Six things women in Saudi Arabia still can’t do

Jun 5, 2018

First licences issued for female drivers, but women still face severe restrictions every day

Hassan Ammar/AFP/Getty Images

Saudi Arabia has started issuing driving licences to women ahead of the repeal of its ban on female drivers.

In all, ten Saudi licences were issued on Monday, all of them to women who have already obtained a driving licence abroad.

The ten women “took a brief driving test and eye exam before being issued the licences at the General Department of Traffic in the capital, Riyadh”, Time reports.

Another 2,000 women are set to join them in the days to come after passing driving courses now offered at all-female university campuses.

However, Saudi Arabia’s newly minted female drivers still face a wait to actually get on the road.

The decades-long edict banning women from driving - the last law of its kind in the world - will be overturned on 24 June.

The move, forcefully resisted by the kingdom’s conservative religious authorities, “is part of a much-publicised liberalisation drive launched by powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he seeks to modernise the petro-state”, says The Daily Telegraph.

Other reforms brought in by Bin Salman include the re-opening of public cinemas for the first time since the 1980s, the lifting of a ban on music concerts and plans to allow women into sports stadiums.

However, women in Saudi Arabia are still subject to a myriad of restrictions on everyday life:

Make major decisions without male permission

With the driving ban victory still fresh, Saudi women’s rights activists are eyeing up the next hurdle – dismantling the kingdom’s guardianship system, which Human Rights Watch has called “the most significant impediment to realising women’s rights in the country”. All women in the kingdom are considered to have a male “wali” – an official guardian, typically a father, brother, uncle or husband.

Although guardianship is not enshrined in written law, government officials, courts, businesses and individual Saudis generally act in accordance with it, meaning that, in practice, women need their guardian’s consent for any major activity, including travel, obtaining a passport, getting married or divorced and signing contracts.

The system makes it “nearly impossible” for victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse to obtain legal redress because the police often insist that women and girls obtain their guardian's authorisation to file a complaint - even when the complaint is against the guardian, political scientist Elham Manea writes for Deutsche Welle.

In May 2017, activists won a small but significant victory when King Salman issued an order specifying that women did not need permission from their male guardian for some activities, including entering university, taking a job and undergoing surgery.

Women’s rights groups in the country are now lobbying for the end of guardianship in Saudi society, often using the social media hashtag “#IAmMyOwnGuardian”.

Wear clothes or make-up that ”show off their beauty“

The dress code for women is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law and is enforced to varying degrees across the country. The majority of women wear an abaya – a long cloak – and a head scarf. The face does not necessarily need to be covered, “much to the chagrin of some hardliners”, says The Economist. But this does not stop the religious police from harassing women for exposing what they consider to be too much flesh or wearing too much make-up.

Last year, a prominent cleric called for even more modesty, urging the nation’s “daughters” to avoid “any abaya that has any decorations… No embellishment, no slits, no openings”.

Two weeks later, a video circulated on social media showing an anonymous Saudi woman walking around a deserted fort north of Riyadh wearing a miniskirt, in seeming defiance of such strict regulations on women’s clothing.

The six-second clip sparked a heated debate in the country, with conservatives demanding her arrest pitted against reformers applauding her bravery. The woman was summoned for questioning by police, but later released without charge.

Interact with men

Women are required to limit the amount of time spent with men to whom they are not related. The majority of public buildings, including offices, banks and universities, have separate entrances for the different sexes, the Daily Telegraph reports. Public transportation, parks, beaches and amusement parks are also segregated in most parts of the country. Unlawful mixing will lead to criminal charges being brought against both parties, but women typically face harsher punishment.

Go for a swim in public

Women are not allowed to use public swimming pools available to men and can swim only in private ones or female-only gyms and spas. Reuters editor Arlene Getz describes her experience of trying to use the gym and pool at an upmarket Riyadh hotel: “As a woman, I wasn’t even allowed to look at them (‘there are men in swimsuits there,’ a hotel staffer told me with horror) – let alone use them.”

But even that is expected to change in the coming years, under the Crown Prince’s push to make Saudi Arabia more attractive to foreign visitors and investors. Part of his economic plan involves the development of tourist resorts along the Red Sea coast, says The Atlantic. “The facilities will be built to ‘international standards’, a term widely interpreted as allowing not only gender-mixed bathing, but also bikinis and probably alcohol,” the website adds.

Compete freely in sports

In 2015, Saudi Arabia proposed hosting an Olympic Games without women. “Our society can be very conservative,” said Prince Fahad bin Jalawi al-Saud, a consultant to the Saudi Olympic Committee. “It has a hard time accepting that women can compete in sports.”

When Saudi Arabia sent female athletes to the Olympics for the first time, at London 2012, hardline clerics denounced the two competitors as “prostitutes”. The women also had to be accompanied by a male guardian and cover their hair.

However, in September 2017, Saudi Arabia’s national stadium welcomed its first ever female spectators. Women were assigned their own section in the normally male-only venue to watch celebrations marking the anniversary of the founding of Saudi Arabia.

Try on clothes when shopping

“The mere thought of a disrobed woman behind a dressing-room door is apparently too much for men to handle,” says Vanity Fair writer Maureen Dowd in A Girl’s Guide to Saudi Arabia.

Other more unusual restrictions on women’s lives include entering a cemetery and reading an uncensored fashion magazine.

However, adds Dowd, everything in Saudi Arabia “operates on a sliding scale, depending on who you are, whom you know, whom you ask, whom you’re with, and where you are”.

But things are slowly beginning to modernise. “Saudi Arabia is the world’s most gender-segregated nation, but amid changes now under way, multiple generations of women are debating how to be truly modern and truly Saudi,” says National Geographic.

A transformation is indeed under way, confirms royal adviser Hanan Al-Ahmadi, “but we need to be able to create this change gradually and maintain our identity”.