“I sometimes feel that Saudi women writers do not live in Saudi society. If I did not know they were female, I would think that their columns were written by men using women’s names.”
This is an excerpt from a phone conversation I had with a middle-aged woman. She said more than once that Saudi women writers were exaggerating their demands for women’s rights.
I tried to explain to her that what she saw as exaggeration, we see as the rights all women in the country are entitled to and deserve. After all, our society is in a state of change and development and we want women’s contributions to play a proper role.
She went on: “You want me to participate in the Shoura Council and to be optimistic about women becoming ministers. We don’t want that. We want the courts to allow us to keep our children after we divorce an irresponsible husband or an addict. We want to work and not to see doors closed in our faces every time we apply for a job. We want society to allow and encourage us to have jobs. We want to be ruled by religion rather than by culture. Most women, including me, do not care about our own official identification card. What we want is to keep our rights — such as the right to raise our children and receive support from their father.”
I agree with all that she said and support her — but I say that if women get jobs, that will help to support women’s rights. This is especially so since there are many men in high positions who do not believe that women have the ability to demand their rights or talk about their problems. They refuse to listen to women and always say to them, “Bring the man who is legally responsible for you.”
The woman who spoke to me on the phone has the right to demand that we women journalists write more about women’s problems — such as the situation of divorced women and widows who can find neither jobs nor official government protection or help.
At the same time, she must not think that we women journalists do not write about women’s problems. Women these days are more than half of the Saudi population but they do not hold anything even close to half the jobs. Nonetheless, I feel my friend on the phone was a bit hard on Saudi women writers. They live in this society and have the same experiences of suffering as other women do. They write about problems because the problems are a part of life here, and women writers are not isolated from them.
Arab News From the Local Press 27 August 2003
