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Libya
The Traditional View of Men and Women
The social setting of the family significantly affects the circumstances
of a wife. Until the discovery of petroleum--and to a lesser degree
until the 1969 revolution--conservative attitudes and values about
women dominated society. By the 1980s, however, modifications
in the traditional relationship between the sexes were becoming
evident, and important changes were appearing in the traditional
role of women. These varied with the age, education, and place
of residence of the women.
In traditional society, beduin women--who did not wear the veil
that symbolized the inferior and secluded status of women--played
a relatively open part in tribal life. Women in villages also
frequently were unveiled and participated more actively in the
affairs of their community than did their urban counterparts.
Their relative freedom, however, did not ordinarily permit their
exposure to outsiders. A sociologist visiting a large oasis village
as recently as the late 1960s told of being unable to see the
women of the community and of being forced to canvass their opinions
by means of messages passed by their husbands. The extent to which
the community was changing, however, was indicated by the considerable
number of girls in secondary school and the ability of young women
to find modern-sector jobs--opportunities that had come into being
only during the 1960s.
Urban women tended to be more sophisticated and socially aware,
but they were also more conservative in social relations and dress.
For example, unlike rural women, who moved freely in the fields
and villages, urban women walked in the street discreetly in veiled
pairs, avoiding public gathering places as well as social contact
with men. Among the upper class urban families, women fulfilled
fewer and less important economic functions, and their responsibilities
were often limited to the household. Greater sexual segregation
was imposed in the cities than in the countryside because tribal
life and life in farm villages made segregation virtually impossible.
While women remained in the home, men formed a society organized
into several recognizable groupings. These consisted of such coteries
as school classmates, village or family work associates, athletic
clubs, or circles of friends meeting in a cafe. In earlier times,
the group might have been a religious brotherhood.
Like all Arabs, Libyans valued men more highly than women. Girls'
upbringing quickly impressed on them that they were inferior to
men and must cater to them; boys learned that they were entitled
to demand the care and concern of women. Men regarded women as
creatures apart, weaker than men in mind, body, and spirit. They
were considered more sensual, less disciplined, and in need of
protection from both their own impulses and the excesses of strange
men.
The honor of the men of the family, easily damaged and nearly
irreparable, depended on the conduct of their women. Wives, sisters,
and daughters were expected to be circumspect, modest, and decorous,
with their virtue above reproach. The slightest implication of
unavenged impropriety, especially if made public, could irreparably
destroy a family's honor. Female virginity before marriage and
sexual fidelity thereafter were essential to honor's maintenance,
and discovery of a transgression traditionally bound men of the
family to punish the offending woman.
A girl's parents were eager for her to marry at the earliest
possible age in order to forestall any loss of her virginity.
After marriage, the young bride went to the home of her bridegroom's
family, often in a village or neighborhood where she was a stranger
and into a household where she lived under the constant and sometimes
critical surveillance of her mother-in-law, a circumstance that
frequently led to a great deal of friction. In traditional society,
girls were married in their early teens to men considerably their
senior. A woman began to attain status and security in her husband's
family only if she produced boys. Mothers accordingly favored
sons, and in later life the relationship between mother and son
often remained warm and intimate, whereas the father was a more
distant figure. Throughout their years of fertility, women were
assumed to retain an irrepressible sexual urge, and it was only
after menopause that a supposed asexuality bestowed on them a
measure of freedom and some of the respect accorded senior men.
Old age was assumed to commence with menopause, and the female
became an azuz, or old woman.
Data as of 1987
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