The story of Bedouin-Arab women in a polygamous marriage

This article uses feminist theory to consider the social construction of polygamous marriage in Arab society. Ethnographic research examines lived experiences of six women in a Bedouin-Arab village in the Negev region, Israel, married to the same man. Observation of the family, and semi-structured, open-ended questions of the wives, reveal adverse consequences to women and their children, but also significant coping strategies carried out by women. Polygamy is an organic construct, potentially malleable to transformation from within. Gendered authority relations in polygamous marriages are neither linear, nor static. This paper demonstrates how positive changes in the family system(s) occurred as the husband's authority diminished and wives' coping strategies became less mutually conflicting.