Since the boom of education in Yemen during the early 90's, women have played a strong role in improving the country’s situation by educating themselves, therefore giving them a better chance to a prosperous life.

However, a large number of educated women have found difficulties in finding a man who would accept them with the knowledge they have, as men fear that women who are educated are arrogant and sometimes too old.

Men  have different ideas about reasons why they turn away from marrying educated and university graduate women.

Society's beliefs

A 24-year-old university student Ashraf Ali Al-Hubiasy says that getting married to a university graduate is not acceptable by some society cultures, as he would be ashamed if his wife  goes out of her home for either work or study, adding that an educated woman is not suitable for marriage, especially with the values in Yemen. "It is better for our culture and values if women stay home and take care of their bigger responsibility, which is teaching the children how to be helpful to society, rather than letting them be ignored and destroying their future for the sake of ours."

In return, 23-year-old and a university student Amar Thabit Hadash said that getting married to a university graduate could help  married couples live a better life as an  educated woman has the ability to bring up new thoughts  and the ability to raise up children in a healthy environment.

26-years-old and Sana'a University student Faisal Mohamed Najee also says that he prefers to get married to an educated woman, and even better to a university graduate, as they represent high level of morals, adding that being intellectual and emotional can only be found in an educated women. "More people have started to accept the idea of getting married to a university graduate. It is not like before anymore," says Najee.

Feeling weaker than the wife

39-year-old contractor Mohammad Nasser Ali prefers marrying someone who is not a university women, and that is because he himself is not a university graduate. "It will make life easier for us to understand each other because we would belong to the same class in society educational wise," he says. He added that in his cultural understanding,  it is not logical to see his wife as an employee with other men, and would prefer to have his wife support the family at home instead of having his children stay in the streets.

Fakhriah Hugairah from the Women Media Forum (WMF) refuted youth’s idea of not getting married to educated women, assuring that 60 percent of her female colleagues refuse to marry university graduated men, especially those who are graduated and still have the same job they had even before they started studying at the university level like shop owners, constructors etc. Comparing educated women to noneducated women, Adel Najee Hajar a 32-year-old university graduate is married to two wives, one of them from a rural area with basic education, while the other is a university graduate. He said that he prefers the wife who has basic education, as she clearly shows that she is ready for a long term relationship and builds on it, while the one who is educated shows herself as superwoman and does not care about family values nor gives extra effort to help the family with the children or other housework.      

Sociologist's and Islamic law point of view

Islamic Law professor at Sana'a University Dr. Hassan Al-Ahdal returned the youths' turning away from getting married to university graduates to the old age of the women and this is because women would not get their masters until the age of 26 or more, while Yemeni society prefers marriage to younger women. He indicated that graduated women become open to society while Yemeni men prefer woman who are more conservative and restricted.

“Yemeni men prefer marrying secondary school graduates and in some areas people strongly prefer to get married to women who only finished their primary studies as they don't like to got married to women who are always busy with their jobs and not their families,” he says.

International studies

While women have a natural tendency to seek higher educated men in their marriage, the preference of men for a lower-educating wives outweighs women's tendency to seek higher status men. The University of Michigan study on Yemen revealed that while women did not indicate a strong preference for higher educated men, men had a most definite bias against higher educating women.

The study also revealed that rich people prefer to get married to low educated women in Yemen, conditioning the woman's age, indicating that rich men can get married to women younger than them by 20 or 30 years.

The study added that what women might say in a poll about their desire of getting married is one thing, and what they do in practice is strongly prefer higher status men if they can get them.