“Don’t Mix my Rights with my Faith!”: Unpacking Family Laws in Lebanon through the Tensions between Patriarchal Values and Women’s Agency

This paper explores how the Lebanese legal system concerning family relations fails to respect and protect international women’s rights standards and laws. It sheds light on how the state, religious institutions and families in Lebanon, referred to as gendered institutions in this paper, perpetuate patriarchal values and maintain male domination in the society. It then looks at how women have challenged those patriarchal and gendered systems individu-ally and collectively, however have been confronted by the obstacles of the systems. The objective of this research is to unpack the tensions between the patriarchal values upheld by these institutions and women’s agency for change. Hence, based on these tensions, this re-search claims that a structural change is necessary to achieve development regarding gender equality and women’s rights protection in family relations in the country.