Gender roles in Saudi society come from local culture and interpretations of
Sharia law, or the divine will. Scholars of the
Quran and
hadith (sayings and accounts of Muhammad's life) derive its interpretations. In Saudi culture, the Sharia is interpreted according to a strict
Sunni Islam form known as the way of the Salaf (righteous predecessors) or Wahhabism. The law is mostly unwritten, leaving judges with significant discretionary power, which they usually exercise in favor of tribal traditions. Activists such as
Wajeha al-Huwaider compared the condition of Saudi women in 2007 to slavery. Varying interpretations have led to controversy. For example, Sheikh Ahmed Qassim Al-Ghamdi, chief of the
Mecca region's
Islamic religious police, the
Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, also known as the
mutaween, has said that Sharia does not prohibit
(gender mixing). Meanwhile,
Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, another prominent cleric, issued a
fatwa stating that proponents of should be killed. According to the
Library of Congress, customs of the Arabian peninsula also affect women's places in Saudi society. The peninsula is the ancestral home of
patriarchal, nomadic tribes, in which separation of women and men, and
namus (honour), are considered central. According to one female journalist, "If the Qu'ran does not address the subject, then the clerics will err on the side of caution and make it
haram [forbidden]. The driving ban for women is the best example." Saudis often invoke the life of
Muhammad to prove that Islam allows for strong women. His first wife,
Khadijah, was a powerful businesswoman who employed him and proposed marriage on her own. His wife
Aisha commanded an army at the
Battle of Bassorah and is the source of many hadiths. The level of enforcement of various rules can vary by region:
Jeddah is relatively permissive, while
Riyadh and the surrounding
Najd region, origin of the
House of Saud, have stricter traditions. The 1979
Iranian Revolution and subsequent Grand Mosque Seizure in Saudi Arabia caused the government to implement stricter enforcement of Sharia. Saudi women who were adults before 1979 recall driving, inviting unrelated men into their homes (with the door open), and being in public without an
abaya or niqab. 1979 was also a pivotal year for the emergence of women's roles in Saudi
music,
art, and
culture. The subsequent
September 11th attacks against the
World Trade Center in 2001, on the other hand, are often viewed as precipitating cultural change away from strict fundamentalism.
Public opinion According to
The Economist, a 2006 Saudi government poll found that 89% of Saudi women did not think women should drive, and 86% did not think women should work with men. However, this was directly contradicted by a 2007 Gallup poll, which found that 66% of Saudi women and 55% of Saudi men agreed that women should be allowed to drive. Moreover, that same poll found that more than 8 in 10 Saudi women (82%) and three-quarters of Saudi men (75%) agreed that women should be allowed to hold any job for which they are qualified. Abdel-Raheem conducted another poll of 8,402 Saudi women, which found that 90% of women supported the male guardianship system. Another poll conducted by Saudi students found that 86% of Saudi women do not want the driving ban to be lifted. Journalist Maha Akeel, a frequent critic of her government's restrictions on women, states that Western critics do not understand Saudi Arabia. "Look, we are not asking for... women's rights according to Western values or lifestyles... We want things according to what Islam says. Look at our history, our role models." According to former
Arab News managing editor
John R. Bradley, Western pressure for broadened rights is counterproductive, particularly pressure from the United States, given the "intense anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia after September 11."
