Introduction
Among the world’s religions, Islam is the second-largest, with many Muslims worldwide approaching the two billion mark. The growing number of adherents to Islam naturally raises questions related to gender justice. The traditional notion in Western thought that women in Islam are oppressed by patriarchal society may be mistaken when one looks deeply into countries’ agendas that practice this Abrahamic religion. In fact, all Muslim countries are bound by the fact that they use sharia as a legal value system to one degree or another. However, while for Malaysia, Iran, and Pakistan, the Shariah is only a supplement to the country’s constitutional laws, in Saudi Arabia, the Shariah has legal supremacy.
Since Saudi Arabia lives by the rules of patriarchal sharia, it is interesting to trace the changing role of women in the country. Sharia has traditionally oppressed women’s political and civil rights, suppressing their will and potential with male restrictions. Nevertheless, in a rapidly changing world, sharia may not be as strict as it once was: globalization processes are forcing countries to follow the path of recognizing women’s rights. As a result, Saudi Arabia may be experiencing a qualitative change in the role of women in light of modernizing sharia. Therefore, the central aim of the current dissertation is to conduct an in-depth and critical study of the social and economic role of women in Saudi Arabia and make a meta-comparison with five countries that also practice sharia with varying degrees of women’s freedoms.
Abbreviations
- UAE is United Arab Emirates
- KSA is Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- WHO is World Health Organization.
Methodology
This dissertation work was qualitative in nature, as it sought to cross-sectionally examine the status of women’s roles in Saudi society, especially in light of Sharia law. Fundamental research interest was to determine the dynamics of changes in the perceived role and whether women in Saudi Arabia are well-off and self-sufficient. This study required a retrospective approach since changes in this country frequently occur due to the young age of the Saudi Arabian state. Among the academic strategies chosen was searching for relevant articles using digital databases, including Google Scholar, Web of Science, Google Books, and Research Gate. In addition, social media platforms, Web blogs, and news feeds were chosen to review non-scientific publications, which often reflect data not yet shown in academic sources.
Scientific publications were searched by keywords and keyword combinations to ensure the best output quality and relevance to the topics of interest. In particular, queries such as “Saudi Arabia,” “women’s rights in Saudi Arabia,” “sharia,” “gender equality in KSA,” and “women and sharia” were used, but these are just some examples of the keys used. Inclusion criteria were applied to select articles based on the language of writing (English only), thematic relevance, and year of publication: most of the papers used were not published before 2017, and only a few were published within a decade.
The ethical basis of the present methodology was based on the principles of academic honesty and open-mindedness. In the current dissertation, a critical approach is widely represented, in which the same statements are not taken directly but are examined through the prisms of other authors. In addition, the work is in no way plagiarized, and all borrowed thoughts, quotations, and ideas have been cited correctly in both the text and the references list. Any materials have been obtained by official means using academic access, which means that no problems related to unauthorized access to published articles are fair concerning this dissertation. The paper’s author assures no conflicts of interest have been presented, and no bias has been present concerning the research topic under discussion.
Context
One of the world’s religions with many adherents and long history is Islam. Islam is the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions, but in the context of universal history, it is an extension of the traditional teachings of the prophets. According to data, there are over 1.94 million Muslims in the world today, which is about a quarter of the world’s population (Schleifer, 2021). Consequently, on average, one in four people is a Muslim, making Islam the second-largest religion after Christianity. For Muslims, the beginning of Islam as a distinct religion begins with the Prophet Muhammad, who began preaching Islam in Mecca in the 600s. When viewed critically, this means that Muslimism is a continuation of Christian and Hindu teachings, and therefore the exact historical figures — though in a distorted context — can be found in the holy books of all scriptures. The history of Saudi Arabia as a state is closely linked to the development and spread of Islam, although it should be clarified that the official date of the country’s foundation is 1932 when King Aziz reclaimed the Hashemite lands and unified them under a single authority (MOFA, 2017). However, the KSA territories were long inhabited by Jewish settlements, and it was not until the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad, who settled in Medina, that the ethnoreligious composition of the region began to change.
