Purpose of the study: This study examines the factors that weaken marital harmony in families with working wives, the positive and negative impacts of the wife’s career, and the strategies couples use to maintain harmony, analysed from the perspective of fiqh munakahat. Methodology: A descriptive qualitative field study with a case study design was conducted in Ulujami Subdistrict, Pesanggrahan, South Jakarta. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four working wives, systematic observation, and documentation. Analysis followed Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña’s interactive model, with source and technique triangulation. Main Findings: A wife’s career does not in itself reduce harmony. Tension arises from role expansion, limited time, financial disagreement, and reduced monitoring of children. Positive impacts include financial independence, economic resilience during crisis, husbands’ participation in domestic work, and broader social capital. Harmony is maintained through open communication, cooling-off before discussion, spousal support, and religiously grounded emotional regulation. Novelty/Originality of this study: The study reads empirical coping strategies of working wives through classical fiqh debates on khidmah (domestic service) and nafaqah (maintenance), showing that domestic division of labour is negotiable bil ma’rūf. It also reveals that emotional regulation is borne mainly by wives, pointing to the need for reciprocal (mubādalah) responsibility.
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