This is the view adopted by the majority of scholars.

The diyah of women from the People of the Book, of the Magians, and of idol-worshippers is set at one-half of the diyah paid for their men, just as the diyah of Muslim women is one-half that of Muslim men.

Ibn al-Mundhir said, “The scholars are unanimously agreed that the diyah of a woman is half the diyah of a man. In the document of ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm it is stated: ‘The diyah of a woman is one-half that of a man.’”

The eminent scholar Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) remarked: “Because a woman is deficient in comparison to a man, and a man is more beneficial than she is—undertaking religious offices, public governance, the guarding of frontiers, participation in jihad, the cultivation of the land, and the crafts on which worldly welfare depends, as well as the defense of both worldly and religious interests—their respective ‘values’ are not equal. That value is reflected in the diyah, for the diyah of a free person functions like the assessed price of a slave or any other property. In His wisdom, therefore, the Lawgiver set her value at one-half of his, owing to the disparity between them.”

Nonetheless, the male and the female are treated equally in liabilities that amount to less than one-third of a complete diyah, based on the hadith of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, traced back to the Prophet: “The blood-money for a woman is the same as that for a man until it reaches one-third of his diyah,” recorded by al-Nasaʾi. Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib commented, “This is the sunnah.”