide has brought to this town on the edge of the Judean Desert, Jihad Manassrah saw none more threatening than the growing number of single women walking in prim pairs through its narrow streets.

Marriage, once a jubilant expression of love and status here, had become a tradition many could no longer afford.

So last month, Manassrah, the imam of a local mosque, presented a novel social contract to several hundred men gathered for a rare public forum. The agreement put a cap on the cost of weddings and bridal dowries that had swelled enormously in this once-prosperous town of merchants, day laborers and civil servants, who like many in the West Bank are now adapting to hard times.

The declining marriage rate here is one example of social change in the midst of what the World Bank calls "an unprecedented economic recession" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Political power, demographics, family structure and customs are being transformed by financial constraints in large and small ways that will likely outlast the crisis itself.
. . .
Across the West Bank and Gaza, young men are abandoning towns and villages to find work in Palestinian cities, leaving communities like this one with a high concentration of unmarried women. At the same time, more Palestinian women are seeking higher degrees and jobs of their own to help husbands make ends meet, a trend university registrars say has accelerated in the seven months in which Hamas has run the Palestinian Authority.

In Bani Naim, a town of 20,000 people that fills several narrow valleys east of Hebron, the exodus of young men began a few years ago, and town leaders say it has quickened this year. The trend was reflected in a summer wedding season that, by all accounts, was the most meager in memory.

Women here commonly marry between the ages of 19 and 22, but many have been staying single far longer.
. . .
In this town, where stone-block mansions overlook valleys of olive orchards, the average cost of a wedding had risen to $15,000 in the prosperous years between uprisings. But many of the newer homes remain half-built, evidence of a lifestyle that has become a thing of the past.

A Palestinian wedding is a lavish undertaking of parties, salon visits and a bridal dowry often used as a measure of status. A bride here had come to expect her groom to provide 300 grams of gold, bedroom furniture and a new wardrobe as her dowry, which families came to see as an insurance policy against divorce.
. . .
There is also the celebration at the signing of the wedding agreement, which calls for the slaughter of a prized lamb, and a half-dozen bridal trips to the salon before each wedding-related event. Custom also demands that the groom rent a large convoy of taxis to retrieve the bride on the wedding day, which culminates in a feast of more than a dozen slaughtered sheep and an expensive fireworks display.

Security 'bad news for sex drive' :: BBC

The argument is that the female's sex drive is high early in a relationship in order to cement a relationship. Later in the relationship it drops. Here's the argument why:

Dr Dietrich Klusmann, lead author of the study and a psychologist from Hamburg-Eppendorf University, believed the differences were down to human evolution.

He said: "For men, a good reason their sexual motivation to remain constant would be to guard against being cuckolded by another male."

But women, he said, have evolved to have a high sex drive when they are initially in a relationship in order to form a "pair bond" with their partner.

But, once this bond is sealed a woman's sexual appetite declines, he added.

He said animal behaviour studies suggest this could be because females may be diverting their sexual interest towards other men, in order to secure the best combinations of genetic material for their offspring.

Or, he said, this could be because limiting sex may boost their partner's interest in it.

Huh? You've already established the cause of why he's already interested in it.

Then there's an attempt at a supply and demand analogy:

Professor George Fieldman, an evolutionary psychologist from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, said: "These findings seem to fit in with anecdotal studies and his explanations seem plausible.

"The rational for why a woman's sex drive declines may be down to supply and demand. If something is in infinite supply, the perceived value would drop."

Hmm. Maybe the idea is if you don't give it way you can sell it for something. Like doing a bit of housecleaning or childcare? Or some tenderness?:

About 90% of women wanted tenderness, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship, but only 25% of men who had been in a relationship for 10 years said they were still seeking tenderness from their partner.

In Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love the author, Helen Fisher, writes:

There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence for this negative chemical relationship between attachment and romantic love. People around the world say the exhilaration of romance wanes as their marriage or partnership becomes increasingly stable, comfortable, and secure. Some even go to psychiatrists or marriage counselors to try to renew romantic passion in their relationship. Some seek romance outside their marriage instead. Some divorce. And many settle into a long-term partnership of devoid of romantic bliss.

Rethinking Marriage After 40 :: Newsweek

Amongst Emirati women there is a spinster problem. A large proportion are not married by age 25. Will they ever marry?

Twenty years ago Newsweek made an ominous claim: in the U.S. "a 40-year-old single woman was "more likely to be 'killed by a terrorist' than to ever marry."

