Saudiwoman's Weblog

Historically Arabs are notorious for their autocratic business model, however in today’s highly competitive world companies fall over each in trying to gain consumer loyalty through quality products and better customer services. Unfortunately not all Saudi companies have caught on to this approach.

In the majority of Saudi malls there are no fitting rooms inside the shops. If a customer needs to try something on, they have to pay for it and then go to the mall’s public fitting rooms or take it home to try it on. Either way, the transaction has to be completed before the customer can try on what they bought. Add to that the fact that women shoppers also have to deal with transportation issues since there are no public transportation options available and they have to arrange for a man to drive them to return products. It’s a surprise that some Saudi retail companies do not seem to understand this difficulty. It has become a new trend among these to implement a no refund policy. Basically according to the new no refund policy, as a consumer in Saudi Arabia, you can no longer be adventurous in trying out new styles and trends. With no fitting rooms inside the shops, buying something to see how it looks has just become a lot riskier. If the customer does not like how something looks on them, they either have to stick with it or take something else instead even if nothing else strikes their fancy.

The old policy was usually three days for a full refund and seven for an exchange and no refunds on sales items. Three days is pretty tight but people were generally able to work with that. This year though some companies have started to implement the new no-refund policy. Once a customer has paid for something it cannot be refunded. If it does not fit or if for any other reason the customer changes their mind they can only exchange it for store credit. If the consumer exchanges the returned goods for something that costs less, the difference will also not be refunded. So if there’s even a difference of 20SR, the customer will get a store credit card with the amount that can be redeemed at any of the company’s stores. And what if it’s something much more pricey, that store credit card will be quite valuable. Having to keep that card safe until the store offers something you like is not an easy task. Imagine the frustration of losing it or forgetting to use it before the 12 month expiration period.

I am happy to say Saudis are not taking this new policy lying down. A campaign launched on social media calls for the boycott of all of one of these companies’ brands until they change their policy. On Twitter, a hashtag, #noshaya started by Mai Al Shareef got quite a bit of attention with people commiserating on how hard it is already to shop with no fitting rooms and a short time period to return things. Mai Al Shareef set up a poll that asked how people felt about the new no refund policy, 89% of the 3800 people that voted were against the no refund policy. Other activists also started to contact the international brands sponsored by Shaya directly to complain about the local policy. Especially since most of these brands, if not all, have generous refund policies in their home countries. If only AlShaya would be humble enough to actually listen and take into consideration what their customers want.

Al Shaya is a Saudi company that hosts international franchises mostly in GCC countries but has expanded to the larger Middle East area. It has more than 55 brands under its umbrella in 15 different countries. It has brought to Saudi some of my favorite clothing brands to shop at such as Topshop and H&M. AlShaya was also one of the first Saudi companies to encourage Saudis to go into the retail and customer service sector. In all of their stores, I’m happy to say that there’s usually at least one Saudi behind the counter. This nationalization policy and the variety and prices of their goods has always made me proud that they are a Saudi company. That’s why I was honestly surprised and disappointed that they decided to implement the no refund policy.

I don’t know if people will actually stick to the boycott, but boycott or no boycott, I know that all companies that implement a no refund policy have lost my business and no matter how good that blouse in their window looks, I will not succumb.

Women driving has been a controversial issue in Saudi Arabia since 1990when 47 women got into 14 cars and drove on to a main street in Riyadh. They were stopped, suspended from work for two years and condemned for years in religious sermons and social circles. The last public assault was when Sheikh Mohammed Al Arefe in 2003 objected to the fact that these women were allowed to go back to teaching because he was worried that they would encourage their students to follow in their footsteps. READ MORE 

I am honored to have a mention among the top 100 global thinkers of 2011. The magic of internet and social media that I was heard despite being just an average Saudi woman with no platform. And just by starting a blog and writing, the internet enabled my voice to be heard across oceans. Honestly it is a miracle.

