Arab News editorializes on the story it reported yesterday about the incidence of women physically abusing their husbands. It notes, as did I, that the mere fact of the report indicates an attitudinal change: men in the past, for a variety of social and psychological reasons, would almost never have reported being beaten by their wives.
The paper notes, too, that there is no reason to think that the figures reported, which came solely from Jeddah, are not replicated in other cities.
The editorial takes a step off track, though, when it compares the raw numbers of acts of domestic violence in the UK (where there has long been a culture of reporting it) and the Kingdom, where there is no such tradition. Nor does it adjust for population figures or note the fact that more than one half of the Saudi population is unmarried, whether due to age or simply choosing not to marry. And then there are the tens of millions of expats, most of whom are not present with their families. Saudis should not take comfort in the fact that the reported number of abusers in the Kingdom is lower than in the UK.
The paper straightens out again, though, when it states that spousal abuse is often concomitant with child abuse. The Saudi media has been active in reporting child abuse as well as writing about governmental and NGO efforts to combat it.
It is encouraging, I think, that Saudis are beginning to pull their social problems back from Narnia. Things found in closets need airing and sunlight still remains an excellent disinfectant.
Editorial: Devil lies in the details
ARAB NEWSFamily honor and fear of humiliation come first — but in doing so enable the scourge of domestic violence to flourish.
According to the police in Jeddah, 20 percent of cases of physical abuse between married couples — 145 a month — involve wives attacking their husbands. Before readers conclude that women in Jeddah are particularly aggressive, there is no reason to believe that the figures are any different elsewhere in the Kingdom. The explanation from a spokesperson for the Saudi Human Rights Commission (HRC) that women have few other means to express their anger sounds entirely plausible but logically there must be similar numbers of women in Riyadh, Damman and other places whose anger takes the form of violence. Nor, is there any reason to believe the suggestion from both police and the HRC that this figure represents a growing trend. Women, like men, have been prey to sudden outbursts of violence since time immemorial. What can be seen as new is that it is now being reported.
That is, in itself, a significant development. Traditionally, men would have been embarrassed to state publicly that their wives beat them. Clearly attitudes are changing.
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I don’t think there are many people who think that domestic violence is not a serious issue. The problem comes in trying to measure, or even define what domestic violence is. Physical violence is often unmistakable, but there is also psychological violence, coercion, and control, none of which leaves marks. When it comes to measuring how often it happens, by whom and upon whom, things get messy quickly. Short of hospital and police reports (each of which has its own limitations), studies seem to both under- and over-report domestic violence. Part of the difficulty comes from the fact that the matter is self-reported in most studies. It shows up if and only if one chooses to report it. There is also little to verify the truth of those reports and no way to capture behavior that goes unreported. Too, the politicization of some strands of feminism expand definitions of domestic violence beyond how the term is usually understood, thus creating an ‘apples and oranges’ situation in which unlike things are added together.
One form of domestic violence which gets relatively little public notice is that of women upon men. Often, this is the result of the conflict between the image of a male as strong and competent enough to protect himself, if not to automatically dissuade attacks. It certainly flies in the face of the ‘macho’ stereotype and other cultural markers of what being male is all about. But it definitely happens, even in Saudi Arabia, where men are stereotyped as kings of their domain with women as their chattel property.
Arab News reports that in Jeddah, up to 20% of police reports of domestic violence are due to women attacking their spouses. That is not a small number.
Some ‘brides of the Red Sea’ beating up hubbies
MD HUMAIDAN | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: According to Jeddah police reports, on an average, 145 wives beat their husbands in a month, constituting 20 percent of the annual rates of such incidents.
Wives only go for physical violence when they reach a state of explosion and can no longer control themselves, said Fathiyyah Al-Qurashi, member of the Saudi Human Rights Commission.
She was speaking to Arab News on reports about the growing number of wives beating husbands.
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The Saudi government has an unfortunate policy of having the employers of foreign workers retaining their passports. In a way this makes sense as those employers are responsible for both the employees’ behavior in some regards, but also responsible for obtaining exit visas for the workers.
As Arab News reports, however, there are some major downsides to this policy. Here, a company saw its headquarters go up in flames, taking with it over 17,000 passports. The owners of those passports had better have clear copies of them, as well as their iqamas or residence visas, because without them those employees are in for a world of hurt. Passports are, after all, the primary form of international identification. The iqama may work while the employee is within the Kingdom, but it won’t get him out. Lacking a passport with an exit visa, he simply can’t leave the country.
