After focusing in part I on inheritance and in part II on the dower, the central theme of part III is women's access to property through paid labour. In the preceding chapters I have referred many times to the increased importance of male wage labour but usually the women whose stories I have presented were not employed. In the following chapters, considerable space will be devoted to women's labour stories, which were generally more extensive and detailed than their inheritance and marriage stories. Many women demonstrated their ability in analysing the gendered nature of the inheritance and dower systems, yet except under problematic circumstances, they did not elaborate extensively on their own experiences, as arrangements were largely made for them, not by them. In the case of paid labour this was different. For women working outside the home, their employment was not only a central element in their day-to-day life, but as female paid labour goes against the grain of a system in which men are defined as providers, women often felt the need to talk at length about their motivations.

In debates about Arab women in the labour force some have argued that there is a culturalist bias, with women's low participation in paid employment blamed on ‘the “conservative nature” of Islam’ (see Hijab 1988: 74) or ‘the seemingly inviolable laws and traditions of Islam’ (see Hammam 1986: 158).