Sitting at home reading the news, listening to the people around me at work, study and social obligations talk and then taking that with my personal experience I was able to translate it to a Saudi experience that people, if not relate to, can at least understand no matter their background.

Manal Al Sharif and I on the list here

An article I wrote for Foreign Policy titled What do Saudi women want?

The ministry of justice was provoked this week by an outspoken piece by Dr. Badriya Al Bishr to issue a statement to the same newspaper where Al Bishr’s piece was published. Al Bishr criticized the white washing of the Saudi justice system that took place at the International Association of Lawyers 55^th Congress in Miami. There, the minister of Justice, prof. Mohammed Al Eissa gave a talk on the justice system in Saudi Arabia. According to local papers his talk mostly constituted a presentation on how wonderful and just the Saudi justice system. The papers reported that among other things he stated that the Saudi justice system does not discriminate between men and women when it comes to rights and obligations. The audacity of making such a statement at an international conference by no less than the minister of justice himself seriously makes me wonder if this whole thing is all my head. Did I imagine that a few weeks ago a Saudi woman was sentenced to ten lashes for driving her own car and that only a pardon from the king spared her the punishment? Is Najla Hariri’s upcoming trial for driving her car a figment of my imagination? How about that the ministry of justice refuses to issue licenses to women to practice law and won’t even recognize the title of lawyer for women who have obtained licenses abroad, did that change overnight?

AlBishr is apparently having the same delusions as I am, since she pointed out how sexist the ministry is when it comes to sentencing in homicide cases. If women are charged with murdering their spouse, it’s an automatic death sentence while men who murder their wives are dealt with much more leniently. AlBishr cites the recent case of a man who ran over his wife because she would not give him her salary. The murder was committed in daylight, in front of the woman’s family home and in front of several witnesses and yet the man was only sentenced to 12 years in prison. Another case that I recall is one where a man decapitated his wife in front of their toddler and was originally sentenced to only five years in prison then revised to 15.

AlBishr also notes the irony in that the minister’s talk coincided with news that a teacher at an elementary school has reached out to activists concerning the weddings of two of her students during Hajj break. The third and fourth grade girls were scheduled to be married off to adult men at the same time that the minister was giving his talk in Miami. To say that there is no gender discrimination in the Saudi justice system is an outright denial of the truth. However the ministry in issuing its statement today has shown that it is persistent in this denial even at the national level.

In the statement, the head of the ministry’s press office, Ibrahim AlTayyer, mostly took offence with the part of AlBishr’s column that raised the issue of child marriages. He states that according to ministry studies the number of child marriages are not high enough to consider it a phenomenon in Saudi. Though he did not mention what number would be enough for the ministry to act nor more importantly disclose the number of child marriages that was documented in those studies. To me one child marriage is enough to issue a law however it is obviously much more than that. According to an interview with AlRiyadh Newspaper on Jan/22/2010, a sociologist, Dr. Al Johara Mohammed, states that “among us there are more than 3000 Saudi girls aged no more than 13 years married to men in the age of their parents or grandparents”. Are 3000 cases of pedophilia not a signficant enough number for our ministry? How about that an anonymous source within the ministry itself informed AlWatan Newspaper on Oct/15/2010 that in the Eastern region alone, during the previous year, 40 cases of child marriages were stopped via verbal unofficial instructions. The number of child marriages that were approved however was not mentioned in that article, only an interview with a girl who was a victim of child marriages.

AlTayyer went on to state that regardless of the ministry’s position on child marriages, it is not within its governmental jurisdiction to issue a law consigning a minimum age for marriage. If it’s not the ministry of justice’s jurisdiction, than whose is it? The Shura council when they were discussing the implementation of a child protection system, refused to officially recognize child marriages as a form of child abuse. Their reasoning was a bla bla bla argument on the semantics of child and minor.

The remarkable thing is that there is a widespread consensus among Saudis that child marriages should be banned. Members of the royal family, religious scholars, high ranking government officials and celebrities have all spoken out against it. Yet you can tell from AlTayyer’s statement that simply issuing a law that sets a minimum age for marriage is not going to happen in the forseeable future.

