Narratives@najahnasseri.org

Of late, there has been a flurry of movement within my circle of family and friends. Women going back to work. Women leaving careers to focus on family. Women getting domestic helpers to cope with their tasks at home, whether they’re focused full-time on the family or are juggling between a family and a career. Women getting their tubes tied.

Each time this happens, the ‘village’ will discuss, debate and put in their two cents worth on the move after weighing the pros and cons of the circumstances of the woman in question.

For the Muslims, we often fall back to the WWRD question (What would Rasulullah s.a.w. do?) and reams of paper would be used to provide comfort and guidance to the women via various opinions of the learned ulamas. What I’ve found missing in such regurgitations of information is context, which totally avoids the issue of the reality that the woman does not exist in isolation of partners and society in general.

Women today are called upon to be flexible. She should be able to raise a family, earn a living, get an education, teach her offsprings, balance her checkbook, maintain her looks for her spouse, be a great conversationist, be a mentor and a host of other things that she (or women collectively) has silently agreed to do by adapting time and time again to such roles. So it’s a huge slap on the face for womenkind when I read Suze Orman’s Women and Money as she described a woman’s relationship with money, and how despite the great leaps we’ve made, our shackles are still in our minds, especially with something as critical as personal finances.

How many of us know what we sign in a property transaction, a will, an insurance document or even when opening a bank account? I know of women who put so much inherent trust in their husbands that properties and loans are placed under their name without so much as a question on the terms and conditions on the said loans, and whether adequate protection is in place should something happen to the husband. Why is it that women are discouraged from asking how much a property is worth today, or how much the family as a whole earns and spends, which requires us to delve deep into the expenses of our spouse right from the point where the two parties decide to get married?

It is almost as if it’s a virtue to be in the dark about money. Ask a cousin, an aunt, a mother, a mother-in-law about the family investments and the reply you’ll get, about 75% (or more) of the time is: “Oh, my husband handles those things. I don’t care about it as long as we have enough. I’m not materialistic.”

Bleargh.

Too many times, women are left widows with no idea of what their husbands have been up to. The most unfortunate that I’ve seen found out that she was not the only ‘dependent’ upon the tragic death of her husband, which in the end, left her less than half of what little wealth that the husband had accumulated. At times, women are not so lucky and it’s not just wealth that’s left behind, but a mountain of debt. Even if we are still earning our own living (I hate this term, especially when one is married because it implies that a non-earning spouse is leeching off the earning spouse, but that’s another topic for another day), do we really want to spend the rest of our lives paying for mistakes that could have been avoided had we been a bit more concerned and open about money?

So with that, and the first chapter of the book tucked in my mind, I embrace and applaud my lovely feminist, money-minded sisters who take a chapter out of the book of the Japanese wife (I was told they’re quite adept at managing the family finances). You are being responsible to yourselves and your family – nevermind what traditionalists think or say of you.

p.s. This is a reminder to myself as I pore over the guidebook to Borang M. @$%@$^@%$&@