Women and Power in the Middle East

Women in Saudi Arabia: Between Breadwinner and Domestic Icon?

Women in Saudi Arabia Between Breadwinner and Domestic Icon? Eleanor Abdella Doumato In September 1998 an official decree was issued in Saudi Arabia that would bar women from riding in taxicabs unless accompanied by a male guardian or by another woman. In this kingdom where women are not allowed to drive cars, the ban was an unwelcome and humiliating decision that called women ’s character into question and, if implemented, would immobilize women who depend on public transportation.1 Remarkably , shortly after the ban was announced, rumors began to circulate that Saudi Arabia’s consultative assembly, the Shura Council, was discussing allowing women to drive cars, though only during daylight hours and with the permission of their male guardians. The rumors could only have been initiated at the highest levels of government because reports of these discussions were published repeatedly in the self-censored Saudi press, even while council members were denying that the subject had ever been taken up at council meetings.2 However incongruous these two initiatives—banning women from taxis and also allowing them to drive cars—they reflect a long-standing polarity in Saudi society and illustrate how the regime manages to address two widely disparate constituencies at the same time. After twenty-five years of aggressive development, with women graduating from universities and entering nearly every field of employment, women remain at the center of a decades-old national contest over culture and the role of the state as its guardian: are women to be considered fully adult with equal rights as citizens, or are they to be perpetual dependents of men and standard-bearers of culture, with their minor status encoded in laws of the state? Is society BETWEEN BREADWINNER AND DOMESTIC ICON? 167 frozen by a hard core of conservatism that will not yield to alternative voices, or will more liberal voices—buoyed by economic necessity—set the pace and turn the rest of society around? What is clear is that developmental changes affecting women have been occurring all along, even as conservatives hold the discursive high ground and continually attempt to control women through decree or fatwa. Between the two sides is the state, cautiously putting its political weight behind both, but with never enough conviction to satisfy either. The State as Guardian: Saudi Arabia’s Political Culture There is virtually no way to voice an opinion publicly about culture or society in Saudi Arabia, if one wishes to be heard, except with reference to Islam. In the political culture of the kingdom, Islam is at once national identity, religious faith, and mode of governance. The burden placed on Islam to be all things to all people is cultivated by Saudi Arabia’s rulers, who legitimize their rule over the kingdom by claiming to be committed to a seemingly fixed concept of ‘‘Islamic government,’’ with the Qur¡an as constitution. How they define Islamic government and the Islamic society they control can be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. However, when it comes to women, any change begins from a uniquely conservative starting-point because of the historical combination of tribal culture and literalist Wahhabi Islam adopted by the ruling family and propagated throughout the peninsula. The modernization of Saudi Arabia did not loosen the social controls women experienced in the past. Instead, as the influence of the state expanded , restrictions that once operated on the level of cultural understandings become institutionalized as rules enforceable by state agencies. At one time, for example, a woman didn’t go outside her neighborhood without a male guardian, her mahram, but the introduction of the airplane turned a local custom into a bureaucratic procedure at airports, with women having to produce written permission from their closest male relative to travel. Based on the same moral premise, the opportunity for women to study abroad brought a rule that government scholarships would go only to women who had a male guardian to accompany them. Similarly, since townswomen customarily kept themselves separated from unrelated men, the opportunity to work in an office situation brought rules preventing women from working in a sex-integrated environment, and the introduction of restaurants brought rules designating separate ‘‘family’’ sections for women, and sometimes 168 ELEANOR ABDELLA DOUMATO rules preventing them from eating in restaurants at all. When public education was introduced in 1961, the rule was that education was to be sexsegregated at all levels...