Maintenance and Marital Gift: Empowering Muslim Women Through Unlaboured Source

Abstract

This study focuses on women's empowerment through unlabored sources. The core values of the Islamic legal system include the protection of women and children, the distribution of wealth, and resource allocation to male and female Muslims. These sources include monetary support available for wives during marriage, divorce, and after divorce, among others. The researchers used content analysis to collect relevant data and generate the themes. The discussion is on available literature about sources of empowerment in Islam for women with reference to the institutions of marriage and divorce. Prior search was for the researcher to establish the relevance of the information and data for analysis of the subject matter. The data were collected from multiple sources, and a varied interpretation was done based on the research objectives. The study found that women’s empowerment in Islam goes beyond the process by which women have greater control over tangible but includes non-tangible resources that guarantee autonomy over household decision-making. The study contributes to knowledge on Islamic ways of women's empowerment, which is completely different from the conventional way.  This may assist development agents and authorities of non-Islamic societies to give these ways of empowering women, thus without labour or moving out to struggle before she is empowered.  The study on women’s empowerment was limited to only existing literature, so putting attributes or features into categories presented some challenges, generalizing the results to be analyzed with caution.

Keywords: Empowerment, Foundation, Accountable, Obligations, Spiritual, Bride-price

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/17-4-04

Publication date: June 30^th 2026