Undue pressure puts half of Saudi society at risk
Two Saudi women recently decided that death was a better option than living.
One woman, a 26-year-old who accepted a marriage proposal in the Asir Province, had her future dashed when her brother showed up after a two-year absence and broke the engagement. She doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire. She died from her injuries.
Another Saudi woman, a 20-year-old Jeddah resident, sought refuge at the King Khaled Charity Society because she had family problems. She climbed to the top of the Society’s building and threatened to jump before Civil Defense personnel rescued her.
What made these two young women feel that suicide was the answer to their family problems?
When I was younger, we rarely heard about suicide cases. But today the suicide rate, especially among young women, is rising rapidly. Some people attribute the increasing suicide rate to poverty and to lack of religion, but data collected in Saudi Arabia suggests a different picture that goes to the heart of what the Asir and Jeddah women have suffered.
In 2009, Saudi Arabia recorded 787 suicides, a 185 percent increase from 2006.
Saudi researcher Fawazah Al-Enizi published a study that had investigated suicides among women in Riyadh. She found that young people are more prone to commit suicide than older people. More single women than men consider killing themselves, and most who die by their own hand have an intermediate education or less.
Most people who commit suicide live with their families. In fact, Al-Enzi found that 46.7 percent of all suicides are due to family problems, with 26.5 percent of all self-inflicted deaths among women attributed to husbands beating them or husbands seeking a second wife.
Family troubles stand out, though, as the leading cause of suicides. Troubles are due primarily to problems with the father, families refusing to allow the woman to marry the person they love or the family’s increasing doubts about the morality of the woman. Significantly, the lack of trust may be a factor in a single young woman killing herself.
Surprisingly, only 17.4 percent of the suicides recorded in the Kingdom are due to psychological problems. Drug abuse accounts for only 2.4 percent of all deaths.
The tragedy is that nearly half of the suicides in Saudi Arabia can be avoided if the government passes laws making domestic violence a crime. If a young woman suffers from family problems that appear insurmountable to her, shelters, instead of prisons, should be available. We can’t lose half of Saudi society because we have no laws against domestic violence or enough shelters to rescue women who are in desperate need.
Despite what the media have us believe, the lack of religion is not a factor in young people killing themselves. Rather, violence in the home, undue pressure for women to conform to society’s rules and perceived violations of morality are the reasons continue to haunt women. I might add — because I have seen it so often — the need for young men to control the lives of their sisters also leads to destructive behavior. Just consider the brother who broke up his sister’s engagement although he had not been part of her life for two years.
Whether we want to admit it or not, suicides among young women is an increasing phenomenon with science assigning blame to families. The government is hesitant to introduce anti-domestic violence laws and funding studies to further investigate how to prevent more deaths.
Meanwhile, the death toll continues to needlessly rise.
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