Economist takes a look at the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Saudi women and finds that it captures the reality. The article notes some of the paradoxes and contradictions created by the narrow views of religion and culture being imposed by some, but also finds some optimism. Simply allowing HRW into the Kingdom is a marked change from what would have happened only a few years ago. Definitely worth reading.

You might also want to take a look at the comments, linked at the bottom of the Economist article!

Our women must be protected
A report that publicises the plight of Saudi women

THE first and second time her husband shot her, the distressed woman in her 30s rejected advice to file a complaint. To do so, she explained, would require the presence of her obligatory male guardian, who happened to be…her husband. Without him, her testimony would not be legally valid. Besides, the all-male police might accuse her of “mixing” with the opposite sex, a crime in the eyes of most Saudi judges. The third time her husband shot her, she died.

This tale, told by a Saudi social worker in a new report on women’s rights in the kingdom, is particularly harrowing. Yet it dramatises the more mundane plight of millions of Saudi women who are unable by law to study, work, travel, marry, testify in court, legalise a contract or undergo medical treatment without the assent of a close male relative, be he a father, husband or, less commonly, a grandfather, brother or son.

That Saudi women are banned from driving is well-known. But it is the imposition of male guardianship over adult women, affirms the detailed report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based monitoring group, that is the biggest obstacle to female advancement. As the report points out, half the kingdom’s citizens are treated in effect like children or the mentally ill for the duration of their lives. Worse, the guardianship policy creates a paradox: women may be held legally responsible for a crime, even though they are not deemed to have full legal capacity.

Oddly enough, there appear to be no written statutes mandating male guardianship for women. In the religiously conservative kingdom, where Muslim sharia law is held to override all other rules, the practice stems instead from extremist Wahhabi interpretations of Muslim scripture, particularly from a Koranic passage that describes men as the “protectors and keepers of women”. Sadly for Saudi women, the all-male Saudi judiciary is made up entirely of Wahhabi extremists.
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