During his lifetime, Muhammad preached Islam, urging the local Jews to embrace the new Abrahamic religion, but the Jews were not ready to learn the new faith, reflected in the historically hostile context between the two faiths. It was not until the seventh century, under the leadership of the caliphs, that local Muslims were able to fully recapture the Arabian Peninsula, which was the beginning of the establishment of the Arab Caliphate. Academic historians often refer to these years as the “golden age of Islam,” as it was then that Arab science flourished vigorously, and the economic and cultural achievements of the Muslim community under the leadership of various caliphs were observed (Simonton, 2018). During this same period, a law came into effect that prohibited all non-Muslims from living within the Arab Caliphate, contributing to the persecution and genocide of Jews (Webman, 2017). Freedom and independence were not extended features of the newly formed state; however, as already in the late 16th century, the Arabian Peninsula was taken under the control of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
The unofficial reason for the formation of Saudi Arabia as a kingdom is commonly referred to as the development of opposition views and the desire to ensure the independence of Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula, coming from Mohammed ibn Saud and Salafist Mohammed Abdel-Wahhab. However, both the first and second attempts to win political sovereignty failed, and it was not until the third time that Riyadh was recaptured under the leadership of the young commander Abdul-Aziz (Philby, 2021). The spread of the Saudi Kingdom proceeded in parallel with the extermination of enemies represented by the Rashid dynasty, the capture of Mecca, and the final formation of the KSA in 1932 (MOFA, 2017). For a fair historical analysis, it would be a mistake to dwell on this stage, since six years after the founding of the Kingdom, in 1938, oil was found in Saudi Arabia. This discovery was a turning point in the country’s history, as oil deposits became the foundation for the country’s economy. Since then, six sons of Abdul-Aziz have ruled the country, and since 2015, power has passed to his son Salman, the seventh KSA king. During this time, critical socioeconomic changes were taking place in the country, including the formation of Vision 2030.
Overview of Islam
Spirituality remains an integral part of the daily routine of the inhabitants of Saudi Arabia. Committed to the strict pillars of Islam, traditional believers find themselves committed to the religion’s five obligations, which include praying five times a day, proclaiming faith, giving alms, fasting strictly during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca (Islam Explored, 2018). Every Muslim’s life comes under the control of these pillars, and any deviation from them is a religious sin for which sanctions from the mosque and society are intended. However, the degree of severity and cruelty of such sanctions depends directly on the religious sophistication of society and the state of socioeconomic welfare policy in the country. For example, in one of the most violent countries, voluntary deviation from Quranic principles is punishable by public beatings or even the death penalty, encouraged by the state (Victor, 2021). Alternatively, in the center of world trade, the UAE, adherence to Islam is not such a stringent requirement, and an increasing number of people deviate from its principles, although the country continues to be Muslim. In this context, Saudi Arabia is a compromised center in which, on the one hand, the death penalty is publicly encouraged, but on the other, social policies protect the rights of vulnerable groups, something not described in the Quran. Moreover, it is common knowledge that the Qur’an forbids monarchy as a form of government, but a study of KSA’s political-legal horizons suggests that the country is monarchical, with power being passed down through the male bloodline.
The degree of need to be committed to the religion of Islam described above is fully postulated by Sharia law, which forms the religious conscience of Muslims. Sharia literally refers to the right way or course of action, but when considered within the framework of Islam, Sharia should be referred to as the set of precepts and beliefs that define the moral values of Islamists (Perfect, 2019). Defining morality, as well as designating what is unacceptable in Islam, forms the basis of sharia. It is important to emphasize that the origin of sharia is artificial – this code of rules was written and constantly refined by monarchs and their cronies throughout the 7th-10th centuries AD, during the Abbasid Caliphate (Khfaji, 2021). Since then, Islam as a religion has visibly spread throughout the world, which could not but cause ethnoreligious contradictions within. Since the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, one of the significant issues in the Arab Caliphate has been determining who would become the religious and political leader. Some of the faithful favored caliphs appointed by free male election, while others were ready to follow Ali ibn Abu Talib, Muhammad’s heir (Philby, 2021). At this point, one of the strongest divisions of Islam in history was initiated, resulting in the emergence of Sunnis and Shiites.
The difference between Sunnis and Shiites was due to the historical development of the two faiths and is much like how Christianity divided into Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Immediately after the death of the Prophet, the Shi’a believed that only a blood relative of the Prophet could inherit power. The motivation was transparent: only a person who had some of the divine blood in him could interpret the Koran correctly. If the Qur’an did not directly or indirectly answer the question of interest, then state theologians and monarchs had the right to use the Qur’an as a guide but to create their laws. On the contrary, the Sunnis disagreed, arguing that the Qur’an does not need to be interpreted, everything is explained in detail there already, and therefore any worthy person can carry the teachings. Statistically speaking, the modern agenda of Islam includes 87 percent Sunnis, and the remaining 13 percent is unevenly distributed among other groups in Islam, including Shiites (Amadeo, 2020). There is a political conflict between the two faiths over the right to political dominance in the territories of the Middle East and cultural sovereignty: the history of this conflict dates back to the split of Islam. It is noteworthy that although Shiism is more loyal in its recitation of the Koran, attitudes toward women in both directions are broadly the same. Thus, modern Shiites and Sunnis are hostile to each other, although they have many similarities.