Maybe this is due to the hold that fundamentalists have on the Saudi government. A member of the highest religious council, sheikh AlFowzan, wrote in Okaz newspaper last July that child marriages should not be banned and warns that if we do ban them God will punish us by inflicting us with wars and plagues. A sentiment echoed yesterday by a Saudi woman columnist, Fatima Al Faqih. Besides the usual disputed argument that the Prophet (PBUH) married one of his wives when she was only six and consummated it when she was nine, she reasons that since girls for centuries were able to physically survive child marriages then the scientific argument against child marriages is de facto disproven.

Regarding those who claim that we should not abolish child marriages because the prophet (pbuh) consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was nine, this has been repeatedly proven inconsistent with historian records. This is discussed here in Arabic and you can read more about it in English. Besides the historical inconsistency, it’s also inconsistent with the prophet’s behavior since all his other wives were not only adult women but also divorcees and widows. And if we were to go with the fundamentalist argument that we should not ban anything that isn’t banned by the Qur’an than slavery should be legalized and sexual intercourse between a master and his female slaves as well. Both should be considered completely legal if we were to solely go upon the text of the Qur’an. Yet the government has abolished slavery and intercourse is only legal within the confines of marriage. So why can’t we abolish child marriages in the same way?

On a final note, in the local papers on the minister’s talk at the Miami conference, it is reported that the President of the International Association of Lawyers, Pascal Maurer, was impressed by the Saudi judicial system and hoped that the law system would be made accessible to the international community so that they could benefit.

I could not find any report of Prof. AlEissa’s talk in American or international press.

The first Riyadh women only walk to raise awareness about breast cancer is on Oct 27th. Tickets are going fast. You can purchase yours from any of the following places:
We are NOW selling tickets at:
The Pancake House: (King Fahd Road / 01-2016816)
KINETICO gym: (Takhasusi Street / 01-2815595)
Zahra Breast Cancer Association: (Takhasosi Street /01-4833652)
Lollipop: (Tahlia Street / 01-4624064)

* All proceeds will be for charity *

Three types of tickets:-

– [PINK] 50 SR. It includes a “The Walk For Cure” t-shirt.

– [SILVER] 150 SR. It includes a “The Walk For Cure” t-shirt + souvenir

– [GOLD] 400 SR. It includes a “The Walk For Cure” t-shirt + VIP entrance & lounge with catering from La Cucina restaurant, Alfaisaliah Hotel.

For more info, Arabic translation and questions click here

This is the English original version I wrote and was translated to German and published in the new print edition of Stern magazine no41/2011, out today, Thursday, 6th of October, pages 54-57.

In Saudi Arabia my gender decides whether or not I can enter certain ministries, what I can major in college and if I can name my own child.
My gender mandates that I cannot drive my own car. No matter what age I am or how well I drive, I have to find a male to drive my car.
If I were divorced, a widow or simply had a husband that was out of the country at the time, my gender dictates that I have to find a male relative to obtain a birth certificate and document my child’s name at government circles.
My gender also mandates whether I can freely leave the country or not. As a woman, if I need to travel, I am at the mercy of my father and husband. At the airport I am stopped and required to show an official yellow card from the Saudi Interior Ministry that states that my husband has granted me permission to travel. If I fail to provide it, then I’m escorted out of the airport and told to go home and convince my husband.
My husband can legally divorce me without reason, without my presence and without my knowledge.
In public schools, from the age of twelve, girls are forced to cover their faces completely with not even a slit for their eyes as they enter and leave the strictly girls only schools.
All restaurants cannot allow women in unless they have a separate entrance and area for them to sit in.

