womens rights in saudi arabia

Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia
(Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)

Presented by:

Chavez, Jackie Lou P.
Dela Cruz, Rhem
Bem

SOCS001 - N3

OFFICIAL FLAG

“There is no god but God: Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

ECONOMY


Has an oil-based economy with strong
government control over major economic
activities

Possesses 18% of the world's proven
petroleum reserves

Ranks as the largest exporter of petroleum

Plays a leading role in OPEC(Organization
of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)

CLOTHING - WOMEN

 Women customarily wear
a black outer cloak
(abaya) over their dress
 On their heads, Saudi
women traditionally wear
a shayla – a black,
gauzy scarf that is
wrapped around the
head and secured with
circlets, hats or jewelry
 Jewelry symbolizes
social and economic
status [3]

EDUCATION


Education is free at all levels.

School system: elementary, intermediate,
and secondary(college) schools

Secondary School
− either a religious or a technical track

Girls are able to attend school, but fewer
girls attend than boys.

GOVERNMENT


Islamic state - based on principles
prescribed by the Qur'an (Islam's Holy
Book) and the Shari'ah (Islamic law);
Provincial Council System, Consultative
Council (Majlis Al-Shura), and Council of
Ministers.

The primary source of law is the Islamic
Sharia derived from the teachings of the
Qu'ran and the Sunnah (the traditions of
the Prophet).

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

Rights that promote a position of legal and
social equality of women with men.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN SAUDI ARABIA?

Male Guardian:
- Women and girls generally are forbidden to leave home,
travel outside the country, work, study, marry, file a court
case or seek medical care without being accompanied by
or receiving the written consent of a male guardian, such
as a husband, father, brother or son.
- Women are forbidden from opening bank accounts for their
children, enrolling them in school or traveling with them
without written permission from their father.


Employment:
- Girls are taught that their primary role is to raise children
and take care of the household.
- The kafala (sponsorship) system ties migrant workers'
residency permits to their “sponsoring” employers,
whose written consent is required for workers to change
employers or exit the country. Employers abuse this
power to confiscate passports, withhold wages, and
force migrants to work against their will.


Dress Code:
- Women must cover the parts of the body that are awrah
(not meant to be exposed)
- Purdah is a curtain which makes sharp separation
between the world of man and that of a woman, between
the community as a whole and the family which is its
heart, between the street and the home, the public and
the private, just as it sharply separates society and the
individual.


Sex Segregation:
− Non-mahram women and men must minimize
social interaction.
− A strict separation of men and women in all
public places, which reduces women’s
employment opportunities and access to some
government agencies.
− "gender apartheid"


Education:
− Saudi public universities exclude women
and girls from some academic
disciplines, such as political science,
engineering and architecture, and some
admit no women at all
− Saudi girls are banned from physical
education classes in state schools and
from public sports facilities.
− Male teachers are not permitted to teach
or work at girls' schools and women are
not allowed to teach male children.


Mobility:
− They are not supposed to leave their houses or
their local neighbourhood without the
permission of their male guardian, and
company of a mahram (close male relative).
− Women are not allowed to drive although it is
often tolerated in rural areas.
− Women are generally discouraged from using
public transport.


Political life:
− Women can now be appointed to the
Consultative Assembly.
− Women would be allowed to vote and run for
office in the 2015 municipal elections.
− Women are allowed to hold positions on
boards of chambers of commerce.


Thurata al-Arrated -
one of the new
female council
members (2012)



Identity cards:
− The only requirement needed to allow women
to enter hotels are their national identification
cards, and the hotel must inform the nearest
police station of their room reservation and
length of stay, which is the law there for men
too.
− A new, optional ID card for women was issued
which allows them to travel in countries of the
Gulf Cooperation Council. It include GPS
tracking, fingerprints and features that make
them difficult to forge.



Marriage:
− Polygyny is legal in Saudi Arabia; Saudi men
may take as many as four wives, provided that
they can support all wives equally. Polyandry is
forbidden.
− Women cannot marry non-Muslim men unless
they obtain official permission.
− The country’s religious authority banned the
practice of forced marriage.



Parental authority:
− Legally, children belong to their father who has
sole guardianship.
− If a divorce takes place, women may be
granted custody of their young children until
they reach the age of seven. Older children are
often awarded to the father or the paternal
grandparents.
− Women cannot confer citizenship to children
born to a non-Saudi Arabian father.



Inheritance issues:
− The inheritance share of women in Saudi is
generally smaller than that to which men are
entitled.
− The Qu'ran states that daughters should inherit
half as much as sons.[Quran 4:11] In rural
areas, some women are also deprived of their
entitled share as they are considered to be
dependents of their fathers or husbands.
− Marrying outside the tribe is also grounds for
limiting women's inheritance.



Sexual violence and trafficking:
− Under Sharia law, generally enforced by the
government, the courts will punish a rapist with
anything from flogging to execution.
− As there is no penal code in Saudi Arabia,
there is no written law which specifically
criminalizes rape or prescribes its punishment.
− The rape victim is often punished as well, if she
had first entered the rapist's company in
violation of purdah. There is no prohibition
against spousal or statutory rape.
− Most rape cases are unreported, because
victims fear namus, reduced marriage
prospects, accusations of adultery, or
imprisonment.