The Context of Shariah in Saudi Arabia
Ethno-confessional differences dictated a unique reading of the Qur’an, which entailed the emergence of new forms of sharia. This was the reason for the emergence of Islamic states with varying degrees of cruelty or peacefulness since patriarchal sharia literally varies from country to country. Regarding KSA, it must be said that the majority of Muslims in the country are Sunni; meanwhile, the royal dynasty in the country is descended from Sunni fundamentalists (Amadeo, 2020). The Sunni identity of Saudi Muslims determines some brutality on the part of the ruling elite and the public toward vulnerable groups and women in particular. In other words, women’s social role is predetermined by Sharia law rather than by the country’s clearly defined jurisdiction.
The culture of Saudi Arabia throughout the centuries of its existence has been dictated primarily by the patriarchal foundations of Sharia law, which place men comparably above women. Even before the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a state, in pre-Islamic times, the Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by Bedouin nomadic tribes, whose patriarchal traditions naturally divided women and men, where remaining faithful to the man was considered the leading quality of a woman. In today’s agenda, the Western public is traditionally surprised by the social order of the KSA. This is not surprising: a society modeled on gender equality and competition cannot adequately perceive the fact that Arab communities are not characterized by justice to the extent that Western and European women perceive it. In turn, the perception of such differences tends to generate negative references to the religion of Islam, associating it with chauvinism and misogyny. Indeed, Saudi women’s social rights and freedoms are severely restricted compared to women from other communities, but before examining specific examples of such restrictions, it is necessary to identify the cultural context within which these restrictions do not seem phenomenal. In other words, it is necessary to determine why Saudi women tolerate such prohibitions.
First of all, it must be said that Islam is not a voluntary or non-state religion among the KSA, but rather that its practice is mandatory for all Muslims. There is a daily fivefold salah, which encourages residents of the entire state to offer prayers to Allah, as required by the Qur’an. The country does not have its own developed legislative system, but instead, there is the Shariah, which defines the legal rights of citizens on a spiritual and moral level. All of this together leads to the fact that for the locals, religion is not something surprising or unnatural, as it may seem to readers from secular societies. In this sense, it can be said that women there are no more unhappy or deprived since, for them, such restrictions are part of their daily routine. When a Western woman resents that a Saudi woman must cover her face, she fails to consider the context that, for an Arab woman, such a practice may be quite natural and not a cause for concern.
An attempt to explore this phenomenon of happiness for Saudi women in greater depth can be realized through a study of Quora platform users’ responses to the question of why Saudi women feel happy due to restrictions. The choice of this source is justified not by a desire for academic rigor but rather to explore patterns inherent in public directly familiar with the issue under study. Thus, Figure 1 below shows these patterns: Users responded that Saudi women do not feel unhappy, in part because they live in an environment where all women are equal. There is no apparent competition in civil rights because each of them has equal freedoms and rights. In addition, it is highlighted that such women, despite their limitations, enjoy the essential benefits the Qur’an has ordained for them; this includes the absolute protection of men. For example, Khfaji’s study indicates that “female slaves have gone beyond the free women and have reached advanced social, economic and political positions” (Khfaji, 2021, p. 558). In this context, the term “slaves” refers to women deprived of political and civil liberties but who have far more significant social advantages than women in Western communities.
However, there have also been academic studies of happiness among Saudi women. Figure 2 reflects that about three-fourths of all Saudi women feel happy and well domestically compared to two-thirds of men. This trend may be surprising because it contrasts with Western prejudice that Saudi women are slaves and hostages to sharia. The observed gap in women’s level of perceived happiness may be related to the fact that men in this country, too, do not have absolute freedom but are bound by social and political prohibitions of Shariah.
Among the fundamental prohibitions that are obvious to superficial observation is clothing. Women are required to wear long, loose abaya dresses, preferably black, and there are restrictions on men, including foreign tourists, to wear shorts. Any extramarital unions between partners are prohibited, as well as same-sex relationships — this is punishable either by public humiliation, prison, or in the case of relapses, even the death penalty. Adultery, theft, and the use and sale of drugs, including alcohol, were also prohibited in the KSA (Bostock, 2019). Even music was forbidden for all residents because it distracts the heart of a Muslim from his commitment to Allah. For women, until recently, there were restrictions on free movement around their city, communication with men other than relatives and husbands, and education. In addition, Saudi women are strictly forbidden — and it is even humiliating for them — to visit medical institutions without a man.
Prohibitions in Saudi Arabia
Among the prohibitions and restrictions that can cause the most resonance in Western society, it is worth highlighting the aspects related to abortion and rape. Voluntary abortion or abortion by desire is strictly forbidden by Sharia law, so a woman cannot perform the procedure herself. Figure 3 clarifies that neither rape, socioeconomic, nor incest can be sufficient justification for terminating a pregnancy. Instead, in Saudi Arabia, abortion is permitted only when the health or life of the patient requires it. However, performing an abortion requires stringent conditions and can be performed by a licensed health care provider after a ministerial committee approves. This includes prohibiting the sale of emergency contraceptives and pills that allow for medical abortion: this is punishable by jail time (Nabbout, 2018). This creates an essential vulnerability in terms of a woman’s rights and, eventually, affects the socioeconomic status and mental health of unwanted children.
