Opinions of Sunday, 20 September 2015

Columnist: Abdulai, Alhaji Alhasan

Can you divorce your husband over moustache?

Opinion Opinion

After holding the fourth women summit in Beijing in the year 1995, decisions were taken aimed at achieving greater equality and opportunity for women among other sensitive issues.

Since then, women in most parts of the world have been fighting for their rights and course of justice in their domestic and public lives. In public and their married lives women are seen and heard demanding from their husbands all that is due them from food, clothing and shelter.

However sometimes some demands by some women can be sources of worry and surprise to men and people of the world generally.

Could you believe that a woman in Algeria is threatening to divorce her husband for wearing a moustache? The story published on Monday, August 31, 2015 in news media in Algeria is that an Algerian woman is seeking divorce from her husband because she cannot stand his moustache.

According to newspapers in the North African Arab country, the unnamed woman told the judge in the capital Algiers that her husband promised to shave his moustache after their marriage.

“She told the judge that they have been married for nearly three months and the husband has not kept his promise to her,” the papers said, quoting a court source. “She said that she had given her husband the choice of shaving his moustache or divorcing her. She told the judge that she cannot stand that moustache.”

I do not think that the situation is different in Ghana and other African countries. Some women do decide which dresses their husbands must wear to suit each occasions. Women also dictate to their husbands the style of his haircuts.

However we are yet to experience a court case or the chiefs palace involving a woman wanting to divorce her husband for wearing a beard, a moustache or a bad haircuts even though the women only lament over them.

If you have heard of any such threat by women to divorce their husbands over haircuts, beard or moustache let us know about it.

By Alhaji Alhasan Abdulai
Executive Director
EANFOWORLD FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
P.O.BOX 17070AN 233244370345/23326370345/ 233208844791
abdulai.alhasan@gmail.com /eanfoworld@yahoo.com