Have you ever had (or heard) a discussion about polyandry? Besides "it's against Islam/morality*/nature**" what would the reaction be?

This is not in the op-ed section yet it clearly is op-ed and not very subtle op-ed at that. Do local journalists see a difference between descriptive reporting and editorials (perhaps a question for SecretDubai)? Can most Emiratis perceive the difference between editorials and descriptive reporting?

* The half hidden version.
* The three quarters hidden version.

Hmm, I wonder if I can dig up my old university paper on polygamy. Mostly on Mormons, which has a slightly different dynamic owing to the fact that they're a wacko illegal fringe cult.

Still, in my own personal experience, polygamy sucks. You end up with two rival, feuding sub-families, who generally avoid each other and have nothing to do with each other, regardless of the feelings and opinions of the patriarch.

"polygamy is a solution and helps women avoid becoming spinsters."

Is there some vast gender imbalance in the world of which I am unaware (all joking aside about there being no good men out there)? If not, wouldn't polygamy without corresponding polyandry also create an excess of sexually deprived bachelors?

Actually, without taking a view on the solution, in fact there is a gender imbalance, excluding areas where medical sex selection has altered. Women survive at higher rates than men.

Vast? Dunno.

Have you ever had (or heard) a discussion about polyandry?
No.

Besides "it's against Islam/morality*/nature**" what would the reaction be?
A moot question, I'm afraid. This would be sufficiently far away from the teachings of Islam (not to mention the visible and/or visibly beneficial practices of the West) to be out of the scope of discussion here.

there is a gender imbalance... Women survive at higher rates than men.
Indeed there is.
In fact, the most commonly heard explanation for polygyny that I've come across relates to that- since men were liable in the Prophet's time to die at far higher rates (wars and suchlike), far fewer were left to take care of the womenfolk.

At birth, women outnumber men by something like 2-3% in natural human populations--except in cases where selective abortion distorts the ratios (South Korea, China, etc).

Of course, my understanding is that poligamy had origins--or, at least massive impetus--in countries where depopulation among men due to warfare (one not-so-well known case is Korea in 13-14th century, after the Mongol invasions) and if recall correctly, that is also the case in the early Islamic history as well.

A 2 - 3% imbalance, even if all the imbalance is among the population of average age at marriage, sure doesn't allow for many men to have multiple wives, at least not if you're not going to allow women the same privilege...and it would take quite a depopulation of males to even things out. How often do you see a population where literally half the men are missing, even in wartime?

One has to wonder that among certain populations (before or during the Middle Ages) sudden massive depopulation of males may actually have been rather common: practically all the male populations of many steppe nomads were at least part-time warrriors (which is how Genghis Khan could field 300,000 soldiers from a population of less than a milliion). One disastrous battle and big chunks of males in the tribe between 16 and 60 would be wiped out. One has to think this was relatively common in Middle East and or Central Asia at one time--and the practice presumably became embedded in their "cultures" as time went on, even as they became sedantary--although, yes, that would involve the poorer, less privileged males having no mates while the privileged would have many (also common among populations that allow for polygamy, as I understand.)

I think the article was originally written for the Telegraph (The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2005 is at the bottom).

Re "saving" women from spinsterhood begs the question: how many second and third wives are plain, homely ladies in their late thirties and early forties with scant matrimonial options available?

And how many of them are late teens/early twenties, nubile, fertile, and a fraction of the age of the already-married husband?

On polyandry, a friend of mine sometimes wears five or six rings on her ring-finger, and when asked by random (arab) male if she's married, will occasionally say, "Yes, I have five husbands - one to do the cooking, one to do the cleaning, one to sleep with, and a couple for spares."

Eva. The 2-3 percent diff is baseline at birth, males have higher mortality rates at all age groups, meaning cumulatively in a harsh environment you can indeed end up with a serious gender imbalance during "breeding ages" brackets. Historically that has certainly cropped up with no small frequency.

Of course that is historical, not modern, and in modern contexts secretdubai's note is of great relevance.

Historically the issue of course of equity for young males and above all unprivledged ones doesn't arise. Tough luck.

The article seems to a clear case of two separate articles being grafted together. The second half (concentrating on Malaysia) does indeed come from the Telegraph, but there's a GN reporter's name on the top.

This is because the number of women is more than the number of men due to their husbands' deaths or getting divorced.

UAE Population figures:

0-14 years: 25.3% (male 331,269; female 317,977)
15-64 years: 71.1% (male 1,115,826; female 707,058)
65 years and over: 3.6% (male 66,404; female 24,678) (2005 est.)

the number of women is more than the number of men due to their husbands' deaths or getting divorced.

Nope. The gender imbalance above (the UAE and Qatar were the two worst countries in the world in that regard when I last checked a few years ago, and they might well have gotten worse yet) is a direct consequence of massive labor imports- under 20% of the UAE's population is Emirati.
A very large section of the population is made up of construction workers and other manual laborers who are almost entirely male. I can assure you that local women do not often marry subcontinental construction workers. Accordingly, the larger number of males in the population is irrelevant here insofar as they do not constitute part of Emirati society. A majority of Emiratis are indeed female.

"in modern contexts secretdubai's note is of great relevance."

For that matter my own stepmother is an example of that phenomenon, being Wife #3 - the difference of course being that the marriages were serial rather than parallel.

A couple of days ago, a very similar article got reprinted in the Salt Lake City Tribune. The blog I hang out at most, Obsidian Wings, launched an enormous thread about it. I linked here in comments (don't know if anyone came over). The thread wanders a bit, but there are some interesting points.