For Saudi women, rape is an even more critical issue. Western practice traditionally associates rape with an act of physical, sexual, and psychological violence toward the victim, absolving any responsibility in the victim. This seems natural since, in rape, there is a guilty party, usually a man, who bears full responsibility for the act. This is not the case in Saudi Arabia, where public guilt and censure for rape is also attributed to the woman. If an unknown man rapes a woman, she is assumed to have provoked him by her appearance and behavior, which means she is ultimately to blame (Haddad, 2017). This phenomenon creates the problem of unwanted children because a rape victim, a woman, may not want to have a child but cannot have an abortion under Sharia law. Such women miscarry their children and drop them off at other families (Oppenheim, 2019). Admittedly, this practice naturally affects the well-being of the younger generation, which can be critical eventually.
The Cyclicality of Gender History
One must recognize that the history of attitudes toward women in the Kingdom has been cyclical: women have not always been vulnerable in terms of international civil law. During the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime, women seemed to enjoy greater rights and were generally socially more equal to men than they are now. In particular, the Prophet’s first wife, Khadija, was self-employed and, in addition, even took the initiative to propose to Muhammad. The second wife, Aisha, also carried serious military and political weight for the Arab Caliphate, and therefore was not perceived as merely complementary to her great husband. Muhammad wrote about the spiritual equivalence of woman and man in his sacred texts:
Such an agenda, as reflected in the sacred Sunnah and Qur’an, creates apparent contradictions between what Saudi Arabia appears to be and what it should be under original Sharia law. There are no lines in Islamic sacred texts that forbid women to have abortions, drive cars, or be less accessible than men, but nevertheless, the Kingdom’s practices are the opposite. The reason for this phenomenon is the entrenched traditions of the local tribes, on which the practice of practicing Islam is superimposed. Thus, even though the Quran guarantees and grants women social and political freedoms, local Sharia law restricts them. This may seem surprising or incorrect from the perspective of the fundamental Sunnism practiced in Saudi Arabia, but it is worth bearing in mind that even the formation of a monarchical kingdom as such contradicts the Quran, which means that the way of life of Saudi residents is slightly different from the literal reading of Islam’s sacred texts.
Analyzing the Current Agenda
Although for women in Saudi Arabia, the routine of their daily lives may seem ordinary and harmonious, it is the global community’s responsibility to examine the social and economic agenda within the country critically. In particular, the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia must occur according to local sharia law but remain humane and follow at least the minimum norms of international law. Political disagreements and terrorist attacks by the Kingdom have already been reasons for military intervention by Western states, which means that any repetition of conflicts, including hardening of social attitudes toward women, could be sufficient justification for new peacekeeping missions. In this sense, it should be kept in mind that women in KSA already do not enjoy the same socioeconomic benefits as, for example, European women, which means that women’s civil rights must be considered with particular care.
Studying the current agenda of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia requires hindsight, especially since, for Saudi Arabia, as has been said, this history is cyclical. Before 1979, women’s political freedoms in the Kingdom were broader, and the traditions and customs of the various regions of Saudi Arabia were more critical than centralized Sharia law. In fact, some regional differentiation remained since the western regions of the country were considered to be more loyal to women than the capital: in the resort region of Jeddah, “women wear bikinis, some of them smoking shisha” (El-Tabei, 2021, para. 7). The traditional female attire shown in Figure 4 may seem too permissive and relaxed by the standards of a modern state compared to what a woman should look like today, as shown in Figure 5. It is likely that this practice of Sharia “relaxation” was also common in central Saudi Arabia until 1979, when, in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mecca, the KSA government took the political vector to revise socioeconomic policies in accordance with strict Shariah principles.
Before the 1979 events that undermined the ruling elite’s authority in Saudi Arabia, women were free to travel by car and socialize with men who were not their relatives. However, the terrorist attack 42 years ago led to the country adopting a policy of strict Islamic fundamentalism, reducing Sharia relaxation, and using a system of harsh sanctions for dissent (Klijnstra, 2020; Arab News Deep Dive, 2019). This had a substantial impact on women’s freedoms, with a ban on driving and reduced university scholarships. Thus, a woman in Saudi Arabia became severely restricted in her rights for decades. As with the 1979 crisis turnaround, another terrorist attack by the Saudis led to the need to revise the country’s Shariah social policies. In particular, the bombing of the U.S. twin towers in 2001 sparked international criticism of rule in Saudi Arabia, leading the sixth ruling King Abdullah to introduce several critical reforms in the country. Among these reforms are the ability for women and men to study together in the same university, the political ability to vote, initiating the launch of the ability for women to drive, and introducing laws protecting victims of domestic violence. This marked an important turn in the history of women’s rights; nevertheless, many social observers and local activists continued to believe that these acts by Abdallah were just populist propaganda.
