Queueing in the 'women's section' of a Macdonalds
A country where a woman who has no man to speak for her literally doesn’t exist as far as the authorities are concerned – and can’t claim benefits, can’t get medical treatment, feels intimidated to even leave the house. A country where women’s career choices are limited to teaching or, oddly, presenting radio phone-ins – and where they have to ask permission from their husband, father, or even their son, to go to work at all. Where even if they are allowed to work, they have to find a man to drive them there and back since there’s no public transport and women aren’t allowed to drive. Where fashion options are limited to chosing between black, navy or brown for the colour of the stifling, all-covering garment that all women have to wear or face arrest or beating.
The BBC’s Newsnight last night aired an absolutely brilliant film from Sue Lloyd-Roberts about women in Saudi Arabia – the country where all these things are just facts of daily life. It reminded me most of all of Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘A Handmaid’s Tale’, set in a future USA where women’s rights have been eroded to the point that they are reduced to the possessions of wealthy men. But it’s happening now, in a developed country with shopping malls (that women aren’t allowed to work in), radio phone-in shows (where teenagers seeking romance are advised ‘don’t bother’), and a chapter of the Hell’s Angels (whose members see nothing wrong with the country’s treatment of women).
And where, depressingly, some women defend the status quo. Sue Lloyd-Roberts asks one wealthy woman (the founder of an organisation called ‘My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me’, believe it or not) if she agrees that it’s not fair that women can’t drive since it means that women who can’t afford chauffeurs can’t go to work. The reply? “A woman who is so financially constrained that she has to work, will never be able to buy a car”. Never mind that some of her less priviledged sisters are sitting in their homes, enduring illness, poverty and a total loss of dignity just because they are women.
There are some inspiring examples of women trying to make a change – like the social worker in the film and, inevitably, some Saudi bloggers. But it seems not many, not yet.
I know you know this. I knew it too. But seeing it, seeing the little humiliations and deprivations that make up the reality of life for women in that country is a different thing. It was truly horrifying. I hope that one day soon we will look back at films like this and be amazed, as we are now at the treatment of black South Africans under apartheid, that these things were able to exist in our world.
