Reconstructing the Ṣāliḥah Wife: Gendered Exchange, Religious Authority, and Divorce among Working Muslim Women in Indonesia

Abstract

This study critically examines how dominant constructions of the ṣāliḥah (pious) wife, centered on obedience to the husband as a prerequisite for marital harmony, paradoxically generate gender injustice within contemporary Muslim families—particularly among working wives. Rather than producing harmony, such interpretations frequently result in discrimination, double burden, multiple forms of domestic violence, and marital dissolution. This condition underscores the urgency of reassessing the concept of marital obedience in light of contemporary social realities in which both husbands and wives participate in paid work and public life. Focusing on divorced working women, this descriptive qualitative study draws on in-depth interviews with eight female participants who experienced marital breakdown following prolonged structural inequality. The data were analyzed using Social Exchange Theory to examine the balance between costs and rewards within marital relationships. The findings demonstrate that marital instability emerges when wives continuously bear domestic, emotional, and economic responsibilities without reciprocal recognition, support, or shared accountability from their spouses. In such conditions, obedience is transformed from an ethical value into a mechanism of domination that legitimizes unequal power relations. This study argues that marital harmony cannot be sustained through unilateral obedience or rigid gender stereotypes, but instead requires reciprocal exchange, deliberation (musyāwarah), and cooperation between spouses across all domains of family life. These findings support the need to reinterpret marital obligations within Islamic family law and state marriage regulations toward a reciprocity-based framework that explicitly recognizes shared economic responsibility and protects working wives from structural discrimination.