It doesn’t take a fire to point up the weakness of this policy, though. All it takes is the employer to be away from the office to make it difficult, if not impossible, for an employee to exit. I recall spending hours on the phone with an American congressman who could not understand why one of his constituents, working in the KSA, could not simply leave. The idea of ‘exit visa’ was foreign to him. And while the constituent really wanted to get out to fly to his dying father’s side, there was nothing the US Consulate could do. Even issuing a new passport wouldn’t have worked because it would not have either exit or entry visas, itself an invitation to unpleasantness. The employer had the passport tightly locked up in his office safe while he was on holiday in Spain.
By putting the responsibility for the safe-keeping of passports in the hands of those to whom they’re issued, the Saudis would give up some measure of control. That is true. Bosses would lose some leverage over their employees (though why that leverage is necessary is an entirely other question). But putting the passport in the hands of the employee shifts the responsibility for its care. Fewer hands are often safer hands, but when the few hands fumble, as here, its the many who suffer.
Alesayi fire burned 17,000 passports
ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: The fire that ripped through the six-story Alesayi Plaza on Madinah Road last week has shattered the travel plans of many of its employees after the disaster destroyed about 17,000 passports of expatriates working for the company and its branches across the country.
The fire on July 9 also destroyed more than 12,000 land deeds worth more than SR5 billion, Al-Bilad newspaper reported Sunday. The paper cited informed sources close to the ongoing investigation for its report.
The sources said it would take the authorities concerned at least 75 days to verify all the deeds, which involved thousands of buildings and lands in various parts of the Kingdom. They added that a team from notaries public in Jeddah would help in the process.
A Jeddah-based Alesayi employee who wanted to remain anonymous said the company was making every possible effort to help its employees after the tragedy.
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UPDATE: Amusingly, Saudi Gazette runs an article today cautioning Saudi travelers to take good care of their own passports. I wonder how they’d feel if, say, hotels or landlords insisted on keeping their passports while they were visiting?
Throughout human history and across nearly all cultures, incest has been among the foremost taboos. The exact parameters and definitions have differed over time and place, but certain sexual activities within close familial relationships have been condemned to the point where participants have been summarily executed. Cultures do draw different lines, however. What is the most favored marriage in Saudi Arabia—that between first cousins—is considered illegal incest in other cultures and religions. Nevertheless, Shariah law does recognize incest as a crime, though it may define it a bit differently than non-Islamic laws do.
Forced sexual activity with a closely related minor, even by another minor, is generally seen as violating all social norms. That is not to say it doesn’t happen, of course. History is replete with tales (usually of woe and godly retribution) of these relationships, with Ptolemaic Egypt the glaring exception.
What is new is that a subject once so taboo that it could not be even raised in decent conversation is now being talked about and reported.
Arab News carries this story about incest in Saudi Arabia. The writer correctly uses the phrase ‘becoming a noticeable problem’ because it is not a new phenomenon. Incest is older than the laws prohibiting it, after all. Nor does she claim that the incidence is rising, but only that it is coming more to public notice.
From the article, one might conclude that the victims of incest are only young girls. Unless Saudi Arabia is unique in this regard, that simply is not the case. Young males can also be abused by close relatives, male or female. Saudi media do report on boys being abused by their male relations.
The article’s focus is on the fact that the act is considered so shameful that people don’t talk about it, don’t involve the police, and generally try to ignore it. All of which solves nothing. But, as a shame/honor based society, Saudi society sees the shame of the actions falling on all members of the family, not just the miscreant. It’s going to take a deeper change in Saudi society to make incest a more commonly reported crime.
Silence over incidents to blame for incest prevalent in society
BADEA ABU AL-NAJA | ARAB NEWSMAKKAH: Incest is becoming a noticeable problem in Saudi society. There are various reasons why male relatives, especially guardians, sexually abuse the girls in their families.
Experts feel that the growing incidence of this scourge is largely due to the victims’ families not reporting such incidents to authorities concerned in order to save the so-called honor of themselves and victims.
Arab News spoke to some of the victims and their relatives to get a wider picture. A bride in the first month of her marriage was shocked when her new husband’s niece told her that her paternal uncle had been sexually abusing her since she was 10.
The new wife said she could not believe her ears and talked to the girl’s mother who said she knew about the abuse and kept quiet to avoid trouble.
She decided to tell her husband who refused to accept his brother would do such a thing, accusing his niece of being a constant flirt with her uncle even when she was grown-up, kissing him playfully. He said had she been truthful, she would have stayed away from the uncle.