In contemporary Saudi Arabia, women’s rights are on the rise, but they are still not exactly equal to those of men. The historical tradition of needing a male guardian for any adult woman still persists, but women are now free to drive. It was not until 2006 that Saudi women were allowed to obtain their own ID cards, and by 2018 they were able to attend sports stadiums on an equal footing with men (Sergon, 2021). Women were not officially allowed to vote until 2015, and they were able to participate not only as voters but also as political candidates. As a result, women were able to occupy seats on municipal councils responsible for housing issues.
Politically, women are increasingly represented in Shariah councils and commissions, which have political weight. In particular, in Saudi practice, there is a canonical principle of public authority in the Islamic world called shura (Al-Tamami, 2020). The literal translation of this word from Arabic means consultation: in fact, a shura is analogous to a democratic council in Western society, in which the people involved have the right to influence the political course or make significant domestic decisions. It is noteworthy that the shura does not have any legislative power but decides matters of an advisory nature. In recent years, the number of women in the shura has increased to 20 percent, but this still does not reach the measure of gender equality. In addition, women are still not represented on Saudi Arabia’s government committee, which creates a problem of their political vulnerability in society: there are few people among the important decision-makers who care about women’s well-being.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when vulnerable groups were particularly at risk in the areas of health care and affordable medicine. COVID-19 became an issue for the entire world, causing people’s routine lifestyles to be severely disrupted (Yezli & Khan, 2020). In addition, social constraints have led to problems related to the mental health and well-being of people around the world. However, in relation to Saudi Arabia, an obvious problem is noticeable: “women have been mostly absent from COVID-19 government task forces” (Akeel, 2021, para. 3). In turn, this poses an additional threat to women since there are few people to take care of their health security in isolation.
The gender agenda is also changing economically: in the strictest days of Islamic fundamentalism, women could not work freely and had to do only household chores. In today’s Saudi Arabia, the situation is changing, and women can take jobs with the permission of a male guardian. However, the employment of women requires special rules on the part of the employer since the mixing of female and male streams during the work process is not allowed. As a consequence, it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure working conditions in which women work separately from men, according to the official decree of 2005. However, it is clear that such measures are resource-consuming, and not all employers are willing to invest in this: as a result, women simply cannot get a job. In the areas where women can find work, they cannot engage in unreasonable activities for women under Sharia law (Labor and Civil Care Laws, n.d.). Generally, these areas are any that do not involve the use of physical force, including the construction industry.
Although increased women are gaining employment opportunities, the gender gap is still severe. According to World Bank data illustrated in Figure 6, the percentage of working people in Saudi Arabia’s national economy has increased by an average of 5-6 percent over the past thirty years, reaching a peak of 16.8 percent by 2016. However, KSA government data show that only 22 percent of Saudi women are officially employed (Sergon, 2021). Interestingly, women in Saudi Arabia can also hold leadership positions, but in businesses that do not deal with significant political, economic, or legal issues. In fact, one Saudi factory, Luna, located in southeastern Jeddah, allows women to hold administrative roles, and since there are virtually no men in the factory, local female workers may not wear abaya and niqab. In addition, women have been officially allowed to work professionally in the medical industry since 1975, and the number of women employed in this field has been growing ever since (Baqi et al., 2017). In other words, conditions are being created not only for women to work but also for them to hold leadership positions.
In addition, the gender pay gap also persists. Data shows that for every hundred rials a man earns, a woman earns only 51 rials, meaning the gender gap is up to 49 percent (Clingan, 2019). In 2020, wage growth for men across all sectors was 4.1 percent, while for women, it was only 0.4 percent, indicating a clearly different growth rate for key economic characteristics of the labor force (Salama, 2021). However, two-thirds of the common person respondents said that women and men were paid the same for the same job, as reflected in Figure 7. The same thoughts are expressed in the Baqi et al. study, which stated that “the majority opined that there was no gender discrimination in salaries (73.7%), hospital benefits (62.2%), or entry into any field of Medicine/Pediatrics” (Baqi et al., 2017, p. 1). Consequently, it is appropriate to conclude that a gender wage gap exists, but it may not be evident in all fields.
The reasons why women in Saudi Arabia aspire to work seem transparent. First, according to Shariah law, a woman has no right to own property, which means that the only way for a modern woman to achieve financial independence is to work (ISPU, 2013). Second, it is impossible to ignore the profound globalization processes that determine the movement of all human civilizations. In particular, Saudi Arabia is connected to the world’s Internet, which means that Arab women can follow the global community through social media and YouTube. Such women can observe and be inspired by examples of successful women who have made themselves, which catalyzes the desire to work and be independent of their guardians. Third, doing work allows for distraction from daily household chores and personal hobbies, which can be reflected in the interests of Saudi women.