Male guardianship Under previous Saudi law, all females were required to have a male guardian (), typically a father, brother, husband, or uncle (). In 2019, this law was partially amended to exclude women over 21 years old from the requirement of a male guardian. In 2019, Saudi Arabia allowed women to travel abroad, register for divorce or marriage, and apply for official documents without the permission of a male guardian. Male guardians have duties to, and rights over, women in many aspects of civic life. A United Nations Special Rapporteur document states:Legal guardianship of women by a male is practiced in varying degrees and encompasses major aspects of women's lives. The system is said to emanate from social conventions, including the importance of protecting women, and from religious precepts on travel and marriage, although these requirements were arguably confined to particular situations. In 2012, the Saudi government implemented a new policy to help enforce these traveling restrictions for women. Under it, Saudi Arabian men receive a text message on their mobile phones whenever a woman under their custody leaves the country, even if she is traveling with her guardian. Saudi Arabian feminist activist
Manal al-Sharif commented that "this is technology used to serve backwardness in order to keep women imprisoned." Every year more than 1,000 women try to flee Saudi Arabia. Text alerts sent by the Saudi authorities enable many guardians to catch them before they actually escape. Bethany Vierra, a 31-year-old American woman, became the latest victim of the "male guardianship" system, as she was trapped in Saudi Arabia with her 4-year-old daughter, Zaina, despite having received a divorce from her Saudi husband. Some examples of that further highlight the ramifications of these restrictions include: • In 2002, a
fire at a girls' school in Mecca killed fifteen girls. Complaints were made that Saudi Arabia's "religious police," specifically the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, prevented them from leaving the burning building and hindered rescue workers because the students were not wearing modest clothing and, possibly, because they lacked male escorts. • In August 2005, a court in the northern part of Saudi Arabia ordered the divorce of Fatima Mansour, a 34-year-old mother of two, from her husband, even though they were happily married and her father (deceased) had approved the marriage. The divorce was initiated by her half-brother using his powers as her male guardian. He alleged that his half-sister's husband was from a tribe of a low status compared to the status of her tribe, and that the husband had failed to disclose this when he first asked for Fatima's hand. If sent back to her brother's home, Fatima feared domestic violence. She spent four years in jail with her daughter before the Supreme Judicial Council overturned the decision. • In 2008, a married off his eight-year-old daughter to a 47-year-old man in order to have his debts forgiven. The man's wife sought an annulment to the eight-year-old girl's marriage, but the Saudi judge refused to grant it. • In a 2009 case, a father vetoed several of his daughter's attempts to marry outside their tribe, and sent her to a mental institution as punishment. • In July 2013, doctors at King Fahd Hospital in
Al Bahah postponed amputating a critically injured woman's hand because she had no male legal guardian to authorize the procedure. Her husband had died in the same car crash that injured her and her daughter. Guardianship requirements are not written law, but instead are applied according to the customs and understanding of particular officials and institutions (hospitals, police stations, banks, etc.). When women initiate official transactions and grievances, the transactions are often abandoned because officers, or the women themselves, believe they need guardian authorization. Officials may demand the presence of a guardian if a woman cannot show an ID card, or if she is fully covered. These conditions make complaints against the guardians themselves extremely difficult. Liberal activists reject guardianship and find it demeaning to women. They object to being treated like "subordinates" and "children". Saudi activist
Wajeha al-Huwaider agrees that most Saudi men are caring, but "it's the same kind of feeling they have for handicapped people or for animals. The kindness comes from pity, from lack of respect." Saudi
interlocutors told a UN investigator that international agreements carry little to no weight in Saudi courts. Swedish foreign minister
Margot Wallström said that Saudi Arabia "ought to be [there] to learn something about women". In May 2017, the King passed an order allowing women to obtain government services such as education and health care without the permission of a guardian. In August 2019, a royal decree was published in the Saudi official gazette
Umm al-Qura that would allow Saudi women over 21 to travel abroad without permission from a male guardian. Several other liberalizing measures were also included in the decree; however, it is unclear whether these measures have officially come into force. On 16 August 2022, a female Saudi Arabian university student was sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting dissident and activists on
Twitter. On 31 August 2022, a viral online footage from an
orphanage in
Khamis Mushait showed
Saudi security forces, including some wearing civilian clothes, chasing and attacking women with tasers, belts, and sticks. The footage sparked a national and global outcry, prompting the
Saudi Public Prosecution to open an investigation into the incident. Research by the
European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights has found that protests at similar facilities have led to harsh prison sentences for those involved.
