The Quran recognises women’s right to own property: a woman, like a man, may keep a share of what she earns. Amidst the complex rules of inheritance, the Quran affirms that a female inherits half the share of a male.
Women and men are equally required to live in submission to Allah and will both be rewarded in paradise. Still, the promise of access to amorous heavenly virgins seems designed to appeal primarily to men.
The Quran often addresses men rather than women. At the Final Judgement, the righteous will be told, “Enter paradise, you and your wives”. There the “companions of paradise” will recline on couches in the shade with their wives.
Women are not equal to men in worldly affairs. If two men are not available to witness a financial contract, one man and two women will suffice since, if one of the women makes a mistake, the other can remind her.
This advice has often been generalised to other legal matters so that two female witnesses are considered equivalent to one male.
The Quran describes men as the supervisors or protectors of women, apparently because men spend their wealth supporting them.
Wives are to obey their husbands, and those who seem rebellious are to be admonished. If necessary, their husbands may send them to their beds or even strike them.
Men are told their women are like a field in which they sow, so they should go to their field when they wish and send forth something for themselves, evidently progeny. However, they should not have sexual relations with menstruating women, who are ritually unclean.
If being restricted to four wives at a time, let alone one, is understood as constraining men’s exploitation of women, such a view is undermined by men’s sexual access to female slaves (those their right hand possesses) – without having to marry them.
According to the Quran, if a man cannot afford a free wife, he can, to avoid sin, marry a slave woman, doubtless owned by someone else (she would have fewer rights than a free woman).
Any (male) believers who had occasion to visit the apartment of one of Muhammad’s wives was to speak to her through a screen – a hijab. This word came to be applied to a Muslim woman’s head covering.
While the Quran does not require women to wear veils, the Prophet’s wives, called the “Mothers of the Believers”, naturally serve as role models. Both men and women are told to dress and behave modestly.
Detailed regulations in the Quran concerning divorce assume it is a male prerogative. A woman can, however, return some or all of her marriage gift to ransom herself; if her husband resists, he may be overruled by a judge.
Unless guilty of some moral offence, wives being divorced should remain with their husbands until they have menstruated three times to demonstrate they are not pregnant and to provide an opportunity for reconciliation.
If a wife is pregnant, the divorce is not completed until she has delivered her baby. Men are warned to provide suitable maintenance and not to make life difficult for wives they are divorcing.
Source: What does the Quran say about the rights and status of women?