It is impossible not to discuss the Saudi policy on women’s education regarding the employment agenda. In today’s Saudi Arabia, women have the right to higher university education, with current trends showing a high prevalence of literacy among female audiences. In particular, data show that most Saudi university students (51.8%) are women, meaning that women are, on average, more likely to receive higher education than men (Forwerck, 2017). In addition, women are able to pursue all academic degrees, including doctoral degrees. With the permission of a male guardian, women can also study abroad through exchange programs or scholarships, but government financial support for such women will be lower than for men. The education system is one of the advanced industries in which gender equality is achieved; the existing, albeit minimal, gap is rapidly narrowing.
Vision 2030
The reasons why the gender gap is narrowing so rapidly in so many areas and why women are gaining more civil liberties overall is because of the development of Vision 2030. Vision 2030 aims to reduce Saudi Arabia’s national economy’s oil dependence in order to ensure the country’s long-term advantages in the event of a decline in global oil reserves. Additional effects of such a project are diversification and liberalization of domestic policy spheres, including attracting the flow of tourists. Among the goals of the Vision that the government must achieve by 2030 are an increase in the number of people who own homes, an increase in the happiness index among Arab countries, an increase in life expectancy, and an increase in public investment assets. Most of the Vision 2030 programs implemented are shown in Figure 8 below.
Meanwhile, Vision 2030 is directly related to women’s issues and the reduction of the perceived gap. In particular, one of the program’s outcomes is to increase employment among the female population to 30 percent. In addition, the plan is to raise the percentage of women in leadership positions: from the current 1.27 percent to 5 percent by 2030 (Aldosari, 2017). This was partially realized when the first Saudi woman became Saudi Arabia’s official ambassador to the United States in 2019 (Fahim, 2019). In addition to the opportunities already described to obtain a passport, driving a car, and travel independently, after Vision 2030, women were given additional opportunities to work in the military-industrial sector, to visit the country’s landmark attractions without a guardian, and to run personal businesses. Consequently, Vision 2030 has and continues to have a significant impact on liberalizing the status of Saudi women and giving them freedoms and rights they did not have before. It also makes sense for attracting foreign tourists since active feminist trends in Saudi Arabia can be attractive for personal observation.
However, one should not make the mistake of thinking that KSA is on the road to full gender democratization. Although the Qur’an does not forbid women to be equal to men, the lack of answers to all questions in the holy texts has traditionally been interpreted as space for new prohibitions against women. To put it another way, Sharia law will not disappear from the routine practice of the Saudis because it is a socially and governmentally endorsed pillar of life. It is appropriate, then, to assume that Saudi Arabia is moving rapidly toward a neopatriarchy in which gender equality is perceived as a natural part of social life, but restrictions on women do not disappear. Liberal neo-patriarchy is still underpinned by the entrenched foundations of Islamic religion and still seeks to oppress women, but this oppression is expected to be softer and more voluntary, unlike classical Shariah patriarchy.
A Comparative Study
As mentioned earlier, Sharia law is not based on religion in its literal reading but is instead a symbiosis of local community traditions and Islam. As a consequence, Sharia law varies from region to region where it is practiced, as long as the manifestations of traditionalism are also different. Sharia law is widespread in classical Muslim countries, and although sharia is generally associated with Saudi Arabia, its practice is characteristic of virtually all Gulf regions in varying degrees. For example, in Iran, Sharia is standard on the same level as other mixed legal systems, including parliament. In other countries, such as Afghanistan or Pakistan, Sharia is used as an everyday social practice, but it plays no formal role in the judicial system, unlike in Saudi Arabia. Thus, sharia as a phenomenon is not homogeneous in its manifestations, and so it is interesting to observe. In addition to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Malaysia, and the UAE were chosen as countries for comparative study in this chapter.
The criteria for the comparative analysis included six fundamental indicators that could describe the prevalence of Shariah practices in a country. These included marriage, education, attitudes toward violence against women, access to work, property, and personal freedoms of female citizens. Each of these criteria, in isolation, may not tell us much about the region under study. For example, in Saudi Arabia, a large proportion of university students have been said to be women, but in terms of employment, on average, only two out of ten workers are women. Thus, only a parallel meta-comparison of the six sources can make sense in relation to the problem under study.
The first criterion chosen is marriage between a woman and a man in the country. The study of the phenomenology of marriage is an essential feature for patriarchal societies because if a woman is unable to choose her husband but is forcibly passed off by her family to a man, this is evidence of the traditional oppression of her civil rights. In the same context, it is interesting to study divorce as an opportunity for women because if she does not have that opportunity, she will be forced to live in unhappiness with a man who is likely to harm her. Thus, the study of marriage and divorce opens up a broad framework of social well-being in the country and illuminates issues of women’s freedom to choose to be married.