Absher app The Saudi government's smartphone application
Absher allows men to control whether women under their guardianship travel outside the kingdom. It also sends alerts to the man if a woman under his guardianship uses her passport at the border. In 2019,
Absher came under global criticism. Many international communities and human rights organizations demanded its removal from
Google and
Apple web stores. Some critics include US Rep.
Katherine Clark and Rep.
Carolyn Maloney, who called the app a "patriarchal weapon". US Senator
Ron Wyden demanded the app's immediate removal. He called the Kingdom's control over women "abhorrent." Apple and Google agreed to investigate the app. However, following a thorough investigation, Google refused to remove the app from its
web store, citing that the app does not violate the company's terms and conditions.
Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch accused Apple and Google of helping "enforce gender apartheid" by hosting the app. Some Saudi women say that the Absher app has made their lives easier as everything can be processed online, allowing, for instance, travel approval from a guardian in another city. Human rights critics see the app as a way of normalizing patriarchal control and tracking women's movements. ====== Male guardianship is closely related to (or Honor codes of the Bedouin| in a
Bedouin context), roughly translated as "honor." It also carries connotations of modesty and respectability. The of a male includes the protection of the females in his family. He provides for them, and in turn, the women's honor (sometimes called ) reflects on him. is a common feature of many different patriarchal societies. Since the of a male guardian is affected by that of the women under his care, he is expected to control their behavior. If their honor is lost, especially in the eyes of the community, he has lost control of them. Threats to chastity, in particular, are threats to the of the male guardian. can be associated with
honor killing. In 2007, a young woman was murdered by her father for chatting with a man on
Facebook. The case attracted widespread media attention. Conservatives called for the government to ban Facebook, on the basis that it incites lust and encourages gender mingling.
Hijab and dress code in Riyadh The hijab arises from the traditional Islamic norm whereby women are expected "to draw their outer garments around them (when they go out or are among men)" and dress in a modest manner. Previously, the
Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, sometimes known as the religious police, has been known to patrol public places with volunteers focused on enforcing strict rules of
hijab. With the
2016 reforms of
Mohammed bin Salman, the power of the CPVPV was drastically reduced, and it was banned "from pursuing, questioning, asking for identification, arresting and detaining anyone suspected of a crime." Among non-mahram men, women must cover the parts of the body that are considered
intimate parts (). In much of Islam, a woman's face is not considered ; however, in Saudi Arabia, and some other Arab states, all of the body is considered except for the hands and eyes. Accordingly, most women are expected to wear the head-covering called the hijab, a full black cloak called an , and a face-veil called
niqab. Many historians and Islamic scholars hold that the custom, if not requirement, of the veil predates Islam in parts of the region. They argue that the Quran was interpreted to require the veil as part of adapting it to tribal traditions. Historically, the awrah for a slave woman during the
era of slavery in the Muslim world, who per Islamic law was
a non-Muslim, was different than that of the awrah of a free Muslim woman. The awrah of a female slave was defined as being between her navel and her knee, and consequently she did not have to wear a hijab. The strictness of the dress code varies by region. In Jeddah, for example, many women go out with their faces and hair uncovered. Riyadh is more conservative by comparison. Some shops sell designer that have elements such as flared sleeves or a tighter form. Fashionable come in colors other than black and may be decorated with patterns and glitter. According to one designer, are "no longer just . Today, they reflect a woman's taste and personality." Although the dress code is often regarded in the West as a highly visible symbol of oppression, Saudi women place the dress code low on the list of priorities for reform, and some leave it off entirely. Journalist Sabria Jawhar complains in
The Huffington Post that Western readers of her blog are obsessed with her veil. She calls the niqab "trivial": She was reporting as a news anchor from London for the
Al Ekhbariya channel. A few months earlier, a Saudi woman was detained for a short while after she appeared in public without a hijab. Although she did not wear a crop top or short skirt like the previous case, she was still arrested. As of late 2019, hijab and abaya are no longer required for women in public. == Mobility ==