The women’s identification card that the Ministry of Interior issues in the Kingdom has shown that the community suffers from social anxiety. The Education College attached to Riyadh University for Girls requires that all students or job applicants bring their ID with them. I think that this was a normal procedure to keep things organized and within the system just as in other government sectors. Instead of improving things, however, people were enraged and greatly annoyed.
Some described what happened as a disaster and some felt that it was an attempt to defame and break the rules of religion. The social anxiety the community suffers from regarding women’s IDs is unjustifiable. Some narrow-minded people believe that men working in the Ministry of Education or Higher Education will actually abuse and misuse the pictures of women and girls on their ID cards.
Have we reached this level of losing trust in our systems and people? Are the people working in different ministries or governmental bodies from different planets? Are they not our brothers and fathers who care about our wellbeing? Most importantly, why do male employees have to deal with IDs or pictures? Aren’t there sufficient women working in the education sector who are capable of reading files, checking data and making decisions without constantly being supervised by men? Is this paranoia haunting us everywhere?
ID cards are very important for the safety and security of women. Identity theft could cause many problems if women didn’t have official proof that established their identity. So many women have learned about the importance of an identity card only after they were victims of fraud because of the old family ID card that included only people’s names. Because there was no picture, any woman could easily claim to be someone she was not.
Distrust is a disaster if it spreads in the community. We should be supporting the system in order to advance and develop and not remain locked inside the same old box, worried about trivial matters that are not a threat.
I truly thank the Education College for implementing such a procedure and I wish that all other institutions for women would do the same. Protecting women helps prepare them for the unexpected and the more prepared they are, the better their chances of success.
