Lebanese Women: A Diminishing Marriage Market

Professor Barbara Drieskens

More than a few curious individuals called the Public Health Department on October 31 to inquire about Barbara Drieskens' talk: "Reasons Not to Marry: Rising Celibacy in Contemporary Beirut," according to Marwan Khawaja who introduced the Institut Francais du Proche Orient (IFPO) researcher. Drieskens presented the motivations behind her study: primarily, demographers have documented the rising rate of celibacy in Lebanon. A recent survey by the Ministry of Social Affairs reveals the average age of marriage for Lebanese women is 28.8 years, as compared to men (32.8), and it is 30.2 for women in Beirut. As an anthropologist, Drieskens felt this represents a rich site to explore the concomitant impact on social relationships and how women perceived marriage, rather than restricting the attributions of this phenomenon to economic stagnation and the financial burden of marriage or to the imbalance between men and women owing to labor migration.

Drieskens' fieldwork shows that beyond socioeconomic and demographic factors, "not to marry is also a choice" for women. Her case studies comprise 30 unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 35, living in diverse Beirut neighborhoods, who are of different confessional and class backgrounds. She observed their social interactions at home or leisure, with the family, or in the village of origin, where normative expectations for endogamy were often referenced. However, many considered "homogamy" to be more important, a term coined to express the need to marry someone who shares similar ideals and educational standards. The imperative here is a harmonious relationship rather than sustaining the patrilineage or marrying within one's religious group.

Humorous anecdotes were also shared. For example, a Greek Orthodox parishioner at Mar Mitr proudly claimed that in his 40 years of service, there had not been a single "mixed" marriage. In the absence of state-legislated civil marriage in Lebanon, it is no wonder a representative guide carrying a banner entitled "civil marriage" is always present at the Cypriot airport.

Less amusing accounts of rupture were related, such as a Sunni woman's family refusing that she marry a Maronite, who was willing to convert. She was consequently sent death threats by her father, especially if she were to step into her village again. As Drieskens surmised, "transgression of the rules for marriage leads to different forms of social exclusion."

According to this study's female participants, there was a distinction between marrying to establish a family or for legalizing a love affair. Although Drieskens stated her results cannot be generalized, "few women at the age of 30 said they don't want to marry. Most prefer to be divorced at 40 than to remain a spinster," even if marriage was widely viewed as more of a contract than cohabitation, "like a cage which you enter and never re-emerge from."