Access to education was chosen as the second criterion, as female literacy rates are an essential predictor of equal rights. If women remain uneducated compared to men, it is an indication of the low civilizational development of society. Conversely, extremely high levels of education among women can be a sign of women’s impending desire to break out of patriarchal society. Governments that allow women to be educated at the same level as men understand the importance of women’s labor and intellectual potential for the development of a nation.
From the level of education comes a third criterion, access to work. Trained women are an essential human resource that can be used wisely to stimulate national development. High women’s access to work is a sign of equal gender representation in the economic sector, triggering a country’s economic growth and reducing the gap between women and men. In addition, when women have access to work, it unlocks the creative potential of communities, which positively impacts the mental well-being of the entire country.
The fourth criterion for the study was society’s attitudes toward violence against women. This does not necessarily include only domestic violence since acts of physical or psychological pressure on women in Shariah countries are difficult to trace, as it is usually not socially condemned. This includes the study of both public violence and episodes of rape and concern primarily for women’s well-being in such acts. From the perspective of Western thought, male violence is a serious violation of basic human rights, leading to physical and psychological harm.
The fifth metric chosen for the study was property rights. Property is an integral part of any person’s life, determining their well-being and ability to exist independently of others. The right to property derives directly from the slave-owning ages of society when slaves could not own any property and were forced to live under the oppression of their masters. In today’s agenda, examining this criterion is important in order to determine the extent to which women are enslaved by Sharia law. Finally, the sixth criterion for the study is women’s personal freedoms, including the fundamental freedoms of religion, speech, and movement. The extent to which women’s personal freedoms are broad depends on the degree of social maturity of a society on the road to democracy. If a woman has no rights and is completely limited by the will of her male guardian, this is evidence of a serious gender crisis within a nation.
Egypt
Egypt is a North African country that constitutionally recognizes the supremacy of sharia. According to the marriage policy, a woman is not allowed to choose anyone other than a Muslim as her husband, and the voluntary consent of both parties is required for a marriage union. A woman in marriage is endowed with virtually equal opportunities with men and can even file for a no-fault divorce, but in this case, court hearings are required. The average female educational attainment is rising rapidly, and while the gender literacy gap of 20 percent persists, the gap has been narrowing in recent years (Samari, 2019). This is also generating an increase in the employed force among Egyptian women, although again, the gap is still large. Almost twice as many women in Egypt were in the vulnerable labor force because they did not have access to jobs. The unemployment rate for women has increased to 23.1 percent in recent years; in addition, the wage gap is also growing (Nazier, 2019). Domestic violence against women is socially condemned, but in intimate settings, many men harass and rape their wives and lovers without consent (El-Nimr et al., 2020). Because social support systems are underdeveloped, women are afraid to seek help. The civil code also allows women to own property, but only 1 in 20 women actually have personal property (Daily News Egypt, 2019). Finally, women in Egypt do not have sufficient personal rights, and most domestic issues are handled by a male guardian (Farouk, 2019). This creates some vulnerability for Egyptian women, suppressing their civil rights and increasing the gender gap.
Afghanistan
Regarding Afghanistan, it should be said that the current period specifically studied is related to the Taliban rule of the country because it reflects the current agenda. Although women’s freedoms were higher before this era, since the arrival of the Taliban, Afghan women have been under serious pressure. A woman does not have the right to divorce a man at will — unlike a man — and she needs to prove her guardian’s guilt in court: “the divorcees of Afghanistan, women who risk shame, dishonor, and in some cases death” (Nawa, 2017). Under Taliban control, women can still attend universities, but attendance policies have been highly tightened: women and men must not cross paths, which creates an obstacle for female students. Afghan women’s work rights have been drastically curtailed – they can only do jobs that men do not do: “the only job women can do… is clean female bathrooms” (Humayun, 2021, para. 1). Women are also deprived of property rights, and beatings and psychological pressure on girls and women are the norms in Afghan society (Chandran, 2021). Thus, there have been no meaningful personal freedoms for women in Afghanistan since the advent of the Taliban.
Malaysia
Unlike other states, Malaysia is a remote island region located in the Indian Ocean in close proximity to Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangkok. Marriage in Malaysia is bound by Sharia law, and women there traditionally have fewer rights related to the possibilities of inheritance or no-fault divorce. If a man denies a woman a divorce, she cannot claim a free life (Jun, 2020). Gender literacy rates are roughly equal across the country, although there is a significant gap in access to education, with traditionally more boys attending schools and universities than girls (Literacy rate, n.d.). However, the agenda is changing rapidly, and women are not seen as targets of gender discrimination. The country also has a low employment rate among women: only 55 are employed for every 100 women, indicating low interest or accessibility to the workforce (Schmillen, 2019). Violence against women is on the rise despite the existence of formal laws prohibiting domestic violence and protecting women (Shahar et al., 2020). Sharia law in Malaysia allows women to own personal property even when married, which creates many freedoms for Malaysian women (OECD, 2019). However, compared to Westerners, local women have limited personal rights and are vulnerable to patriarchal society, but not as much as in other Shariah countries.
