Arab Women In Saudi Arabia

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During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, women's rights in Saudi Arabia have been limited in comparison to the rights of women in many of its neighboring countries due to Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of sharia law. However, since Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Crown Prince in 2017, a series of social and economic reforms have been witnessed regarding women's rights. In the 2021 World Bank's Women, Business, and the Law index, Saudi Arabia scored 80 out of 100, which puts it ahead of the global average score.[5][6] However, in the 2021 World Economic Forum's global gender gap report, the kingdom was ranked 147th out of 156 countries.[7] The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elected Saudi Arabia to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for 2018–2022, in a move that was widely criticised by the international community.[8][9] Female literacy rate is estimated to be 93%.[10] Women in Saudi Arabia constituted 33.2% of the native workforce as of 2020,[11] ahead from 13% of the country's native workforce in 2015.[12][13] The Saudi law ensures equal pay for women and men in the private sector.[14][15]
Among the factors that define rights for women in Saudi Arabia are government laws, the Hanbali and Wahhabi schools of Sunni Islam, and traditional customs of the Arabian Peninsula.[16] Women campaigned for their rights with the women to drive movement[17] and the anti male-guardianship campaign,[18][19] which resulted in improvements to their status during the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Women were previously forbidden from voting in all elections or being elected to any political office, but in 2011 King Abdullah let women vote in the 2015 local elections and be appointed to the Consultative Assembly.[20] Since 2013, the women's representation in the Consultative Assembly, the Saudi national legislation, is required to hold at least 20 percent of seats,[21] which exceeded the representation of women in the United States Congress at one point.[22][23] In 2011, there were more female university graduates in Saudi Arabia than male,[24] and female literacy was estimated to be 91%, which while still lower than male literacy, was far higher than 40 years earlier. In 2013, the average age at first marriage among Saudi females was 25 years.[25][26][27] In 2017, King Salman ordered that women be allowed access to government services such as education and healthcare without the need for consent from a guardian.[28] He also issued a decree allowing women to drive, lifting the world's only ban on women drivers.[29] In 2018, the percentage of women workforce jumped to 20.2%.[30] Due to guardianship and divorce laws, many women were not previously aware when their husbands divorced them. This often created confusion and even led to homelessness. In January 2019, the Saudi supreme court issued a law requiring women to receive a text message from the court when officially divorced.[31] Moreover, new laws were issued on 1 August 2019, granting women the right to register a divorce or a marriage and apply for official documents without requiring their guardian's permission.[32][33]
In the G20 meeting of 2019, Saudi Arabia participated in the women empowerment initiative that aims at reducing the pay gap between male and female as well as supporting women's participation in small business.[34]
On 1 August 2019, Saudi Arabia allowed women to travel abroad, register a divorce or a marriage, and apply for official documents without the consent of a male guardian. The laws also grant the women the eligibility for the guardianship of minor children.[35][36][37]
In 2019, the government of Saudi Arabia stated that women can start working for higher officer ranks in the military.[38] In December 2019, Saudi Arabia issued a ban on marriages for people under the age of 18 for both genders.[39][40]
In 2020, Saudi Arabia was ranked as a top reformer on women’s rights at work. According to the World Bank, Saudi Arabia has made significant improvement since 2017, affecting mobility, sexual harassment, pensions and workplace rights.[41][42]
In 2021, the Saudi undersecretary for women’s empowerment has stated that women will be able to be appointed as court judges.[43][44]
In June 2021, Saudi Arabia started allowing women to live alone without permission from a male guardian.[45][46] This came as a development of an earlier ruling that affirmed the legality of the independence of an adult woman in a separate house.[47]
Gender roles in Saudi society come from local culture and interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law). Sharia law, or the divine will, is derived by scholars through interpreting the Quran and hadith (sayings of and accounts about Muhammad's life). In Saudi culture, the Sharia is interpreted according to a strict Sunni Islam form known as the way of the Salaf (righteous predecessors) or Wahhabism. The law is mostly unwritten, leaving judges with significant discretionary power which they usually exercise in favor of tribal traditions.[48]
The variation of interpretation often leads to controversy. For example, Sheikh Ahmad Qassim Al-Ghamdi, chief of the Mecca region's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice or the mutaween (religious police), has said prohibiting ikhtilat (gender mixing) has no basis in Sharia.[49][50] Meanwhile, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak, another prominent cleric, issued a fatwa (religious opinion) that proponents of ikhtilat should be killed.[51]
According to the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, two "key" notions in Islamic legal theory that are mobilized to curtail women's rights in Saudi are:
"It's the culture, not the religion" is a Saudi saying.[52] At least according to some (Library of Congress) customs of the Arabian peninsula also play a part in women's place in Saudi society. The peninsula is the ancestral home of patriarchal, nomadic tribes, in which separation of women and men, and namus (honour) are considered central.[16] Many Saudis do not see Islam as the main impediment to women's rights. According to one female journalist: "If the Quran does not address the subject, then the clerics will err on the side of caution and make it haram (forbidden). The driving ban for women is the best example."[49] Another (Sabria Jawhar) believes that, "if all women were given the rights the Quran guarantees us, and not be supplanted by tribal customs, then the issue of whether Saudi women have equal rights would be reduced."[53][54]
