Following are several examples of local stories which have appeared recently in our newspapers.
The Civil Defense Department asked a man to sign a document absolving its officers of any responsibility after the man tried to keep firemen from extinguishing a fire in his house. The man’s justification was that there were women in the house who must not be seen by strangers.
Another report told of a woman who accidentally locked the door of her house when she went into the courtyard to hang out her laundry. She had left a pot boiling on the stove and a small unattended child inside. Unable to open the door or call for help, she panicked when she saw smoke coming from the house. She then went to a neighbor’s house to call her husband. He was of course out of his office at that moment.
Filled with fear, the woman refused to give her name to the person who answered the phone because for her a woman’s name is a secret never to be revealed outside her close family. What she did was to tell the man to tell her husband that his house had caught fire.
The third example involved a dispute between the family of an employed woman and her husband over the woman’s salary. Each side insisted on taking the poor woman’s money for themselves. Unable to do anything, the woman watched helplessly as both sides traded insults and accusations.
Our own Saudi Telecom has its way of treating women. A woman who applies for a mobile phone will be told: “Tell your guardian to apply for you”. But when it comes to the bill, the same company sends it directly and without hesitation to the woman’s address. Even when taking a woman to hospital, it is always the father or the brother — and not the patient — who must sign the papers if an operation is required.
It is exactly this kind of treatment which marks them as inferior. This causes women to be confused and panic when faced with an emergency. While the logical thing to do is to act quickly to save lives, the woman keeps wondering whether she has the right to act alone and if so, under what circumstances. Yes, people are aware of the need to guarantee women’s rights but awareness is not enough. What we need is to pass laws which guarantee and protect women’s rights and punish those who undermine or scorn them.
29 September 2002