UAE
The UAE is considered one of the world’s major progressive centers of trade and technology, yet it has Sharia law. A woman in the UAE has every right to file for divorce from a man for any reason, and women, as well as men, have unfettered access to absolutely all levels of education (Sergon, 2021). In the UAE, about 77 percent of women receive a college degree and are then generally free to take any job; only the permission of a guardian is required. Attitudes toward domestic violence are changing rapidly, and in recent years many restrictive laws have been passed to protect the rights of vulnerable women. Emirati women are free to buy real estate and take out mortgages as single or married. Although forced to wear traditional black garb, Emirati women enjoy considerable civil liberties and freedoms.
General Comparative Analysis
The manifestations of Sharia law described above may be surprising in their diversity: while Emirati women have many political and civil liberties, women in Afghanistan are heavily suppressed by patriarchal pressures; although, both countries are Sunni. Overall, it has been shown that women from each country have access to education, although, in Afghanistan, technical problems with the new government have created delays and uncertainties in the physical accessibility of entry to universities. The meta-comparison makes clear that women are more empowered and “more equal” to men in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and it is in these countries that the equally named national Vision 2030 programs are implemented. The countries of Malaysia and Egypt do not seem much interested in gender equality, and although it is slowly being achieved, it may take much longer. Women are the worst off in Taliban Afghanistan, deprived of meaningful political rights and freedoms.
For ease of parallel comparison, three companion indices were assessed that provide a measure of Shariah policy in the regions studied. These relate to the gender inequality index, the divorce rate, and the female employment rate. Figure 10 reflects these statistics: the compromise leader in all three positions is the UAE. The country has the lowest inequality index, the highest divorce rate — indicating its possibility and prevalence — and an average female employment rate. For Saudi Arabia, the maximum female unemployment rate is noticeable since only there was a recent law allowing women to work.
Conclusions
This study found several intriguing findings to judge women’s rights in Saudi Arabia in light of sharia. First, local women have traditionally been oppressed by patriarchal pressures. Second, the Qur’an says nothing about gender inequality or the oppression of women. As a consequence, life in Saudi Arabia is dictated by Sharia law, which is based not so much on the religion of Islam as on a symbiosis of the Quran and the local traditions of tribal peoples. Fourth, the gender agenda in Saudi Arabia has moved in cycles, and the improvements now resemble the positive changes that existed before 1979. This poses the danger of a return to a system of severe denial of women’s rights, as was the case under fundamental Sunnism after 1979 and before 2001. Fifth, the Vision 2030 program aims to improve the status of women in society, but one should not count on the disappearance of Sharia law in the country. On the contrary, Shariah as the only lawmaking system will remain, but it will be modernized. It is not predicted that women will receive democratically equal rights in the near future, but Saudi Arabia is expected to follow the path of neopatriarchy.
One cannot identify that the movement along the Western path will ultimately prove correct: this is a highly subjective judgment. It is true that Saudi Arabia is creating more equal opportunities for women and is gradually moving toward full encouragement of their potential, but the Westernization of their role will never happen as long as classical sharia exists. Nevertheless, comparative analysis shows that countries under sharia can be incredibly developed and grant women many rights in ways that bring them closer to men but never make them fully equal. Even a developed country like the UAE still maintains a system of male custody, which means that Saudi Arabia cannot be expected to change its agenda radically. In the meantime, following the Western path will be true as long as the tendency to recognize women’s civil liberties and condemn domestic violence and gender oppression persists. However, if this modernization leads to a complete cultural erasure of Saudi sovereignty, or if the world community demands a complete change in the country, this could be the downside of this Westernization.
On this basis, the people of Saudi Arabia must sovereignly decide their own destiny, as has been historically the case. Forcing Saudi Arabia to follow a particular path is the wrong way for the world community to develop since it is never known which civilizational strategy will prove most successful in the end. Even the publicly accepted liberalization and democratization in the U.S. leads to constant protests and the constant emergence of new taboo topics (Turley, 2020). The decision to abandon Sharia law can only be made by the local Saudi people, and if the monarch makes such a decision, then it is the right way for the country; moreover, it will mean abandoning the neo-patriarchal system of oppression. Thus, the right strategy for Saudi Arabia would be to recognize the rights of aggrieved groups, to promote the historical value of Shariah, to create a level playing field, and to get rid of all forms of discrimination. The creation of a civil society in which there is a permanent desire for equality is the ultimate goal for any state, including Saudi Arabia.
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