Asmaa Al-Muhammad, the editor for Al Arabiya, points out that women in all other Muslim nations, including those in the Gulf area, have far more political power than Saudi women. The 2013 Global Gender Gap Report ranked several Muslim nations, such as Kyrgyzstan, The Gambia, and Indonesia significantly higher than Saudi Arabia for women's equality.[55] However it moved up four places from the last report due to an increase in the percentage of women in parliament (from 0% to 20%), (based on the introduction of a new quota for women in parliament) and had the biggest overall score improvement relative to 2006 of any country in the Middle East.[56]
Saudis often invoke the life of Muhammad to prove that Islam allows strong women. His first wife, Khadijah, was a powerful businesswoman in pre-Islamic times who employed him and then initiated the marriage proposal on her own.[57] Another wife, Aisha, commanded an army at the Battle of Bassorah and is the source of many hadiths.[58][59]
Enforcement and custom vary by region. Jeddah is relatively permissive. Riyadh and the surrounding Najd region, origin of the House of Saud, have stricter traditions.[60] Prohibitions against women driving are typically unenforced in rural areas.[61]
Enforcement of the kingdom's strict moral code, including hijab and separation of the sexes, is often handled by the Mutaween (also Hai'a) – a special committee of Saudi men sometimes called "religious police." Mutaween have some law enforcement powers, including the power to detain Saudis or foreigners living in the kingdom for doing anything deemed to be immoral. While the anti-vice committee is active across the kingdom, it is particularly active in Riyadh, Buraydah and Tabuk.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent Grand Mosque Seizure in Saudi Arabia caused the government to implement stricter enforcement of sharia. Saudi women who were adults before 1979 recall driving, inviting non-mahram (unrelated) men into their homes (with the door open), and being in public without an abaya (full-body covering) or niqab (veil).[49][62] The subsequent September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center in 2001, on the other hand, are often viewed as precipitating cultural change away from strict fundamentalism.[53][58][63]
The government under King Abdullah was considered reformist. It opened the country's first co-educational university, appointed the first female cabinet member, and passed laws against domestic violence. Women did not gain the right to vote in 2005, but the king supported a woman's right to drive and vote. Critics say the reform was far too slow, and often more symbolic than substantive.[63][64][65] Activists, such as Wajeha al-Huwaider, compare the condition of Saudi women to slavery.[66]
According to The Economist, a rare 2006 Saudi government poll found that 89% of Saudi women did not think women should drive, and 86% did not think women should work with men.[67] However, this was directly contradicted by a 2007 Gallup poll which found that 66% of Saudi women and 55% of Saudi men agreed that women should be allowed to drive.[68] Moreover, that same poll found that more than 8 in 10 Saudi women (82%) and three-quarters of Saudi men (75%) agreed that women should be allowed to hold any job for which they are qualified outside the home.[68]
Five hundred Saudi women attended a 2006 lecture in Riyadh that did not support loosening traditional gender roles and restrictions. Mashael al-Eissa, an Internet writer, opposed reforms on the grounds that Saudi Arabia is the closest thing to an ideal and pure Islamic nation, and under threat from "imported Western values."[69]
A poll conducted by a former lecturer Ahmed Abdel-Raheem in 2013 to female students at Al-Lith College for Girls at Um al-Qura University, Mecca, found that 79% of the participants in the poll did not support the lifting of the driving ban for women. One of the students who took part in the poll commented: "In my point of view, female driving is not a necessity because in the country of the two holy mosques every woman is like a queen. There is (someone) who cares about her; and a woman needs nothing as long as there is a man who loves her and meets her needs; as for the current campaigns calling for women's driving, they are not reasonable. Female driving is a matter of fun and amusement, let us be reasonable and thank God so much for the welfare we live in."[70]
Abdel-Raheem conducted another poll to 8,402 Saudi women, which found that 90% of women supported the male guardianship system.[71] Another poll conducted by Saudi students found that 86% of Saudi women do not want the driving ban to be lifted.[70] A Gallup poll in 2006 in eight predominantly Muslim countries found that only in Saudi Arabia did the majority of women not agree that women should be allowed to hold political office.[72]
Saudi women supportive of traditional gender roles (many of them well educated, "sometimes downright aggressive" and including "award-winning scientists, writers and college professors"[69]) have in the past insisted on the position that loosening the ban on women driving and working with men is part of an onslaught of Westernized ideas to weaken Islam and that Saudi Arabia is uniquely in need of conservative values because it is the center of Islam.[69] Some Saudi female advocates of government reform reject foreign criticism of Saudi limitations upon rights, for "failing to understand the uniqueness of Saudi society."[69][51][63]
Journalist Maha Akeel, a frequent critic of her government's restrictions on women, states that Westerner critics do not understand Saudi. "Look, we are not asking for ... women's rights according to Western values or lifestyles ... We want things according to what Islam says. Look at our history, our role models."[58] According to former Arab News managing editor John R. Bradley, Western pressure for broadened rights is counterproductive, particularly pressure from the United States, given the "intense anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia after September 11."[73]
Under the previous Saudi law, all females must have a male guardian (wali), typically a father, brother, husband, or uncle (mahram), but in 2019 this law was partially amended to exclude women over 21 years old from having a male guardian.[32] The new amendment also grant the women the eligibility for the guardianship of minor children.[32][33] Girls and women were forbidden from traveling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from their male guardians.[75] However, in 2019, Saudi Arabia allowed women to travel abroad, register a divorce or a marriage, and apply for official documents without male guardian permission.
