Interesting for what it says in the lines and rather more interesting for what it says between them, “Saudi Women Speak” by Mona Almunajjed is a collection of interviews with 24 prominent Saudi women.
Sub-titled “24 remarkable women tell their success stories” the reader is inclined to believe that this is a document of Saudi women who have succeeded in a series of ‘rags to riches’ success stories. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In her introduction Almunajjed says that the women she selected came from “intellectual, educated, professional and well-off families” and were brought up in a “traditional affluent environment” where they were “respected and venerated. They were encouraged by their parents to get an education and to seek it outside Saudi Arabia.”
Rather confusingly, the assumption Almunajjed works on is that the West has a distorted view of the position of women in Saudi society and that Saudi society has no sympathy or tolerance for the erosion — as she sees it — of Western moral values, Western religious laxity and Western materialism.
Yet almost all the women she chose to interview were educated in the West, lived in the West and out of their own mouths, benefited from the experience to some extent. She avers that traditional barriers are being overcome and “an attempt is made to balance cultural values and traditional heritage with new emerging economic realities...” The women she describes as having “broken the barriers of rigid tradition” and are “shaped by a mixture of traditional and modern social forces and economic dynamics.”
That apparent conflict established the women themselves — who range from well-known figures in the Saudi royal family to the daughters of prominent businessmen — produce a mix of opinions that are sometimes quite pointed. A great deal of the time, they are in agreement over several fundamental threads that weave through the fabric of the book.
Without exception, family life was fine, father supportive and treated (in at least one case) daughters like boys or at least as respected individuals, encouraged them to get a good education and follow their own opinions and be themselves. Husbands were always equally supportive and the busy lifestyles of the women enabled them to combine careers — some of them remarkably burdensome — with bringing up large families.
The question and answer style of reportage is carried through all 24 interviews and I found it difficult to live with. The questions are anodyne, often leading and rarely more than scene setters for the next set-piece answer from the interviewee.
The responses of the interviewees were more a curriculum vitae of their experiences than an exploration of the personalities or motivating forces that drove them to their success. Few opinions are a surprise or challenging — many follow the thread of the West not understanding the culture and the religious and moral degradation of the West being something that Saudi society should eschew. Whilst for the most part I cannot deny the good sense of that, the lack of seasoning in the rather bland kabsa of the prose results in the style being more akin to a ‘fanzine’ than a work of intellectual rigor.
For example, Almunajjed points out that in 2004, the Kingdom ratified, with a reservation for conflicts with Islamic law, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women that refers to “any distinction or exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex.” It might have been more complete had Almunajjed — who has worked with several UN agencies on projects related to gender — also noted the 2006 UN opinion that “to achieve the goals set out in the CEDAW, Saudi Arabia still needs to make substantial progress toward gender equity.”
All that said, the book is well worth a read, first as a document of record and secondly as — given the veracity of the responses — an insight to a section of Saudi society that the West really does have almost no idea exists.
The text opens with a 33-page context-setting introduction of the Kingdom, Islam and the considerable rights and equality that Islam offers to women. As the book is clearly aimed at the general reader outside the Kingdom, it provides useful background to set the later interviews against.
Each chapter is prefaced with a sketch of the interviewee, noting her academic achievements and setting the reason for her selection — very often it is the “first woman” to have achieved the post she is famous for.
The interviews, however, are not really interviews. Huge sections of direct quotes with no analysis or commentary by Almunajjed while allowing the reader to judge the importance of what is being said could benefit from a structured approach that followed some kind of intellectual agenda in order to illustrate a point.
In all, the point of the book one has to guess at; Saudi women are much more influential and capable than the West thinks. There is no doubt of that in the minds of anyone who has lived in the Kingdom for any length of time. To foreign readers, however, who work under the stereotypes and preconceptions of what all women see as biased media, the book would benefit from a tighter structure, sharper comment and an analysis by Almunajjed — a Ph.D. in sociology by training and therefore well placed to do this — of the points made in the book.
However, to the astute reader, within the autobiographical commentary of the interviews there is a fascinating glimpse into the workings of Saudi society, insights into some really remarkable characters and the possibility of a whole new take on women in Saudi society.
Saudi Women Speak: 24 Remarkable Women Tell Their Success Stories
Published by Arab Institute for Research and Publishing