Saudi Women: Which Way Out?

The Arab News in Jeddah has some interesting stories about the tragedies and semi triumphs of Saudi women.

Correspondent Molouk Ba-Isa has some pieces on a conference of 200 Saudi businesswomen and academics, called "The Saudi Woman Between Economics and Social Reality." One of them highlighted how some women in the royal family are pressing the cause of women's rights, which is good to see. Princess Adelah, for example, said while job opportunities for women were increasing, the Kingdom still ranked last in the world in having women in the workplace, just 5.5% of the female population. Putting women to work would serve the development of Saudi Arabia, she said. But she lamented the fact that besides the unemployment, Saudi women are lagging way behind in investing their money due to the lack of effective investment channels and activities available to the sheltered female half of the country.

Ba-Isa had a related article focusing on the issue of guardianship --the fact that a Saudi woman of any age is legally under the guardianship of her father, husband or some other male relative. That means they need the male guardian's consent in order to go to school, open a business or travel, as Dr. Fawzia al-Bakr, a professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, complained. She denounced the practice as one that stifled the activities of Saudi women in the private sector.

The story quoted a young Saudi woman named Fatima who was blocked from pursuing the major in marketing that she sought. After she was dumped into a literature program at her university, where the professors "cared more about what I was wearing than what I was learning," she dropped out. She refused to give up, however. She won a scholarship to study in the U.S., so that's where she's headed now.

The story of Asma doesn't have a happy ending, at least not yet. Arab News reporter Arjuwan Lakkdawala has a heartbreaking piece about the dilemmas of "married spinsters"--women who are rejected by their husbands, end up staying at home with their parents, life's opportunities closing off around them.

After no one in her tribe or family sought her hand in marriage as is Saudi custom, Asma agreed to marry a man who already had one wife. They went through the formalities but the husband appeared to have second thoughts and tormented Asma with criticism. He refused to stay with her and refused to divorce her, putting her into an indefinite state of marital limbo that effectively makes young childless women social outcasts. Legally, measures can be taken against the husband to compel him to keep his wife or divorce her. But most families are too mortified at the thought of losing face not to mention the dowry that the husband paid for his bride.

Last month, incidentally, Arab News had an amazing story about a business woman named Yara who landed in prison for having coffee with a male colleague. Splashed across six columns at the top of the front page, the story included the headline, "From Starbucks to Malaz Prison."

If you haven't guessed, it was another case of the Saudi morals police cracking down on women for what is deemed illegal behavior in the ultra conservative Kingdom. Yara, a 40-year-old, wife of 27 years and mother of three, who is a partner in a Jeddah company, went to Riyadh to inspect a new branch office. When the power went out, she and the colleague went down to a Starbucks cafe in the lobby to chat about such things as brand equity and sovereign wealth funds. Soon a squad from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice pounced, discovering that the two were not related. She was initially denied the right to call her husband, was strip searched and forced to sign a confession. "I was scared for my life," she told the paper in a tearful interview after she was freed. "I was afraid that they would abuse me or do something to me." Also interviewed by the Arab News was her husband Hatim, who commented, "I look at this as if she had been kidnapped by thugs."

The Arab News has some excellent women journalists and publishes quite a lot on Islamic women's issues, so I recommend bookmarking the paper at http://www.arabnews.com if you're interested in this topic.

Hey, Saudi women: We'd dearly love to hear more from you in the comments!

--by Scott MacLeod/Cairo