A Career Woman’s Guide to Surviving Ramadan

JEDDAH, 1 October 2006 — The blessed month of Ramadan for most conjures up feelings of generosity, compassion and mercy. However, for many working women around the world the holiday is anything but merciful.

The combined chore of balancing family life, holiday cooking and career schedules in addition to observing fasting duties can really take its toll. How many women go to work only to sit thinking about cooking duties waiting for them at home and then run to the kitchen as soon as they get one foot in the door?

“I have no time, so I have to make time,” said an accountant at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz University and mother of two. “I get home around three or four o’clock in the afternoon and have no time at all to rest, and in the evening I’m so busy studying with my children that it becomes a vicious cycle. As a result I am forced to take my annual vacation effective next week just in order to have a functional holiday ... Ramadan should be about worship, especially the last 10 days. This year we are required to report to work until the 26th of the month, which is completely unfair.”

Some women, after working all day inside and outside the home, do not get the opportunity to pray Taraweeh because they have no one to babysit or are apprehensive of leaving children with the housemaid. As a result, many women miss out on the spiritually serene experience of the blessed month.

“It is really difficult trying to get everything done,” said Salma Al-Ansari, a Saudi teacher in Makkah and mother of three. “We have a lot of preparation to do for our classes, and with small children I don’t get a lot of time. I can’t go to the mosque to pray Taraweeh or Isha as I would like, so I pray at home and stay with my family.”

Al-Ansari added that Ramadan should be about becoming closer to Allah and not just thinking about food.

Many women say that Ramadan is sadly becoming more and more a traditional or commoditized cultural practice rather than one of the five pillars of Islam. The ritual is almost cliche, they say, with people sleeping in the day and staying up all night to avoid the humbled or deprived feeling of fasting.

“Since we live in a strong country responsible for implementing Islamic regulations I feel that we should be the first place with flexibility,” said Nausheen Ahmad, a Pakistani textbook distributor for Tihama Bookstore and mother of six. “I feel that work and school schedules shouldn’t be changed just to accommodate fasting in Ramadan. Back in Pakistan and in the rest of the world life goes on as usual with an added feeling of cooperation in the community. Still I was lucky to have finished all my heavy work before Ramadan and I know that there are a lot of working mothers who don’t have that luxury and who aren’t so lucky.”