All of these rules are not only socially or culturally enforced but legally as well. So that no matter how much our society may move forward and general awareness is raised, the laws pull us back. This legal and governmental factor makes it extremely difficult for forward thinking women to demand change. If I drive my car as a woman, I am not only breaking a social taboo but also entering into a discussion of whether or not I’m breaking the law and challenging the government. This is what has led to the nine-day imprisonment of Manal Al Sharif. One of the accusations presented against her by government officials is driving a car while female within a city and inciting other women to do the same. Just last week another Saudi woman was sentenced to ten lashes for driving a car in a city. The king soon pardoned her, but it remains a fact that a judge can do that.
A member of the highest Islamic council, Sheikh Al Manea, reasons that it is justified to sentence a woman to physical punishment or imprisonment for driving a car, not because she drove the car per se but because she broke the law. These types of arguments are what makes it particularly difficult for the women rights movement in Saudi Arabia. The argument that you are not only breaking a social, cultural or even religious taboo but also going against the government and legal system can be a powerful deterrent to Saudi women who need to speak up for their rights.
A few months ago, the aforementioned Manal Al Sharif, spearheaded a movement to get Saudis used to the idea of a woman behind the steering wheel. July 17th was set as the day when Saudi women would start to drive themselves to work or school rather than rely on a male driver. The purpose was that from that day and onwards more and more women would slowly gain the courage to drive. At the same time Saudi society in general would gradually get used to the sight of women driving. Unfortunately that was not how it worked out. A couple of weeks before July 17th, Manal Al Sharif was arrested.
On the day itself there was a heavy police presence on all the main streets. Despite these obstacles, a few brave women drove their cars. I was fortunate enough to be able to be a part of it, even though Ive never learned to drive. I got into the car with another Saudi woman, Azza Al Shmasi. As I videotaped, she drove for 15 minutes close to a main street in Riyadh. When I got home I excitedly shared the video with my followers on Twitter, as did all the women who drove that day. Then for the next few weeks, more and more women drove and uploaded videos. It seemed as though we were making progress.
Unfortunately our progress was severely halted when several of the women who took part started receiving phone calls from the interior ministry and getting trial dates. I started receiving calls from the investigation unit at the Interior Ministry about a month after the last time I got into the car with Azza. In the beginning it seems as if they had made the assumption that my husband does not support me in my fight for women rights. They asked to speak to him, as though they did not have his full details right there in my file. This tactic of threatening women with informing their male guardians might have worked decades ago but Saudi society has evolved past that. The overwhelming majority of women who went out to drive have the full support of their immediate families. After two weeks of these harassing phone calls, my husband was called to the ministry. He refused to sign the pledge that he would make sure that I would not drive or upload videos of driving. The phone calls stopped. However, another Saudi woman, Najla Hariri has not been as fortunate. After her phone calls and visit to the interior ministry, she is currently awaiting a trial.
Here we were, fighting for the simple and basic right to drive our own cars. So we were surprised when King Abdullah surpassed all these rights that we had been fighting for and granted women not only the vote but also the right to be nominated as candidates in the 2015 municipal elections. The king also announced that women would be included in his appointed parliament. These changes are huge breakthroughs in the fight for womens rights, however they remain far in the future and have no effect on the day to day life of Saudi women today. They have however enraged many of our sheikhs. One such sheikh is Shiekh Allehiedan, another member of the Saudi highest Islamic council. He came out on TV to state that the king had not consulted with him before these announcements and that he is more protective of the country and its Sharia constitution than the king himself. Other extreme conservatives have also made a point of stating their unhappiness with these announcements. A worrying but unsurprising development; the extreme conservative have had a hold on the country from its very beginning. A partnership between the government and the mosque that is gradually growing sour because of the failure of both in reining in the peoples demands for their freedom and rights.

