Report: Saudi women’s lives dictated by male guardianship

FILE – In this Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015, file photo, a Saudi woman waits outside a polling center as she prepares to cast her ballot during the country’s municipal elections in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A new study by Human Rights Watch says Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system is the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the kingdom. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia’s guardianship system, which bars women from traveling abroad, obtaining a passport, marrying or exiting prison without the consent of a male relative, remains the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the kingdom, according to a report released Sunday by a leading human rights group.

The Human Rights Watch study takes on increasing significance as the kingdom works to implement its “Vision 2030” and “National Transformation Plan” to wean the country off its dependence on oil, including government targets to boost women’s participation in the workforce.

The report also comes just seven months after Saudi women were allowed the right to run and vote for the first time in the country’s only local elections, for municipal council seats.

The report finds that even with these greater opportunities, a woman’s life in Saudi Arabia rests largely on “the good will” of her male guardian — often a father, husband, brother, or in some cases her son.

A 25-year-old referred to as Zahra in the report says her father used to beat her so severely that at one point she temporarily lost her vision and had to be taken to a hospital. Though her parents divorced and she lived with her mother, her father remains her legal guardian. He refused to allow her to study abroad on scholarship and she cannot travel abroad for work without his permission.

HRW, which interviewed 61 Saudis inside and outside the kingdom over the past nine months, says it used pseudonyms for its interviewees for security reasons.

“Guardianship really creates a system that is ripe for abuse,” said the report’s author Kristine Beckerle, a fellow in HRW’s Mideast division.

The underpinning of Saudi Arabia’s legal system and social norms is an ultraconservative Islamic ideology widely known as Wahhabism. Powerful Wahhabi clerics in the kingdom support the imposition of male guardianship based on a verse in the Quran that states men are the protectors and maintainers of women.

Other Islamic scholars argue this misinterprets fundamental Quranic concepts like equality and respect between the sexes. Other Muslim-majority countries, even those with Shariah courts, do not have similarly restrictive male guardianship laws.

HRW says the Saudi system effectively renders adult women as legal minors. The report also cites the kingdom’s ban on women driving and an almost complete segregation of the sexes as further impediments.

Because of a variety of rules and informal restrictions, women in Saudi Arabia cannot make decisions for themselves “because they need to worry if their dad or father is going to agree.” This could include signing a lease, getting a job, traveling, studying or getting married, Beckerle said.

Some guardianship restrictions have been loosened over the past decade, with women granted the right to work without male permission.

Under the kingdom’s ambitious economic reform plans, women are encouraged to enter the workforce and companies are given incentives to boost female employment. However, penalties are not imposed on employers who refuse to hire women without the permission of male relatives. Some universities also require guardianship permission to enroll.

Other reforms have included granting Saudi women the right to obtain national identity cards without male permission. But in order to be granted an ID card, women must present a family card, which is issued to men. Recently, the government issued a directive allowing divorced and widowed women to obtain family cards, which grants them the ability to enroll their children in school, for example.

A law was passed in 2013 that criminalizes domestic abuse, and women can seek protection in shelters without the approval of a male guardian.

But women still cannot travel abroad with their children without the permission of the father, who remains the children’s legal guardian, and women cannot provide consent for their daughters to marry, or pass their nationality to their children, the report said.

Informally, both public and private hospitals sometimes require a male guardian to agree before performing procedures, such as a C-section. Though not strictly enforced, women who are granted scholarships to study abroad must be accompanied by a male guardian. Female inmates must be released to a male guardian, leaving many either lingering in jail or shelters.

“There have been reforms on the margins that have no doubt had an impact on women’s lives… but by and large they can’t really get around without a male helping them,” said Beckerle.

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