It is impossible to discuss Muslim women's concerns today without digging into the obstacles with which they cohabit, in which thought, including its original principles and renewable spaces, is entwined with reality, with its conflicts, dilemmas, and diversity of characters.

And, if we use the issue of women's work as a model for this engagement, we will discover that there is a general tendency for girls to adopt paid work as an integral part of contemporary lifestyle, to the point where some of them stipulated in the marriage contract that they not be prevented from working, with a wide and increasing acceptance of this matter by men.

Some researchers even believe that the issue of women's work is one of those issues that have been resolved in favor of her going out to work, and that the debate over it has become an intellectual luxury, or that its place is historical research and not a challenge to current priorities.

Notwithstanding the growing acceptability of women's work, we keep an eye on a few dissenting voices, such as popular periodicals that associate girls' employment with the burden of youth unemployment and advocate for leaving scarce job possibilities for them.

Looking at the comments on such publications, we will find the sympathy of quite a few sectors of both sexes for the thesis, and if we take into account the religious literature that calls for the decision at home in the face of going out to work as a legitimate necessity and priority for the Muslim family, we will find that the issue has not been resolved yet.

Of course, we cannot ignore sectors that seek intellectual jurisprudence in the issue of women's work, whether by linking it to reality, such as the need for women to work or the need for certain sectors for women's work, or trying to invest the information revolution in the interest of women by promoting women's paid work remotely without the need to actually go out to work.

Real Motives

We cannot talk about the current priorities of women without defining the driving motive that shaped the current moment in all its manifestations, even if we return to the model of paid women's work, which finds wide acceptance, perhaps in a way that was not previously imagined. We will find that there are three major motives for it:

1- The Economic Motive:

Money is the backbone of life, and the suffocating economic crises afflicting the world and many of our Arab and Muslim countries have made there is an urgent need for women to work, whether to meet their personal needs, or to enhance the economic performance of the family, and sometimes to bring the family to the level of subsistence and satisfy the basic needs of its members.

And if we consider the growing phenomenon of the breadwinner mother who bears sole responsibility for spending, we will find that the economic reality imposed itself on abstract thought to embody the work of women as a fact that should be dealt with.

2- The dialectic of education and work:

Women's access to the highest point in the educational ladder raised an existential question about the purpose of this specialized education. Education that goes beyond basic knowledge that qualifies a girl to become a skilled wife and a successful mother. What is the purpose behind it?

The truth is that the relationship between a girl’s education and her work is a relationship that raises a lot of controversy. While the traditional opinion was that the two issues were separate, the reality had a different opinion. Many girls saw that work is the practical aspect of the education that they spent many years collecting.

3- Feminist pressures:

These are particularly severe and violent pressures aimed at empowering women in accordance with an international vision that sees paid jobs for women as a bridge to this empowerment.

In this setting, feminists do not hesitate to use the slogan "work first" and viciously attack those who believe that women should reconcile work and home, giving primacy to the home.

New priorities

However, the new reality in which women went out to work produced new challenges, and describing these challenges and their jurisprudence and then searching for a strategy to deal with them became a real priority for women instead of those exhaustive issues that were researched a lot and that do not relate to the largest sector of women.

Among these challenges that should be given priority in the field of research:

 - Challenges resulting from women's participation in family spending:

 Some husbands and some families, especially in rural areas and marginalized areas, think that allowing a woman to work means losing her right to alimony completely. Rather, the children’s right to alimony is also forfeited, or the working woman is forced to spend her entire salary at home or hand it over to the husband as he is responsible for the family’s financial system.

Forcing here is carried out by the force of customs and traditions, or by threatening divorce and the destruction of the family, or by depriving the woman of work if the income does not go entirely to the husband.

The challenge becomes more complicated when the husband dies or in the event of divorce, where the working woman contributes a significant amount to the wealth owned by the husband without a legal basis proving that.

Hence, researchers and those interested in social affairs and women themselves must participate in solving this challenge, and which is better - according to the circumstances of each social environment and each class - activating the financial disclosure of women or activating the fatwa of women's right to toil and endeavor, taking into account the contemporary applications of the concept of toil and striving.   

- The challenge of participation in household management:

 When a woman goes out to work with the full consent of her husband and his desire to share with him the burdens of living, it is also fair for him to share with her the consequences and results of this paid work.

And if the Prophet, peace be upon him, was in the profession of his family; That is, he helps them in the work that they do, in addition to his service to himself, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, so he was, as stated in the Musnad of Ahmad, milking his sheep, mending his shoes, and patching his clothes, despite their free time. The family budget, which is unfortunately not a common culture in our societies, which see this as a diminution of men's masculinity.

Hence, the working woman bears the responsibility of doubling her traditional task of managing the house in addition to her work tasks, and sometimes it is a triple duty by assigning her alone all that pertains to the children as well, such as guidance, education, training, and so on.

We can say, then:

The Islamic rooting of women's financial responsibility or guaranteeing their right to hard work, or the rooting of a culture of participation is a top priority for working women.

This does not involve following Western norms or bowing down to feminist values.