The Press — There are figures that send chills down your spine. In 2024, 12% of Tunisian women with cancer faced a divorce request initiated by their husband. Twelve percent! Twelve women out of a hundred who, while fighting for their lives, must also fight to preserve their dignity.
This figure, reported by the president of the National Union of Tunisian Women (Unft), Radhia Jerbi, is not just a statistical data point; it is a mirror held up to Tunisian society. It reveals a moral flaw, a collective defeat. For some men, a sick woman ceases to be a wife, and in the eyes of society, she becomes almost guilty of her misfortune. The president of the Unft denounced a "macho mentality," and the word is weak. These husbands who file for divorce due to their wife's cancer, citing it as a prejudice, rely on a distorted interpretation of the law and marital duty. However, the Court of Cassation has been clear: cancer, a disease that can affect any human being, cannot in itself be a legal grounds for divorce. And even if it were a serious illness, marriage is not a contract with a limited health duration. But beyond the law, there is morality. In our culture, a woman who leaves her husband because he is sick would be immediately judged, pointed out, and labeled as ungrateful or "poorly educated." Society would condemn her. It would be said that she was not "raised with values," that she does not know how to keep her home, that she is neither patient nor faithful. And yet, when it is the man who flees, who turns his back, who abandons his sick wife, he often finds excuses, if not silence, and indulgence. This double standard is a reflection of an ancient domination; one that makes the woman the guardian of the home, the guarantor of morality, and the man the measure of her value. When illness affects a woman, the entire edifice of virility seems to waver. For she becomes vulnerable, less "desirable," sometimes mutilated by treatments — breast removal, hair loss — and her body no longer corresponds to the reassuring image of the "complete" wife. So, instead of fighting alongside her, some husbands prefer to desert, citing prejudice where it is they who break the bond that founds marriage: solidarity in the face of adversity. Here, it is not the illness that destroys the marriage, but cowardice. It is not cancer that drives spouses apart, but the refusal to love beyond appearance and strength. The testimonies collected by the Unft are heartbreaking: women forced to accept an amicable divorce, gnawed by guilt, convinced that they have "failed" in their role. Others tell of men who refuse the idea of a mastectomy, preferring to lose their wife rather than face her transformed body. What these stories say is that illness not only reveals the fragility of bodies but also the fragility of consciences. And in this mirror, our society must dare to look at itself. For we cannot preach solidarity, dignity, and compassion in speeches while tolerating a sick woman being rejected for having ceased to please. It is time to say clearly that courage is not divorcing a sick wife, but staying by her side. And a worthy society does not judge the one who falls, but the one who abandons her.