PUNISHMENTS


Whip lashing (latigo) - varies according to the
discretion of judges, and ranges from dozens of
lashes to several hundreds

Imprisonment

Fines / Blood money

Torture / Execution

Amputation of hands and feet for robbery

Flogging for lesser crimes such as "sexual
deviance" and drunkenness

CASE 1.

Unconfirmed reports that a Saudi Arabian man who brutally murdered his
five-year old daughter would be released after paying “blood money” to the
girl’s mother have sparked intense debate and condemnation. The victim
suffered horrific injuries, including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs,
a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. The father, a self-
styled “cleric,” has claimed that he was motivated by the child’s
“inappropriate” behavior and his suspicions about whether her
virginity was still intact. Reports of the case coincided with a heavily
lampooned call by a Saudi cleric for babies to be dressed in burkas as a
prophylactic measure to protect them from sexual crimes.
While it appears that a final ruling is yet to be issued in the murder case, the
debate does highlight—rather graphically—some of the most glaring
obstacles faced by women in accessing justice in an embedded patriarchy.
To wit, the girl’s mother flatly denies that the child was raped, labeling the
very charge of rape as an “assault” on her daughter’s honor. However, the
medical examiner in the case has confirmed that the “offender committed all
sorts of physical abuse on the victim” and that she exhibited clear evidence
of sexual abuse and rape, including “swelling in the region of the genitals
and laceration in her anal area.”
Source: http://hlpronline.com/2013/02/womens-rights-in-saudi-arabia-under-
scrutiny-again/

CASE 2.

On May 22, Saudi authorities arrested Manal al-Sharif after she defied the
kingdom’s de facto ban on women driving. Al-Sharif appeared in a video
showing herself behind the wheel. Prosecutors charged her with
“tarnishing the kingdom’s reputation abroad” and “stirring up public
opinion,” according to Saudi press reports. On May 30, Khobar police
released al-Sharif from prison after she appealed to King Abdullah.
On June 17 around 40 women with international drivers’ licenses participated in
a “women2drive” campaign. No law bars women from driving, but senior
government clerics have ruled against the practice. Saudi Arabia is the only
country in the world to prohibit women from driving.
Source: http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-saudi-arabia

CASE 3.

Rizana Nafeek arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2005 and spent her first few weeks
in Saudi Arabia working as a housemaid to earn money to support her
relatives back home who had been displaced by the massive tsunami in the
Indian Ocean the year before.
She then spent the next seven years in Saudi jails as she was accused,
charged, convicted and sentenced to death (beheaded with a sword) in the
killing of her employers' 4-month-old son.

In cases where the death penalty is possible, "defendants are rarely allowed
formal representation by a lawyer and in many cases are kept in the dark
about the progress of legal proceedings against them," Amnesty
International says.

They argued that the courts had failed to take into account Nafeek's
birth certificate, which showed she was only 17 at the time of the
baby's death in 2005, making her too young to receive the death
penalty under international law.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/10/world/meast/saudi-arabia-sri-lankan-
maid

CASE 4.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to
40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the
kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local
media reports.

Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had
breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in
Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was
escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman
then arrested both men.

Al Watan obtained the court's verdict and reported it was partly based on the
testimony of the religious police. In his ruling, the judge said it was proved
that Fahd is not Sawadi's son through breastfeeding.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam called Wahhabism and
punishes unrelated men and women who are caught mingling.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/09/saudi.arabia.lashes/

CASE 5.

The "Qatif Girl" Rape Case (Arabic: ‫ )قضية اغتصاب فتاة القطيف‬is a much-
publicized gang-rape case. The victim was a teenage girl from Qatif
(Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia), who, along with her male companion, was
kidnapped and gang-raped by seven Saudi men in mid-2006. A Saudi
Sharia court sentenced the perpetrators to varying sentences involving 80 to
1,000 lashes and imprisonment up to ten years for four of them. The court
also sentenced the two victims to six months in prison and 90 lashes
each for "being alone with a man who is not a relative" in a parked car.
The appeals court doubled the victims' sentences in late 2007 as
punishment for the heavy media coverage of the event in the
international press regarding the treatment of women in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and Saudi judicial practices. In December 2007 the
Saudi King Abdullah issued an official pardon for the two victims, citing his
ultimate authority to revise "discretionary" punishments in accordance with
the public good, although the pardon did not reflect any lack of confidence in
the Saudi justice system or in the fairness of the verdicts.
Source: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/11/girl-from-qatif-rape-
victim.html

CASE 6.

A Filipino woman in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be lashed 100 times
by the government as punishment for being raped by a Bangladeshi
coworker in August. To add to the tragedy, the Filipino has been held in
prison since September 2009. In December 2009, the woman — known only
as “Camille” — miscarried. Now, she is facing a medieval crime — all
because she was raped.

In Saudi Arabia, all sex outside of marriage — including rape and sexual
assault — can result in prison and lashings under their extreme interpetation
of Sharia.
Source: http://trueslant.com/nealungerleider/2010/01/21/saudi-arabia-to-lash-
filipino-rape-victim-100-times/

REFERENCES:

[1] Owen, Richard (17 March 2008). "Saudi
Arabia extends hand of friendship to
Pope". The Times (London). Retrieved 27
July 2011.
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia#
cite_note-Times-200
[3]http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/

womens rights in saudi arabia

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