Many people fail to realize how relatively new Saudi Arabia is. It was not declared a country until 1932, so it is only about 80 years old. It is about 5 times the size of Germany. Our first king, King Abdulaziz, managed to unify this vast desert land despite the different cultures and even religious Islamic sects of its people. Then with the discovery of oil, led our dispersed people into building one of the more prosperous countries of the world.
Unlike the majority of our neighbors we were not colonized so we did not have a western law system imposed upon us. We had to start with the tools we had at the time; Arab tribal law and religion. Starting as we did from square one in the modern world makes for some interesting challenges. Condensing hundreds of years of evolvement of national law, civilian rights and freedom in a few decades. From that perspective, it is not hard to understand how we have come to have all these modern amenities and yet live a lifestyle that is reminiscent of medieval times.
As a Saudi woman, I understand all this. I also understand how exotic Saudi women are to the rest of the world. Our abayas and culture are a more subtle form of the same exoticism of the Padaung tribe where women wore neck bracelets that made them look giraffe necked. Despite how uncomfortable it looked and how much it affected their lives, it seemed to outsiders as though they were proud of their heritage and wanted to maintain it by passing it on to future generations. However when human rights organizations dug beneath the surface they found that it was face, politics and economics that were forcing this tradition on women who wanted better for themselves and their daughters.
Although we don’t wear our niqabs because we need to draw tourists, we still have in common with these Burmese women that a combination of face, politics and economics have constricted our freedom and put many unnecessary obstacles in the path of our happiness. Arab traditions and culture have dictated the most extreme governmentally enforced environment of gender discrimination. So much so that these factors have resulted in the creation of the only gender apartheid in todays world.
As a Saudi woman, I understand all this, yet; somehow it does not alleviate my frustration at how my country’s history has such an impact on my day-to-day life.

What’s it like being a Saudi woman? A common question I’ve come to expect from outsiders – even fellow Arabs. The restrictiveness of the guardianship system, gender segregation and a persistently sexist culture add up to create an exotic and mysterious lifestyle that is difficult to not only explain but also to comprehend. READ ON

Every accusation imaginable has been thrown at Saudi women who spoke up for their right to drive their own cars. Sheikhs and ultra conservatives have created this intricate conspiracy theory on how this whole demand is a well-planned Iranian/Shia plight to bring down the government by corrupting it’s women. Others have claimed that it is a Western conspiracy because somehow the Christian/Jewish West know deep down that Islam is the right path but they need to corrupt Muslim women through using their own women as an example. According to their logic, somehow women driving cars will lead to the fall of Islam. Confusing, I know, but nevertheless quite emotional and effective when presented in a religious context of salvation and preserving our faith and morals in an evil world. Another issue that they have is a “gotcha” argument where they say if women really wanted to drive for the good of the country and independence then they would first have to prove it by giving up their maids. As if maids were a requirement and by law, Saudi women are banned from doing their own housework as they are from driving their cars?! Choice and freedom are two words that are not in the opposition’s vocabulary.

That was all expected, it’s the same rhetoric that is employed by the extreme right in opposing anything they don’t like. However what was surprising is that quite a few Saudis who are progressive and some activists as well are against the women driving campaign. Some have taken it as a matter of pride, that the women joining the campaign are exposing the country to international ridicule. Some are cynical about why Western media has given this issue so much attention. They say it’s just an oriental stereotype that these outlets are abusing for their own amusement. Such a clear black and white case of gender discrimination in the 21^st century is really not worthy of anyone’s attention. And that a government would arrest women simply for driving a car is a “stereotype” and not actual incidents happening nationwide. Then they question why western media doesn’t consult Saudis on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict or why they don’t cover this or that.

They also are upset at Saudi women who have had to resort to Western media to present their case, instead of being upset at local media for not giving these women a platform. The day after June 17, our newspapers completely ignored the issue except for one report in one paper, Okaz, where the traffic police denied that there were any cases of women driving. This was despite the fact that traffic police issued a ticket to a woman, Maha Al Qahtani, for driving without a Saudi license on the very same day they claimed that there were no women drivers.