The guardian has duties to, and rights over, the woman in many aspects of civic life. A United Nations Special Rapporteur report states:
legal guardianship of women by a male, is practiced in varying degrees and encompasses major aspects of women's lives. The system is said to emanate from social conventions, including the importance of protecting women, and from religious precepts on travel and marriage, although these requirements were arguably confined to particular situations.[48]
The official law, if not the custom, requiring a guardian's permission for a woman to seek employment was repealed in 2008.[51][55][76][77][78][79]
In 2012, the Saudi Arabian government implemented a new policy to help with enforcement on the traveling restrictions for women. Under this new policy, Saudi Arabian men receive a text message on their mobile phones whenever a woman under their custody leaves the country, even if she is traveling with her guardian. Saudi Arabian feminist activist Manal al-Sharif commented that "[t]his is technology used to serve backwardness in order to keep women imprisoned."[80]
Some examples of the importance of permission are:
A situation where a male guardian (wali) is thought to have abused his power to approve his daughter's marriage for personal gain is a 2008 case were a father married off his eight-year-old daughter to a 47-year-old man to have his debts forgiven.[85] The man's wife sought an annulment to the marriage, but the Saudi judge refused to grant it.[86]
Guardianship requirements are not written law. They are applied according to the customs and understanding of particular officials and institutions (hospitals, police stations, banks, etc.). Official transactions and grievances initiated by women are often abandoned because officers, or the women themselves, believe they need authorization from the woman's guardian. Officials may demand the presence of a guardian if a woman cannot show an ID card or is fully covered. These conditions make complaints against the guardians themselves extremely difficult.[48]
In 2008, Rowdha Yousef and other Saudi women launched a petition "My Guardian Knows What's Best for Me," which gathered over 5,000 signatures. The petition defended the status quo and requested punishment for activists demanding "equality between men and women, [and] mingling between men and women in mixed environments."[51]
In 2016, Saudis filed the first petition to end male guardianship, signed by over 14,500 people; women's rights supporter Aziza Al-Yousef delivered it in person to the Saudi royal court.[87]
Liberal activists reject guardianship as demeaning to women. They object to being treated like "subordinates" and "children".[53][58] They point to women whose careers were ended by the guardians, or who lost their children because of a lack of custody rights. In a 2009 case, a father vetoed several of his daughter's attempts to marry outside their tribe, and sent her to a mental institution as punishment.[88] The courts recognize obedience to the father as law, even in cases involving adult daughters.[89] Saudi activist Wajeha al-Huwaider agrees that most Saudi men are caring, but "it's the same kind of feeling they have for handicapped people or for animals. The kindness comes from pity, from lack of respect."[51] She compares male guardianship to slavery:[66]
The ownership of a woman is passed from one man to another. Ownership of the woman is passed from the father or the brother to another man, the husband. The woman is merely a piece of merchandise, which is passed over to someone else—her guardian ... Ultimately, I think women are greatly feared. When I compare the Saudi man with other Arab men, I can say that the Saudi is the only man who could not compete with the woman. He could not compete, so what did he do with her? ... The woman has capabilities. When women study, they compete with the men for jobs. All jobs are open to men. 90% of them are open to men. You do not feel any competition ... If you do not face competition from the Saudi woman ... you have the entire scene for yourself. All positions and jobs are reserved for you. Therefore, you are a spoiled and self-indulged man.
The absurdity of the guardianship system, according to Huwaider, is shown by what would happen if she tried to remarry: "I would have to get the permission of my son."[58]
The Saudi government has approved international and domestic declarations regarding women's rights, and insists that there is no law of male guardianship. Officially, it maintains that international agreements are applied in the courts. International organizations and NGOs are skeptical. "The Saudi government is saying one thing to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva but doing another thing inside the kingdom," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.[90] Saudi interlocutors told a UN investigator that international agreements carry little to no weight in Saudi courts.[48] According to Riyadh businesswoman Hoda al-Geresi, the government has been slow to implement a 2004 resolution to increase employment and protect against abusive guardians.[55]
In 2017, when the kingdom was elected to the UN women's rights commission, several human rights organizations resented and disapproved the decision. UN Watch director Hillel Neuer called the decision "absurd" and compared the situation to "making an arsonist into the town fire chief".[91] Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström said that Saudi Arabia "ought to be" there "to learn something about women".[92]
It was announced in May 2017 that King Salman had passed an order allowing
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