Just a few days ago, an article was published on the Kingdom page of Arab News written by a female reporter from Reuters. It talked about how women in Saudi Arabia were negotiating the cultural barriers that hinder their progress. Similar articles have been written in the past by other wire agencies. All of them tried to give the reader an inside scoop of Saudi women’s life and the difficulties they face in a male-dominated society.

Though the women interviewed in the piece might boast of some freedom due to the nature of their work, they still need a male guardian’s permission to travel; still cannot be admitted to a hospital without a male guardian accompanying them; and still cannot even obtain a mobile chip from the Saudi Telecom Company without a male guarantor.

Last night, as I was sitting quietly in the living room of my house reading a wedding invitation I received from an acquaintance, something occurred to me. Engraved with all sorts of beautiful drawings, the card read: Mr. So-and-so (the groom’s father) and Mr. So-and-so (the bride’s father) would like to invite you to a dinner party on the occasion of (the groom’s name) being wedded to the daughter of Mr. So-and-so.

There was nothing new in that card. The bride’s name was not mentioned. A strict no-no in our culture.

“Wait a second,” I told myself. “I found it!” The missing piece that explains everything.

How can we Saudis talk about women negotiating cultural barriers when the biggest cultural barrier of all stands solid as a concrete wall, unchanged through the passage of time: Uttering a woman’s name in public?

How can we call for rights for our women; find jobs for our female graduates; seek a larger role for women in social development — when even uttering a woman’s name in public is still unacceptable in our society?

I only woke up to this cultural idiosyncrasy when I moved back to Saudi Arabia from the United States during my childhood. I heard a classmate threatening another classmate to tell the entire class his mother’s name if he did not do as he asked.

At the beginning, it was very hard for me to comprehend what the importance of that was. Later on though, I came to understand that should someone outside the family know the names of your mother, or sisters, it would be like an indelible black spot on your thobe, bringing shame and disgrace in front of others.

I also discovered the way we Saudis have of not calling a woman by her name but calling her “Umm this” or “Umm that” — meaning the mother of this person or that. Moreover, I learned that, though she is usually called “Umm Ahmed” for example, had she given birth before Ahmed to Layla, for example, she would not be called “Umm Layla”, but still “Umm Ahmed.”

Ahmed would always take precedence — even if he is not the eldest, but just because he is male. I also became aware why Saudi women are reluctant to say the names of guests on a TV show, for example.

Is uttering a woman’s name in the presence of men or in public that shameful?

As a matter of fact, I hate to say this, it is. In most cases, had a Saudi man’s wife said her full name on TV with thousands watching, he might as well bury himself alive to escape the humiliation he would face.

In the past when I used to pick up my sisters from school, I found myself the only one calling them out by their names using the microphone. All the other Saudi males were calling them out by their own names.

Of course, I felt very silly at the beginning as all eyes were fixed on me. “Even if they feel ashamed of calling out their relatives by their names, I will not,” I told myself.

I later changed my mind. I could not go against the tidal wave no matter how good a swimmer I was. I had to go with the flow. And so I began calling my sisters out by my name.

We continue to believe that women are God’s curse to human beings and are the source of corruption and temptation on Earth.

We continue to think that they should be fully covered from head to toe in black so that they cannot seduce men. We continue to degrade them and think that men are superior to them, believing falsely that our religion tells us so.

I say, let’s start by uttering their names without feeling disgraced in public first, and then we can move on to talking about more jobs, women driving, rights, and a larger role for them in social development.

Arab News Opinion<> 23 April 2003