Today Newsweek reports:

Twenty years later, the situation looks far brighter. Those odds-she'll-marry statistics turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about 90 percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry, a ratio that's well in line with historical averages. And the days when half of all women would marry by 20, as they did in 1960, only look more anachronistic. At least 14 percent of women born between 1955 and 1964 married after the age of 30.
. . .
The research that led to the highly touted marriage predictions began at Harvard and Yale in the mid-1980s. Three researchers—Neil Bennett, David Bloom and Patricia Craig—began exploring why so many women weren't marrying in their 20s, as most Americans traditionally had. Would these women still marry someday, or not at all? To find an answer, they used "life table" techniques, applying data from past age cohorts to predict future behavior—the same method typically used to predict mortality rates. "It's the staple [tool] of demography," says Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin. "They were looking at 40-year-olds and making predictions for 20-year-olds."
. . .
Some demographers immediately doubted the dire odds. Within months Census researchers did their own study and concluded that a 40-year-old single woman really had a 17 to 23 percent probability of eventually marrying, not 2.6 percent. In retrospect, the demographers faced a huge challenge in getting these predictions right. That's because marital behavior was undergoing a profound shift. Before 1980, a woman who hadn't married by 30 probably never would. But times were changing. "[Women] weren't remaining unmarried because marriage was less appealing, but because it was becoming more appealing to wait," says Steven Martin, a University of Maryland sociologist.
. . .
Today a new generation of sociologists continues to tinker with the delayed-marriage puzzle. The latest research—a 2001 study by Princeton sociologists Joshua Goldstein and Catherine Kenney, and a 2004 paper by Maryland's Martin—concludes that roughly 90 percent of baby boomers will eventually marry. In a shift, however, the newer studies conclude that nowadays, a college degree makes a woman more likely to marry, not less. The Princeton paper suggests that for female college graduates born between 1960 and 1964, 97.4 percent will eventually marry.

What I'm reading today - May 27, 2006

Saudi Arabia's Mass Weddings Leading to Unhappy Endings :: Asharq Al-Awsat - Maybe. But there's numeracy issues in this report. You report that "thirty-nine percent of couples who tie the knot in mass weddings in Saudi Arabia later divorce" (and you later quote an official as saying it is 39% in the first year of marriage amongst those married in mass weddings in Jeddah last year). But you give no percent for couples who did not marry in mass weddings. So what can we conclude about mass weddings? Later you state that 1,052,000 women of marriagable age are single. But you do not put that number in perspective. For example, as a percentage how does this compare to the amount in recent decades?

Mid-day break for workers during summer indispensable :: S.S. Lootah Contracting Company press release - "The announcement came during S.S. Lootah Contracting HSE policy review meeting held in Dubai last week. Health and safety policy refinement, unconventional operational methods and behavioral based safety management were among the issues discussed during the meeting. 'It is challenging to achieve safety excellence in the construction industry'. Lootah noted. 'We are communicating and implementing HSE principles at all operational levels, but our values that promote respect, care and appreciation for all workers is the key in achieving our goals' he added. . . . The discussion concluded that it is becoming increasingly important to have one official body overseeing health and safety policy making and implementation in the construction industry."

Note that Lootah would like its standards imposed on the rest of the construction industry. It is probable that this means that Lootah is not being compensated by its customers for its higher safety standards. When we blame construction companies for treatment of workers let's remember that it is the customers of the construction companies who are not willing to pay for improved safety. Nor, evidently, are the workers, otherwise a construction company could cut labor costs by exchanging better safety for lower wages. Workers who complain about working in deadly heat are asking to change the terms under which they were hired. Are they willing to take a wage cut in return for not having to work in the hottest hours of the day? Reader, if you object please note that I am also willing to accept the possibility that the construction company is the one that is changing the terms and did not provide workers with full information about working conditions before they were hired.

Getting rid of old cars in Dubai will help the economy? :: Gulf News - Actually, thereare simply not that many old cars on the roads in Dubai. But there are a lot of old trucks. I wonder who owns all those old trucks and why they are still allowed to ply the highways? My guess is that they are the major source of pollution in the vehicle fleet. Besides that, these older trucks are slow and unsafe, contributing to traffic jams and hazardous conditions for others. So, yes, tightening up on the regulation of old cars and trucks would be a net benefit for society.

But reasoning like this is simply a display of economic ignorance on a grand scale: "Ayir N., 36, a manager from India, said preventing very old cars from plying the roads 'is an excellent idea that will push up the economy by allowing more sales of new cars.' . . . Reem Hashim, 29, a flight attendant from Syria, said removing vehicles over 15 years old is a great move. 'It will help decrease the pollution and will refresh the economy by allowing people to buy new cars,' she said." While we at it let's destroy some of the older housing in Dubai to "allow" Ayir and Reem to rent new apartments.