Eight Year Old Seeks Divorce in Yemen
Yemen is ranked number one in the world in gender inequality. One study found that rural women work 17 hours a day on average. Domestic abuse is not considered a crime nor is it socially unacceptable. Women are required by law to submit to their husband’s sexual demands-ie, there is no such thing as marital rape in Yemen. Rape is a largely under-reported crime because social mores blame the victim.
The laws do not criminalize underage marriage. In rural areas, the marriage age for females is often 10 to 14. In cities, the marriage age rises to a whopping 14 to 16. Children over the age of seven automatically are awarded to the husband in a divorce, and many wives stay in an abusive marriage in order not to lose their children. Efforts to change the laws are repeatedly thwarted by the government which relies on the support of Salafi hardliners in order to retain power. Some fundamentalists advance the idea that women should leave their homes only twice, once to marry and once to go to the graveyard.
Women often have problems taking possession of their legal inheritances, which are confiscated by male relatives. Genital female mutilation is a regular practice, found mostly in the countryside. One method includes placing hot stones on an infant girl’s genitalia for several weeks. Women in the work place face discrimination and harassment. Few women work outside the home, except for domestic farming which is the primarily an unpaid position. Women less than fully veiled face discrimination and harassment. Female activists are regularly slandered by the government media as immoral.
Female illiteracy is over 50% and highest in rural areas. One reason girls drop out of school is that they are needed to haul water, which is in short supply. A shortage of female teachers and segregated classrooms is another factor. Several schools for girls have been attacked by extremists who oppose the idea of education for women. The level of medical care for pregnant and postpartum women is extremely low, with many women never seeing a doctor and delivering with the help of neighbors. Newborns die at high rate, often from diseases like tetanus which are preventable with a vaccine.
In sum, women have little legal rights. The laws in existence are infrequently enforced. Women are expected to work and serve men. They have few opportunities to develop their education, talents or job skills or to achieve financial independence.
Now on to our story, an eight year old girl went to court, alone, to seek a divorce from her 30 year old husband who was repeatedly raping her. Kudos to the Yemen Times for running the story.
SANA’A, April 9 - An eight-year-old girl decided last week to go the Sana’a West Court to prosecute her father, who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man…”My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage,” Nojoud Nasser told the Yemen Times. “I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,” she said.
Nasser said that she was exposed to sexual abuse and domestic violence by her husband. “He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them. Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him.”
