RIYADH, 2 September 2007 — Sarah, 54, is struggling to obtain a national identification card after she failed to convince her two brothers to allow her to have one. Her husband, 73, doesn’t drive a car nor is he even aware that women have been allowed to carry a national ID since 2001.
Since she is not a businesswoman, or even working, she says her brothers don’t think she needs an ID card, which require women to show their faces for the picture.
Since 2001, thousands of women around the Kingdom have obtained ID cards. In Dammam, for instance, officials have reported that approximately 12,000 women have gotten ID cards. Jeddawi women lead the country in obtaining ID cards; according to Al-Watan newspaper one in four Saudi women who have gotten ID cards are from this Western coastal city.
Majedah Besar, a sociologist, said the number of women with ID cards would be higher if there were no social family pressures against them. “The approval of a male guardian is still a fundamental condition to obtain an ID,” she said, adding that “an identification card is meant to be a citizen identity reference, and it’s also a means of independence, which can’t be accomplished since men still have the right to decide whether women can get IDs.” (Women are typically listed only by name on Saudi family ID cards, which has pictures of the male head of households and lists all family members by name.)
Norah Alswayan, member of the Family Charitable Center for Social Consultation, said society is still unwilling to recognize the importance of individual ID cards. “There is still a serious social misunderstanding regarding the real purpose of carrying a national ID card,” she said. It is a legitimate right which is important to prove the individual identity whether male or female and stamp out fraud.”
Social conservatives argue that the ID is another domino in the gradual erosion of their values because they say it forces women to show their faces, which runs counter to their conservative interpretations of modest women’s dress.
Alswayan says she believes with time this view will abate. “We all knew that the Saudi society won’t accept the idea of issuing women IDs at first, but they will in the future,” she said. “Women themselves are hesitant about showing their faces.”
Besar says that the ID issue will resolve itself once society realizes that they can’t have their cake and eat it, too: If women are to work, conduct business, etcetera, then they need photo ID to protect from fraudulent activity.
“It’s not enough to verify a woman’s identity through her family ID card (which only depicts a photograph of the male head of household),” she said, pointing out that unless women get their own photo IDs, they will always have to be accompanied by the man depicted on their family IDs for institutions to get reasonable verification of the woman’s identity.
Besar also says that when women have their own identification they will feel more like citizens and less like names on a card belonging to another person.
