Significant role of Saudi women

The role of women in Saudi society has always been significant. But historically their contribution has been confined mostly to the home. That low profile has however changed as the Kingdom has changed.
Women are now active in a great range of jobs, from teachers to doctors, from shop assistants to bankers, from pilots to engineers. There are also some highly successful businesswomen. And of course there is the Shoura Council. Thirty of the 150 members of this important consultative body are female. Not many parliaments elsewhere in the world have this proportion of women. Far from being confined to women’s affairs, they have been active in advising on all matters that have come before them. Moreover, male Shoura members have welcomed their contribution to debates and suggestions.
Yet curiously, there are those outside the Kingdom who choose to characterize Saudi women as oppressed. Through ignorance or malice they are demanding changes to female status that were actually made long ago. Call it “empowerment” or “emancipation”; it doesn’t matter which. Saudi society has always appreciated the crucial role of women. They are already empowered. Their part in the country’s life is established. As more well-educated young women graduate from the likes of Riyadh’s all-female Princess Nora bint Abdulrahman University, there will be an ever greater supply of female professionals and entrepreneurs. These are realities that ought not to be ignored.
It is curious that all around the world, there are “Women’s Lib” movements that are bitterly critical of their own societies. They have proved to be powerful lobbyists. Some governments are compelling state and private sector organizations to hire a fixed proportion of women. In Europe there is an official push to have women holding at least 40 percent of the directorships in a company boardroom.
Strident and avowedly feminist, women’s lib groups often appear to be motivated by an active dislike or, even contempt, for men. Their demands for empowerment and equality, often sound as if they actually wish to dominate in society. Yet ironically in the UK, Margaret Thatcher became a hate figure for left-wing feminists because of her right-wing politics. She also dismissed feminism as an absurd digression. She rightly pointed out that she had attained British leadership on her merits, not because she was a woman.
And therein lies a great truth. Societies that give precedence to any group, purely on the basis of that group’s identity, face a great danger. They are ignoring the issues of qualification and competence.
Here in the Kingdom, there are no quotas for females in the boardroom and in the workplace and actually they don’t need to be. The role of women is respected and secure here. It is part of our religious and traditional values. The misfortune is that the outside world cannot, or perhaps, will not accept the conservative values that sit at the heart of Saudi society.
This refusal is doubly wrong. For a start it belittles the conduct of a society that is based on deeply-held Muslim teachings and traditional principles. Just as importantly, when this refusal is turned into governmental condemnation, it becomes an unjustifiable interference in the affairs of another sovereign state.
Earlier this month Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom attacked the Kingdom’s human rights record. The bluntness of her words caused the government to withdraw our ambassador from Stockholm. The cogent point has been made that it is actually the Swedes that have human rights issues. Their treatment of their Roma minority has been deplorable. Meanwhile, the authorities appear helpless in the face of a disturbing growth in Islamophobia. The archetypal Western liberal society, it seems, is not so liberal after all. Yet we have pursued our policy of refraining from interfering in the affairs of other states. The Kingdom has made no comment on Sweden’s internal affairs.
It is inevitable that people will suspect that there is some wider anti-Saudi agenda at work here. Those critics who choose to focus on the role of women in Saudi society are miscalculating. They are ignoring religious and cultural differences. They could be doing this deliberately. Or they themselves be motivated by Islamophobia. Either way, they are wide of the mark. Their assertions are claptrap.
Saudi women will continue to enjoy a respected and crucial role in all walks of life in the Kingdom. The evidence that Saudi women are very far from “oppressed” is there for the seeing, if outsiders really want to look.