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Cell or mobile phones have been, mostly, a blessing of modern life. As the technology advances, little, hand-held devices are taking on capabilities that were once married to massive pieces of equipment costings tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars. But with the good comes the bad: no matter how highly touted the security systems of phones and tablet computers, they remain vulnerable to concerted attacks.
For well over ten years, security professionals have realized this weakness. They know that cell phones, even when turned off, can be made to turn into microphones and transmitters. As a result, no cell-based technology has been permitted into secure areas of government offices. In some government buildings in the US, for example, cell phones are all turned off and deposited in pigeonholes in the entryways. Other buildings, which may have only certain secured areas, prohibit phones from entering those rooms, or perhaps entire floors of those buildings. This, by the way, is one of the things that create amusement (or anger) at the film and TV portrayals of ‘intelligence agencies’ like those of the ‘Bourne’ series or ’24′. Everyone is using cell phones in areas that are supposed to be highly protected! Even if all those conversations were encrypted on the phones, the mere use and volume of calls taking place provides useful information to those who know how to use it.
So, the Saudi government is catching up. Saudi Gazette reports that there is now a ban on two specific pieces of high-tech communications gear in security establishments. It’s definitely about time. The Kingdom’s enemies, both real and perceived (e.g., Israel and Iran) are more than competent in high-tech espionage. Without knowing it for a fact, I am dead certain that both of those countries have very active intelligence operations working against the Saudi government; the hostility of their relations assures it. But late is better than never, so it’s good that the Saudi government is catching on.
While they’re about it, the article notes, the government is also looking into banning flash memory devices, like USB flash drives. Classified computers within the US State Dept. have had USB drives banned for as long as I can recall. Even CD and DVD drives capable of recording are banned from nearly all classified computers. As we learned from WikiLeaks, however, this was not uniform USG policy and military computers were left insufficiently protected.
Security is often a trade-off between convenience and actually protecting people, information, and facilities. Whether it’s full-body scanners at airports or having to memorize a plethora of passwords, balances are sought every day. That, for better or worse, is life these days.
iPhones banned in all security establishments
RIYADH – The Ministry of Interior has slapped a ban on the use of iPhone and the Galaxy Tab, a tablet computer, in all security establishments. The ban, which came into force Saturday, has been imposed because these devices are easy to hack and could be used to commit security-related violations, Assharq Alawsat Arabic daily reported Friday.
Experts have confirmed that the two devices pose threats to personal privacy and to security establishments’ confidentiality.
Saudi Arabia is not the first country to ban the devices in security establishments; the United States and some European countries have done so and some bans include portable flash-memory devices.
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There’s no denying that a rash of attacks on Muslims occurred in the US following the 9/11 attacks. Muslims, and those who ‘looked Muslim/Arab/Middle Eastern’ were the target of people outraged by the tragedy and seeking their own retribution. As is usually the case when emotions override reason, the aim was often misplaced.
Next week, a Texan named Mark Anthony Stroman is scheduled to die by lethal injection. He was charged with murdering and assaulting several men he thought to be somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks. He was tried and convicted for his murder of a an Indian gas station operator, Vasudev Patel, who was not Muslim, was not Arab, and was not from the Middle East. He could have been tried on his other attacks, but the state settled for one conviction that led to the death penalty.
From what I’ve read of him, Stroman had a long history of white supremacy activities as well as a lengthy criminal record. He has claimed—but never substantiated—that his sister was killed in the 9/11 attacks and that his motive was retribution. As his own attacks ranged over a period of days, this was not seen as the passionate, emotional response of someone suddenly aggrieved, but rather an attempt to take the law into his own hands.
Interestingly, one of his victims, Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim of Bangladeshi origin, is now active in trying to save Stroman’s life.
Arab News runs a piece from its economics sister-publication Al-Eqtisadiah on a movement to use arbitration, mediation, and reconciliation rather than go to the courts on disputed issues. The article cites clogging of the courts’ dockets as a major reason to keep as many cases as possible out of them. That is indeed a good reason; justice systems worldwide are overwhelmed by the number of cases they are forced to resolve.
Even more important, I believe, is that it’s wise to keep things out of courts in Saudi Arabia. Too often, the current legal system gives judges far too much latitude to resolve cases. They are not bound by precedent and they have no (or few) codified laws which restrict them. As a result, we see idiosyncratic decisions coming from judges of varying education and quality, often ending up with bizarre judgments that violate common sense if not basic human rights. Depending on just how a judge understands the law, with few limits on external sources of pressure, may be a system, but it’s not a just system.
