Male Guardianship over Women in the Healthcare Context: An Islamic Approach

The concept of wilāyat al-rajul (Male Guardianship) has been discussed in jurisprudential works extensively. The practice of male guardianship gives men authority over women in managing women’s personal affairs. In the contemporary context, some rulings are implemented sometimes to misapply the rights and obligations of male guardianship. Specifically, there are some cases where men and women are treated unequally in terms of accessing healthcare resources. Male guardianship rules can lead to social isolation of women, and restriction on their mobility, in some situations.In this thesis, we will consider the desirable and the undesirable practices of male guardianship and focus on the ethical dilemma of having male guardianship in healthcare aspects. Additionally, we will investigate the implementations of the concept of wilāyat al-rajul (Male Guardianship) in the healthcare by evaluating the different status of women in relation to different cases of treatment. The thesis aims to find the moral status of guardianship in women’s healthcare. In the first chapter, we addressed the transformation of the concept from the classical jurisprudential understanding to the contemporary FiqhÊ perception. In the second chapter, we demonstrated the justification and the argument that jurists often refer to in their explanations. we argued that the jurisprudential rulings (Aḥkām) in the classical and the contemporary period’s related to male guardianship in healthcare are based on moral foundations. The moral foundations are supported by the objectives of sharīʿa.