It’s no longer a man’s world ...
SAUDI: WOMEN SLOWLY THROW OFF GENDER SHACKLES From Sunday they can drive – but males must still give permission before travelling.
Navigating daily life in the sprawling metropolis of Riyadh with its seven million people requires a complicated set of calculations for the 50% of the population that is female. Will a man be available to drive me to this or that appointment? How will the children get to school? Which door should I use to enter this building? Which line should I join to order my coffee?
Sometimes, in the course of a day, women will pull on and off their face coverings, headscarves and black-robe abayas a dozen times or more, depending on whether men are present and how well they know them. The penalty for getting it wrong can include social ostracisation, humiliation for the woman and her family, unwelcome harassment by men and, until recently, detention and imprisonment.
In small, but significant ways, the daily reckonings are becoming easier and the costs of failure are falling. The social reforms unleashed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are bringing changes to many aspects of life in the conservative kingdom – but none stand to benefit more than women, whose treatment has set Saudi Arabia apart from the rest of the world for decades.
Glimpses of hair are starting to appear beneath headscarves, the lines segregating men from women are beginning to blur and the government is slowly retreating from its once vigorous intrusion into women’s lives.
From Sunday, they will be allowed to drive – the most symbolic and practically important of the changes so far.
But political freedoms are definitely not included. The arrest last month of 17 activists, including seven of the most prominent women who had campaigned for the right to drive, sent a clear signal to all Saudis that only the government can bestow freedoms – and the government can take them away.
The arrests probably had less to do with the specific demands the women were making than that they were making demands at all, said Hala al-Dosari, a Saudi activist who has supported the driving campaign. Male clerics, bloggers and human rights campaigners critical of the government have also been detained, but simply received less publicity, she said.
Rather, the new Saudi Arabia appears to be heading toward an ever harsher form of authoritarianism, even as the government promotes the social reforms that are starting to release women from the rigidly enforced gender discrimination.
Future campaigns for more meaningful reforms to women’s lives, such as an end to the widely hated guardianship law requiring all women to seek the permission of a male relative before travelling, working or even visiting a cafe, will be deterred, Dosari said.
But it is in Riyadh, where conservative tribal traditions often trump the state, that the real test of the liberalisation will come. Here, restaurants and cafes are still segregated and the majority of women still wear the face covers known as niqabs, despite statements by the crown prince that they are no longer compulsory.
In interviews, dozens of Saudi women from all segments of society nonetheless said the reforms are changing their lives in ways they had once thought impossible. They are entering careers, starting businesses and, in one of the least noticed but most appreciated of the reforms, seeking and securing divorces and child support payments.
“It is as if we are finally being allowed to breathe,” said Walla Jarallah, 32, who recently returned from two years studying photography in New York and found herself at once chafing at the restrictions that remain and stunned by the transformation that had occurred.
The interviews with the women also raised many questions that it is still too early to answer. Will the changes endure? Will they go far enough to make a real difference? Or are they perhaps going too far for this conservative society, risking a backlash?
Throughout the day and late into the evening, a steady stream of taxis drops off black-clad women outside an innocuous-looking door marked with the words: “Men and children not allowed.” Once inside, the women rip off their face-coverings, unwind their headscarves and sit down to chat with friends.
The cafe is one of a number of woman-owned, women-run and women-only cafes that have sprung up in Riyadh to cater to a burgeoning clientele of professional women who want to relax without the societal pressures.
But women themselves, sheltered by their families for decades, need to adjust to the new freedoms, said a woman activist in Riyadh who declined to be identified.
“We’ve had 40 to 50 years of brainwashing. We’ve been made to fear every man in the world,” she said.
“But men are not like that. It’s a matter of removing the myths around the gender relationship.” – Washington Post
We’ve had 40 to 50 years of brainwashing.