Saudi Arabia is in process of redoing its entire justice system, from demanding higher qualification of its judges to actually codifying laws. Until that process is complete, though, it’s wise to avoid the courts when possible.
The complaints about overcrowding the courts is legitimate, too, though. Not everything in life needs to be settled in a court of law. There is much room for sorting things out on a lower, less official level, with both parties and subject-matter experts sitting down together.
Reconciliation still a better option
ABDULLAH BAJUBAIR | AL-EQTISADIAHLATELY, the Ministry of Justice announced the launch of “reconciliation offices” as a new initiative.
The objective of this project is to compel disputants to pass through these offices before filing a lawsuit. The ministry believes reconciliation is better than going to court. It is unbelievable that 65 percent of cases received by the Saudi courts are family issues, such as divorce, alimony, custody and nursing.
Courts should take a serious initiative to eliminate these issues before they reach the judge. Many family problems could be solved through mediation and reconciliation between the disputing parties under the supervision of experts and professionals. Social workers could be of great help to court officers because of their role in reducing the burden of litigation and in finding amicable solutions.
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I do note that the US, just now, is having a serious debate about arbitration. Many, if not most contracts have language that requires arbitration before the lawsuits start, sometimes making lawsuits impossible. This has led to clashes of law between states and with the federal government. Various courts have decided the issue in different ways, leading to uncertainty. The cases concerning the validity of arbitration clauses in contracts are working their way up to the US Supreme Court over the years, but clear decisions have not yet been made on most issues.
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ it is frequently said. So too are honesty, justice, and fairness.
Saudi Arabia recently enacted a ban on hiring domestic servants from Indonesia and the Philippines in reaction to new regulations put out by those countries that sought to protect their citizens taking jobs in the KSA. Arab News reports, based on an article in the Arabic Al-Riyadh, that Saudi citizens find this ban just fine as they don’t like being ‘blackmailed’. Hmmm…
In fact, what Saudi employers don’t like is having to divulge personal information—including photos of family members and architectural layouts of the homes in which the women will be working. One person notes that it’s employers who are supposed to impose conditions, not employees.
It appears that the concept of ‘contract’ is rather weakly understood in the Kingdom. According to Wikipedia, A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties with mutual obligations, which may or may not have elements in writing. That is, both parties place obligations on each other, not just the boss to the worker. Here, governments are saying that they will not send their citizens to work in Saudi Arabia unless certain conditions are met. The Saudi government is saying that until those conditions are lessened or dropped, no citizens of those two countries will get visas to take up the jobs.
As the economies of both Indonesia and the Philippines strongly depend on large potions of their citizens’ salaries to be repatriated, they indeed have motive to lower their demands. On the other hand, they also have an obligation, one that speaks to their very legitimacy, to protect their citizens.
The clash is causing a great deal of animosity at present. Recently, Saudi Gazette has been running editorial cartoons that show an Indonesian made bossing her lower-middle class employers around. Certain Saudis also have their noses out of joint because they are being forced to pay the consequences of the frequently-reported abuse their compatriots inflict on domestic workers. And of course higher minimum wages, as demanded by the sending countries, displeases them.
I think that the issue will be sorted out by negotiation among the governments. The governments sending workers will back down on a few issues and the Saudi government will relax its ban. Both sides of this argument depend too heavily on each other to do otherwise. Women from Indonesia and the Philippines tend to be educated, hard working, and for the most part Muslim. Those are very desirable qualities. Substitutes cannot easily be found by searching through other developing countries like Niger or Sudan. On the other hand, those repatriated salaries make an important addition to the sending countries’ economies, one that their government would like to see continued. Compromise is possible.
Ultimately, all the involved countries need to find ways to break their dependence on migrant labor, whether as exporters or importers. Saudis need to learn to manage with fewer servants. The Philippines and Indonesia need to improve their economies so that they do not depend on the $150/month salaries of their women taking jobs as domestics. That time is not now, so all are going to have to find ways to accommodate each other. When it comes to matters of pride, however, ‘accommodation’ becomes a dirty word. Backs stiffen, wallets shut, and people demand the maximum benefit to themselves. I wish the governments good luck in their talks, but I also hope for better conditions for migrant workers, no matter from where they come.
Recruitment ban a step in right direction, say citizens
ARAB NEWSRIYADH: There has been an overwhelming positive response from society to the Labor Ministry’s recent decision to ban recruitment of domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines that came into force on Saturday, Al-Riyadh Arabic daily reported.
