<![CDATA[Drawing on field research in Padang Bolak District, North Sumatra, this article analyses the dual role of wives under patriarchal culture and its bearing on domestic harmony from the perspective of Islamic Family Law. Data were gathered through observation and in-depth interviews with 27 informants drawn from 22 families, and analysed using the patriarchal theory of Sylvia Walby alongside the interactive model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña. The findings reveal an ambivalent pattern. On the one hand, wives' participation in the public sphere strengthens the economic independence of the family; on the other, domestic labour remains disproportionately theirs, producing physical and emotional exhaustion and latent marital conflict. Eighteen of the 22 households studied fell into the conflicted category, whereas the four households in which husbands shared domestic work and decision-making remained harmonious. Islamic Family Law thus offers a transformative framework rather than a justification of the existing arrangement: qiwāmah is a responsibility bounded by justice, and household order must be realised through mu'āsyarah bil ma'rūf and ta'āwun.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
