Women and Reproductive Rights in Qatar: Knowledge Production Between fiqh, Law and Society

Do women have access to knowledge about their reproductive rights as outlined in fiqh, modern Qatari law, hospitals, schools, and the institutions on family/marriage? In this thesis, it will be shown that women possess limited information on what qualifies as are productive right and what does not. Women might know what different types of contraceptives are available, and how they are used. They may also know that they do notneed a prescription to obtain contraceptives from a pharmacy or permission of any kind.However, what they lack is the knowledge regarding their basic reproductive rights, such as the use of contraceptives without the permission of the husband. This rather widely believed information leads women to think that they need their husbands’ permission to use birth control. In other words, if her husband decided that he wanted a child, she must obey him even if she does not want to do so. At the same time, it allows husbands to believe that they have a final say on what happens to their wives’ bodies. The discourse that womenare exposed to is very limiting and limited; limiting because women are told what to dothrough prohibitions (what not to do), and limited because women are not informed on therights which are related to their own bodies, the matters to which they are entitled, whatthey can and cannot do, etc. Because of the lack of knowledge about their rights in additionto social norms, women in Qatar do not have their reproductive rights, and husbands arethe ones who have the right to choose when to reproduce.