Welcoming the decision, many Saudi families described it as a step in the right direction. They noted that usually, employers imposed conditions for recruitment, but in the Kingdom this role had been taken up by domestic workers.
Cashing in on the employers’ inaction and lack of awareness about their rights, the housemaids and their respective countries try to impose tougher conditions that are unacceptable, many of them pointed out.
The ministry has taken the decision to stop issuing work visas following tougher hiring conditions imposed by the two Asian nations.
The move came as a reaction to an earlier decision of these countries to suspend recruitment of domestic workers to the Kingdom until it meets some of their strict conditions.
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Arab News reports that some real estate agents in Mecca may be scamming the market by alleging that properties are possessed by jinns. Many (if not most) Saudis take jinns very seriously, so the ‘fact’ that a jinn has taken up residence in a house is certainly going to depress its value. If realtors can create that ‘fact’, then they can scoop up properties for below market value and then ‘forget’ about the jinn when it comes time to sell.
While this is all quaint and amusing, American’s shouldn’t get to feeling cocky about it. Real estate law in the US is governed by the states—that is, there’s no single, countrywide law. Several states (for instance, New Jersey) requires that sellers and their agents disclose whether a house is ‘haunted’ by ghosts or poltergeists. Failure to do so voids the sale and may leave the seller and agent open to charges of criminal law. Most states, however, restrict disclose of ‘defects’ to material defects: haunting is not considered material.
Perhaps we’ll see an aspiring Saudi filmmaker turning out a Mecca-based version of The Amityville Horror one of these days…
Makkah realtors cash in on ‘jinn’ rumors
BADEA ABU AL-NAJA | ARAB NEWSMAKKAH: There are widespread rumors among Makkawis claiming some abandoned buildings and estates are possessed by jinns.
According to the widely circulated gossip, residents of these buildings located in various districts of the holy city, especially on the outskirts, say they vacated their dwellings after supernatural forces had harmed them.
There are divergent views among local residents with regard to the rumors. However, most of their views seem to confirm the existence of something mysterious at these buildings.
These have forced the owners of a number of such buildings and plots of lands to sell them at much lower rates.
There are also reports that some realtors are allegedly behind these rumors.
Local resident Muhammad Bazaid said it was easy to identify abandoned buildings that are allegedly possessed.
“Some buildings and estates in the city are known to be possessed by jinns. People used to say that,” he said, while noting that this situation is being exploited by some realtors.
“They are behind spreading of these rumors and are thus instrumental in lowering prices of these properties. They then try to buy them at prices much lower than the market value,” he said.
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The Saudi Ministry of Labor has ruled that only women can sell lingerie in lingerie shops. This puts women at ease by not forcing them to discuss their intimate apparel with male clerks. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is concerned that men sometimes accompany their wives to buy lingerie and would thus present a moral threat to female clerks (and, I suppose other customers) who are unrelated to those men. The result is that nobody is quite sure what to do about firing the current male clerks and hiring females. Needless to say, this is a quandary that could happen only in Saudi Arabia.
Might one not expect that a woman accompanied by her husband would be capable of stopping her husband from attacking the staff? Or, as the religious police fear, the staff attacking her husband?
If authorities want to place lingerie shops off limits to male customers, they could certainly do so. The husbands might be deprived a bit, but only a bit. They (the males) could still browse all the Victoria’s Secret catalogs and order the naughty lingerie on line, as does most of the world these days.
Lingerie shops in Riyadh fear fresh Haia raids
GHAZANFAR ALI KHAN | ARAB NEWSRIYADH: Several owners and operators of lingerie shops in Riyadh have expressed concern that the Kingdom’s plans to replace male clerks with women employees at shops catering to women, most notably lingerie shops, may fall in the doldrums following reports of raids of such shops by religious police over the past few months.
The Ministry of Labor has vowed to implement a plan to replace male clerks at various types of shops, preferably with Saudi women, as well as to offer job opportunities at grocery checkout lanes. But it is unclear if the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Haia) would stand idle when it comes to women working in any commercial service that isn’t explicitly for women only.
The ministry has targeted lingerie and cosmetic shops in particular, but many of these businesses allow both men and women inside, especially husbands with their wives. The Haia is opposed to women sales clerks interacting with male customers, as it is considered illegal mingling of women with unrelated men.
The ministry has issued a 12-month deadline for expelling male sales clerks at lingerie and cosmetics shops, viewing it as the obvious first step toward offering more job opportunities for women.