These same progressives and activists claim that the women driving their cars are going about it the wrong way and that they should go through official channels. It has obviously slipped their minds that Wajeha Al Huwaider and Ebtihal Mubarak  had delivered a petition to the Royal Court to lift the ban signed by over 3000 Saudis. They also must have forgotten when Dr. Mohmammed  Zalfa during his time on the Shura Council (closest thing to parliament in Saudi) presented a proposal to lift the ban in 2006 and received a huge social and professional backlash in return. Also Abdullah Al Alami, a journalist and activist has been trying for the past year to get the Shura Council to revisit the issue with no success. It’s very obvious that the official track is pretty worn out. Although we have still not lost hope and are persevering in its pursuit.

One example of such progressives is Tareq Al Homayed, who claimed in an article published on June 27 and translated to English the next day is that the Western media is out of touch.  And that they have been following misinformed social media hype. He claims that the women who drove on June 17^th and after are fewer than those who protested the ban in 1990. When actually the 1990 protest was only fourteen cars that had 47 passengers, while from June 17^th and onwards there have been about seventy documented cases of women driving. He also claimed that this issue was politicized by the campaign when in actuality the politicization of this basic right was by the extreme right with their accusations from decades ago until today that this is a foreign conspiracy and that women who call for this right are traitors. Finally he claims that the low number of women driving is a reflection of the campaign’s low priority for Saudi women. As if he wasn’t Saudi and does not understand how paralyzed with fear people are here when it comes to any form of public demonstrations.  For example we have thousands of political prisoners who are in prison indefinitely and without trial and yet at its height of the protest only 200 of their loved ones stood in front of the interior ministry to demand their release.

In an interview on a weekly discussion show, Suad Al Shammari, a leading Saudi women rights activist presented the following statistics: only 45000 Saudi women have licenses which they can only acquire from abroad, 40% of cars purchased in Saudi are purchased by women and that there are currently over a million and two hundred thousand foreign men brought into this country for the sole purpose of driving our cars instead of the women owners. FYI the Saudi population is 27,140,000 a third of which are foreign workers.

You would think that it’s a reflection of our wealth while in reality, 70% of Saudi do not have the financial resources to buy their own homes. The unemployment rate for women is over 28%, the majority of those unemployed women have graduate degrees. The unemployment rate for men too is high with two million registering for unemployment benefits.  So essentially many of these foreign drivers are here only due to the ban rather than the “luxurious Saudi lifestyle”.

The low number of women driving their cars is not due to the low number of women who care. The overwhelming majority of women do not know how to drive since Saudi driving schools ban women students and just practicing with your father or brother might end up with both of you with a criminal record. The low number is also because Saudi society shames women who publicly speak out against anything. As one Saudi woman who desperately needs to drive told me: “I will put up with importing a driver and a salary I can’t afford to pay, because otherwise my family would estrange me and people would drag my name in the mud.”

Recommended Reading:

The veil behind the wheel: Reuters report on being in the car with a woman activist who happens to be of a conservative Bedouin background.

An Arabic statement released today by Shiekh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, a member of the highest religious council in Saudi Arabia where he states that women driving is allowed in Islam however he likens it to allowing weapon trade which is also allowed in Islam but would have dangerous consequences on the security of the country and safety of society.

Another member of the highest religious council, Shiekh Qays Al Mubarak, surprisingly is being quite outspoken in this Arabic piece in the call for lifting the ban on women driving.

On 11 March, when Saudi protesters’ “day of rage” did not materialise, Fouad al-Farhan, a human rights activist, tweeted:

“My fear is that the ceiling of our reformist demands will be lowered to women driving for some and combating westernisation for others.”

Two months later, his fears became a reality. A campaign to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia was started on Facebook. Currently this issue has overtaken all others online, in the press and on the ground. read more…

Recommended:

CBC Radio interview with one of the first women to drive in this campaign, Najla Harriri, and Saudi journalist and activist, Ebtihal Mubarak. I’m also on there too.

A comprehensive historical look at the campaign that goes back over twenty years ago by Ebtihal Mubarak in Foreign Policy.