As a woman with a driving licence, who enjoys travelling without my father’s permission and one who chooses to bare my face in public, I have always been drawn into the never-ending saga surrounding the women of Saudi Arabia. None of the above-mentioned activities they can engage in whilst inside the Kingdom. However with the recent accession of the ageing King Abdullah in 2005 to the throne, observers have noticed a gradual push towards much needed reform for women in Saudi Arabia. With David Cameron’s recent visit to the Kingdom to sell arms, activists have called on Cameron to push the Saudi monarchy towards a human rights agenda. Some have argued the reasoning behind the current restrictive and male dominated political and legal system that stunts the rights of women in the Kingdom is not simply based on a Wahhabi form of Islamic law, they claim it is based on state bred irrational fear of women. When a man is raised without seeing a woman uncovered who is not one of their direct relatives, where women under the veil – whether it be the full face covering burkha or the slightly less restrictive niqab – are seen as sexually enticing if any skin is shown, can the new generation of men in the Kingdom ever grant women full political rights? The purpose of this piece is to examine in a political light with a human rights perspective the current situation in the Kingdom and to have a look at the reforms that have so far that have occurred; is life really changing for women in Saudi Arabia?
The Saudi Arabian state is based on a hereditary monarchy following the line of succession from Ibn Saud who, according to Saudi literature, unified the Arabian Desert in the Eighteenth Century. The elderly sons and grandsons who form this chain of succession have kept the out-dated legal system with a lack of codification of law; leaving the law in the hands of male judges. This is only the beginning of the problems facing reformers for women’s rights in the desert Kingdom. When Ibn Saud founded the State he made a pact with Al-Wahab to conquer the areas dominated by the Ottoman Empire and purify the land with a hard-line form of Salafi Islam; Wahhabism. This today has proved to be as much of an obstacle for women as the monarchy, despite King Abdullah’s apparent desire for reform, he is pulled back by the uncompromising ullama; the Wahhabi dominated religious scholarly community. I would argue the puritanical Commission for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the so called religious police, who roam the streets ensuring their interpretation of Islam is observed, are a further hurdle in the bid for women’s reforms. Additionally in political studies, Saudi Arabia fits the bill for what Anderson would describe as a rentier state; a state that does not feel obliged to work on behalf of citizens as they rent themselves out through the form of oil, so they only need to please those who purchase the commodity. This means that the Saudi Arabian state is even less inclined to fulfil the basic rights of the female citizens of the Kingdom.
One argument that I so often hear from those calling against Western intervention is the concept of ‘cultural relativism’ where people assert that restrictions on women’s rights is the Saudi Arabian ‘culture’; what can be defined for the purpose of the cultural relativist’s argument as the Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law which they claim is what all the women in the Kingdom want. Gaytri Spivak has highlighted this form of Orientalism and Imperialism as “white women saving Brown women”. However in order to call for any reform in the Kingdom we must erase this notion, we cannot force any concepts of what Western women are in the Saudi Kingdom, but we must call through diplomatic means for women to have a choice; whether it be the ability to drive or to expose their faces on the streets of Riyadh.
So have King Abdullah’s gradual changes for women been a real success story in the desert Kingdom or just an affront to get the United Nations and Human Rights activists off the case? It was announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in local elections as well as stand in them from 2015. In a monarchical State where the King has supreme power, the power of those who are elected is minimal. However I would suggest that this is an encouraging reform, as is the recent invitation for women onto the Shura Council, who recommend laws to the King, which will take effect in 2013. Despite this constructive first step, the newly appointed women will only be able to communicate with the male Council members through a communications system. These changes may be positive in the sense they are allowing women to gain a foothold in the political workings of the Kingdom and will partially eradicate it’s male-dominated nature. Although women will be still not be truly seen or heard, this is still perhaps a welcome step in the right direction.
Additionally women in Saudi Arabia have been allowed to join the mutwa, the aforementioned religious police, for the first time, thus suggesting a reduction in the powers of the men who enforce strict rules on women. It is yet to be seen however if these women who are to be employed by the mutwa will push for leniency on enforcement of religious laws on women or if they will be just at power hungry and severe as their male counterparts. Furthermore women are about to be given permission to practice law as attorneys in the Kingdom for the first time due to internal pressure.
It’s clear that in the legal and political spheres in Saudi Arabia women are slowly being embraced, although how far these reforms are accepted by society, by both men and women, is yet to be seen. However we must examine in brief the rights that are still being denied to women, whether by established law or by what has become custom. In many schools of Islamic law the concept of a mahram, a male guardian for a women, is accepted whether for the right to marriage, to engage in legal contracts or, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, to travel. The concept of mahram is still in force in Saudi Arabia, with many women and men complaining about their female relatives needing travel permits even just to cross borders within the Arabian Gulf itself. One of the most famous and reported restrictions on women in the Kingdom is the inability to drive. The spotlight has been drawn on this issue by the recent protest in 2011 called Women2Drive in which women drove without male permission on the streets of Saudi Arabia. Despite much media frenzy about women being banned from driving in the Kingdom, it is not a legal ban in any sense of the law, codified or not. It is simply based on customs since the 1979 siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca, after which travel restrictions and the tightening of the law took place, that have never been addressed by judges or the monarchy.
So how does one move forward in a pursuit for global women’s rights? Saudi Arabia may have both signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women but they clearly are dragging their heels through the sand when it comes to implementing full political, social and legal rights for women. Once the recent changes to women’s rights have come into full effect, the global community needs to seriously evaluate their impact, and Saudi Arabians themselves need to debate how to take these baby steps forward and implement further reforms to give Saudi Arabian women what they truly deserve – a choice.
Photos taken from: De Clérambault French Psychiatrist and Photographer of 19th Century
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