Women themselves have said they feel uncomfortable discussing intimate apparel and beauty products with unrelated men. Virtually all of these clerks are foreign workers.
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Asharq Alawsat reports on the mass terrorism trial now underway in Riyadh. In the course of the prosecution’s making its case, it points to links throughout the Al-Qaeda organization to various terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The surprise here, I think, is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was also involved in the planning of the May, 2003 attacks in Riyadh, the action that started the Saudi anti-terrorism push. The article also points to how Al-Qaeda had infiltrated certain sectors of the Saudi military and security sectors and how various explosives and surface-to-air missiles made their way into the Kingdom.
Now, this is all based on the prosecution’s case. The defense has yet to speak. I doubt, however, that the defense will be terribly successful. Some of the defendants are charged with capital crimes and may be lucky to avoid the death penalty, though.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed implicated during Riyadh Compound bombing trial
Turki Al-SaheilRiyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – A number of surprising revelations were made on day five of the trial of 18 defendants implicated in the Riyadh Compound bombings of 12 May 2003, which resulted in 35 deaths and more than 160 wounded. Asharq Al-Awsat received information that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and 9/11 “facilitator” Ramzi Bin al-Shibh – both of whom are being detained in Guantanamo Bay – were implicated in an Al Qaeda plot to target infrastructure belonging to Saudi Aramco, the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia.
The Special Criminal Court in Riyadh played host to the trial of 18 defendants allegedly involved in the 2003 Riyadh Compound bombings which shook Saudi Arabia to the core. This heinous crime led to a huge nation-wide security crack-down against extremist elements that ultimately signaled the end of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. None of the defendants were identified by name.
One of the 18 defendants on trial is accused of receiving direct orders from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Bin al-Shibhi to target Saudi petroleum infrastructure. This defendant allegedly received training in Afghanistan, where he pledged allegiance to former Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden. He allegedly received orders – from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Shibhi – to return to Saudi Arabia and carry out attacks targeting Saudi Aramco.
Another of the 18 defendants is accused of having ties with Mohamed Atta, the Emir of the Hamburg cell that carried out the 9/11 attacks. In addition to this, the defendant is accused of having met with Rakan al-Saikhan, a senior Al Qaeda member suspected of being involved in the planning of the USS Cole bombing and the Limburg attack.
The Saudi General Prosecution accused another defendant of travelling to Iran, receiving training there, and taking part in a criminal conspiracy with a number of Al Qaeda figures based in the country.
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Both Saudi Gazette and Arab News report on new regulations from the Saudi Ministry of Labor intended to ‘protect’ women in the workplace. Most of the regulations would not pass muster in a Western country as they are too paternalistic and set too strict limits on the kinds of jobs women can hold.
The regulations, for example, prohibit women from working on sewage, oil, or gas lines and from jobs that would require them to climb ladders. Others keep them away from potentially toxic materials like lead. Twenty years ago, the US Supreme Court, in a case dealing with lead batteries, found that attempting to protect women of child bearing age from toxic chemicals was a violation of their civil rights. Too, the West has seen many cases where women have had to go to court to assert their rights to jobs like firefighter or construction worker.
But this is Saudi Arabia, patriarchy par excellence. So, women will not be able to work in a wide variety of jobs, for their own safety.
On the other hand, they will be permitted to own companies that do these jobs or to work in the ‘back office’. They are explicitly being given authority to work in other areas, thus immunizing them (to an extent) from those who would keep them ‘barefoot and pregnant’ in the home. The ‘extent’ is that the Ministry does not want to cross sword with the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which has its own views about how women should work.
In sum, this is a rather typical half-step forward.
Women protected from laborious jobs
MD AL-SULAMI | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Labor Minister Adel Fakeih listed over 20 jobs that women would not be employed in, while highlighting on Monday the need for other departments to assist and promote women’s employment.
According to international standards, Saudi women were prevented from working in these jobs that stress their unsuitability to undertake certain jobs for physical reason, Fakeih said at a press conference here.
“The woman may be pregnant or breast feeding, so she will not be in a position to take up tough jobs,” he added.
The ministry, however, said while women are prevented from working in these positions, they are allowed to own or manage businesses related to these fields of work.
Fakeih, while emphasizing his ministry’s sole role in enforcing rules and regulations concerning the employment of Saudi women in the private sector, said: “The ministry, however, does not want to overrule other bodies in supervising markets such as the security organizations and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.”
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