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Rights are things that an individual is/should be legally or morally allowed to do/have. Various countries allow little/ no rights to women, one of those countries is Saudi Arabia. Women not having many rights in Saudi Arabia has been practiced for over many centuries. This essay will discuss women’s rights in Saudi Arabia regarding gender discrimination.
Saudi Arabia is commonly known for its strict moral values and customs regarding religion and women. Gender discrimination is a global conflict, but it is prevalently seen in Saudi Arabia. Gender discrimination is so poignant in Saudi Arabia because there are strict sets of moral guidelines and ideologies that Saudi Arabian culture implements on its people. Although Saudi Arabian men impose restrictions on women for the sake of upholding their cultural beliefs and family honor, there is no doubt that Saudi Arabian culture is male-dominated and holds misogynistic views on women, but progress is being made. Firstly, gender discrimination is not an exclusive feature of Saudi Arabia, but it is a more outwardly visible problem there. Gender discrimination and male superiority are most visible in Saudi Arabian culture because “inhabitants of the region where the Arabic language predominates are, despite their diversity, bound into a singular cultural unit with a particular gender system” (Tucker VII). One belief most Saudis have in common is their “conservative view toward women” (Al-Mannai 82). Middle Eastern individuals know what behaviors to expect from each gender, and what each gender should and should not do. An effect of holding such a belief is that a man’s role in Saudi Arabia tends to be one of dominance and power; the male is the ruler of the house and the main source of income for the family, he has to be notified or asked for permission for virtually everything. A woman’s role on the other hand does not consist of such significance and does not grant the power that the male role does. Rather, the female role consists of women acting modestly and submissively; women are expected to be confined to being in their homes, caring for their families, and depending on their spouses or male relatives. For Saudi Arabian culture to have adopted such a mentality they must have had large amounts of people - particularly males - with the same belief in extreme modesty and male superiority. Laws are made of rules; they determine “how the [ideology of gender roles] was formulated, applied, and implemented” (Yahyaoui 38). To make gender roles a generally accepted Saudi Arabian ideology, the ideology must have been supported by laws both directly and indirectly. One form of direct control of women is religious police or vigilante; women aren’t allowed to socialize, act, or dress in a fashion that isn’t considered appropriate. To ensure that no woman is behaving outside of what the culture condones, Saudi Arabian males created police-like individuals or watchmen that supervise the streets to make sure that everyone is behaving, socializing, and dressing as their culture instructs them to do. Charges will apply if a woman doesn’t abide by Saudi Arabia’s common law. Women also cannot do anything without male advice or consent. They must have male escorts if they go out of their home, and they can only socialize with people of the same gender or nuclear family members of the opposite gender (Zuhur 219). If a female is having a bad day, or just feels the need to get out of their house they cannot even do that because, on top of all the restrictions imposed on women, they are not allowed to drive (Zuhur 219). Despite Saudi Arabia’s extreme restrictions on females, it seems as if women’s rights are beginning to be tended to. In the twenty-first century “workforce demographics have helped raise awareness in the Saudi Arabian gender gap and positive steps [have] been aimed at promoting women’s advancement within the labor market” (N.A. 2). Women are now encouraged to pursue an education with careers that Saudi Arabian culture perceives as feminine or appropriate for a woman to work instead of condoning women to stay at home and care for their families (N.A. 2). A career Saudi Arabians consider feminine is teaching and working in hospitals, and that is why we see “women’s roles are centered mainly in education and health,” (Mahdi 93); it is one of the few professions that pays well and is seen as appropriate for a woman to do so naturally women would center their lives around something that would be promising to invest time in. It is now easier for women to have access to universities and other institutions that further education than it was for women in the twentieth century. Such measures are effective because women used to only hold 5.4 of Saudi Arabia’s workforce and they presently hold 14.4 percent of Saudi Arabia’s entire workforce, 95 percent of which jobs are in the public sector, with 85 percent holding jobs that cannot be attained without education (N.A. 2) Education is slowly starting to help gender disparity to be addressed.
To conclude, females in Saudi Arabia are conditioned to rely on males and lack independence to not compromise male superiority; if women were as equally privileged as men that means one day they could have the potential to surpass males and thusly no longer contribute to the superior status males hold in Saudi Arabia.
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