Saudi Women Are Rattling Their Gilded Cage

All eyes have been on Saudi Arabia these past few days as women fight with to obtain the most basic rights. They are met with extreme threats of violence just for wanting to learn how to drive. But that struggle is only the tip of the iceberg; inequalities between men and women in the country run much deeper.

One woman, Samia, is now using her last resort in her fight for independence. She appealing to the Saudi Supreme Court to obtain the right to marry the man of her choice.

Samia is a surgeon in her 40′s from the holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia. For the past five years, she has been living at a women’s shelter for battered women in order to avoid being forced by her father to marry a cousin she doesn’t love.

Her father insists that she marry one of her younger, less educated cousins. She has had suitors in the past who have asked for her hand but he rejected them all. When Samia tried to reason her father, he locked her in her bedroom for weeks, where he and her brothers beat her with a hose. She documented her bruises on her iPad.

Sadly, Samia’s situation is not unusual in Saudi Arabia. Although a number of men justify this treatment of women with Islam, the Quran mentions that a woman has the right to choose her partner, as long as he is morally upright. Even the kingdom’s top religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Asheikh, has declared that: “Forcing a woman to marry someone she does not want and preventing her from wedding [the man] whom she chooses … is not permissible.”

This idea that men decide what is best women comes from the guardianship system, which is a tribal tradition central to Saudi culture. It requires women to get permission their father (or if he has died, their brother or uncle) to marry. Once they are married, their husband becomes their guardian and must give his permission for them to travel abroad, get hired, access medical care, study and even deal with administrative issues in government offices.

A very dark irony hangs over Samia’s case. She has access to the latest technology, performs one of the most demanding jobs on the planet where she holds people’s lives in her hands, yet she is not allowed to make a crucial decision for her own life about who she marries. Instead, all she can do is try to win at court; she filed a complaint against her father in a Medina court because of the abuse she suffered and because he has been taking the better part of her wages for years, only to leave her a small monthly allowance.

In 2009, The Saudi government accepted a recommendation from the United Nations Human Rights Council to abolish guardianship, but has yet to take action. Right now, women are left to fight this battle alone.

More and more of them are challenging abusive guardians in court, according to the National Society for Human Rights. Last year, the society reported that 86 similar cases had been filed in the previous five years.

They’re also taking advantage of social networks such as Facebook to lobby against fathers who will not let them marry freely. The group “Enough Adhl!” created last year by a female professor in her mid-30s whose father has rejected all her suitors has already attracted hundreds of members.

Meanwhile, no one knows whether a date has been set for Samia’s appeal to the Supreme Court, but a win for her seems difficult because the guardianship system is strongly embedded in the Saudi legal system.  The two courts that have rejected her case so far did so because the judges claimed she was “disobedient” daughter who should seek counseling “to help with her problem in being stubborn with her father and not listening to him because he knows what’s best for her.”

If the Supreme Court rules against her, then, it would make it illegal for any woman to marry without the consent of a male family authority. But Samia says she keeps going “for all the girls who are treated like animals in the name of guardianship.”

This oppressive cultural and legal philosophy of guardianship affects all aspects of these women’s lives and it’s important to keep the spotlight on this battle so they have a better chance to move forward and obtain the rights we all enjoy. No one prefers a gilded cage to freedom.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com