{"id":17510,"date":"2019-08-09T02:19:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T02:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=17510"},"modified":"2019-08-10T05:49:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T05:49:56","slug":"saudi-women-are-fighting-for-their-freedom-and-their-hard-won-victories-are-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/saudi-women-are-fighting-for-their-freedom-and-their-hard-won-victories-are-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi women are fighting for their freedom \u2013 and their hard-won victories are growing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alainna Liloia<\/a>, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Saudi women will soon be allowed to obtain passports and travel<\/a> without the permission of a male relative.<\/p>\n

This new regulation, announced by the government in early August, eases one of the most limiting aspects of the Gulf country\u2019s \u201cguardianship system<\/a>,\u201d which puts men in charge of their female relatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saudi women will also be allowed<\/a> to register marriages, divorces and births and to receive official family documents without their guardian\u2019s approval, but they must still get permission from male chaperones to marry, leave prison and move out from a domestic abuse shelter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Social pressure likely means some Saudi women still won\u2019t travel without family permission. Though it became legal for women to drive<\/a> in 2018, familial disapproval has kept many women off the roads.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law that sees gender separation and male authority as vital to preserving a moral Islamic society<\/a>. But women are much more than victims in this patriarchal regime.<\/p>\n

As a researcher who studies women\u2019s movements across the Middle East<\/a>, I have learned that Saudi women \u2013 like any large population \u2013 are a diverse group with different opinions and experiences. They attend school, work as journalists and airline pilots<\/a>, scuba dive<\/a>, meet friends for coffee \u2013 and, increasingly, defy the law to expand women\u2019s rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fight for equality<\/h2>\n

Saudi women\u2019s new freedoms are part of broader reform efforts led by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to modernize the conservative Muslim country<\/a> of 33 million and to alleviate international human rights concerns.<\/p>\n

But these legal advances have come coupled with the repression<\/a> of the Saudi female activists who have pushed to reform the guardianship system<\/a>. Women fought<\/a> for decades for the right to drive cars<\/a>, and before the ban was lifted last year several activists were arrested<\/a> for very publicly getting behind the wheel. Many remain in prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saudi women have also campaigned to abolish the guardianship system, circulating online petitions<\/a> with the hashtag #IAmMyOwnGuardian and holding workshops<\/a> to educate women on guardianship laws. A woman-created app called \u201cKnow Your Rights\u201d<\/a> gives women information on their legal rights.<\/p>\n

Saudi women even make the most of laws forbidding gender mixing in public places, I\u2019ve found.<\/p>\n

In the private, women-only areas<\/a> of malls, parks, restaurants, schools and coffee shops, women feel free to express their independence. They remove their abayas \u2013 the long black robes all Saudi women must wear \u2013 and talk openly, without male oversight.<\/p>\n

Some women have even called for more gender-segregated places<\/a> to give women more breathing room in this patriarchal society.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s education<\/h2>\n

Saudi women have been attending university since the 1970s<\/a>, but their educational opportunities have grown markedly over the past 15 years.<\/p>\n

A government-funded study abroad program launched in 2005 sends tens of thousands of young Saudi women to the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and many other countries<\/a> each year.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s first women\u2019s college, the Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University<\/a>, was founded in 2010. With room for about 60,000 undergraduate students \u2013 the world\u2019s largest all-women\u2019s campus \u2013 the school aims to give female students better access<\/a> to male-dominated fields like medicine, computer science, management and pharmacology.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Saudi women\u2019s undergraduate enrollment rates actually surpassed those of men<\/a>. Women comprise 52% of all university students in the kingdom, according to the Saudi Ministry of Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Working women<\/h2>\n

Employment rates have not followed these educational trends.<\/p>\n

Only 22% of Saudi women worked outside the home in 2016, compared to 78% of the male population, according to the World Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, women can \u2013 and do \u2013 work in nearly all of the same fields as men, with the exception of \u201cdangerous\u201d fields like construction or garbage collection. Since Islamic law<\/a> permits women to own and manage their own property, ever more Saudi women see employment as the path to financial independence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are female Saudi journalists<\/a>, like Weam Al Dakheel, who in 2016 became the first female TV presenter to host morning news in Saudi Arabia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are female Saudi lawyers, like Nasreen Alissa, one of only a few women to run a law firm in Saudi Arabia<\/a> and the inventor of the \u201cKnow Your Rights\u201d app.<\/p>\n

And just over half of all teachers in Saudi Arabia are female, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development<\/a>. Saudi women also make up almost half the kingdom\u2019s retail workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Saudi journalists question then-Secretary of State John Kerry at a press conference in Riyadh in 2016.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Jacquelyn Martin<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Saudi government has set a goal of a 30% female labor participation rate by 2030<\/a>. Though gender-mixing is often prohibited in the workplace<\/a>, women are a key component of the kingdom\u2019s ongoing \u201cSaudization\u201d efforts<\/a> to replace non-Saudi workers with a local workforce.<\/p>\n

Political engagement<\/h2>\n

Saudi Arabia began slowly expanding the rights of women after the Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, part of a rebranding effort<\/a> to counter negative views of the country as a breeding ground for terrorism and religious fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

Women have made particular progress in politics in recent years. In a series of firsts, women were appointed as deputy education minister in 2009<\/a>, advisers to the king in 2010 and ambassador to the United States in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Saudi women were given the right to vote<\/a> and to run in municipal elections. Nearly 1,000 women campaigned for seats on local councils, comprising 14%<\/a> of the total candidate pool.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s first crop of female candidates<\/a> struggled to convince voters \u2013 just 9% of whom are women \u2013 to elect them. Today they hold just 20 of Saudi Arabia\u2019s 2,000 local council seats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two prominent women\u2019s rights activists, Loujain Hathloul and Nassima Al-Sadah, were disqualified from running<\/a> in 2015 for unspecified reasons.<\/p>\n

In patriarchal Saudi Arabia, the women elected face significant barriers to performing even the limited duties of their office<\/a>, which include overseeing garbage collection and issuing building permits. Some must attend council meetings via video conference to avoid being in the same room as men.<\/p>\n

These challenges have not stopped Saudi women from working \u2013 both within and outside of the political system \u2013 to change their country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was never but a good citizen that loved her country, a loving daughter and a hardworking student and a devoted worker,\u201d wrote the Saudi activist Nouf Abdulaziz in a letter posted online<\/a> after her arrest in June 2018.<\/p>\n

Even facing jail, she \u201cwished the best for\u201d Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

This story is an updated version of an article<\/a> originally published March 25, 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

[ Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today\u2019s news, every day.<\/a><\/em> ]\"The<\/p>\n

Alainna Liloia<\/a>, Graduate Associate, Ph.D. Student, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alainna Liloia, University of Arizona Saudi women will soon be allowed to obtain passports and travel without the permission of a male relative. This new regulation, announced by the government in early August, eases one of the most limiting aspects of the Gulf country\u2019s \u201cguardianship system,\u201d which puts men in charge of their female relatives. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":17507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[1180,1182,260,865,6770,5356,6610,2415,6771,185,1591],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17515,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions\/17515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}