The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the most conservative states in the world. Here, strict segregation of women is observed mainly outside the walls of the house. Women of Saudi Arabia have very limited rights. This is due to the great influence of religious leaders and the peculiarities of the laws of the country, based on Islamic law.
Life of a woman in Saudi Arabia
Every adult resident of the Kingdom must have a guardian - a close relative of a male. Without the consent of the guardians, the women of Saudi Arabia are deprived of the opportunity to travel, obtain licenses for doing business, work, study in a college or university. Training is allowed only in the female environment, male teachers can communicate with students only on domestic television. Even in cases where the consent of the guardian is not required by law, the authorities appeal to him for permission. Without the permission of the husband or guardian, women in the welfare state do not receive medical care. There are no laws prohibiting violence against women in the country, but there are a great number of legislative norms fixing the dominant position of men. Thus, men have the right to have several wives at the same time, to divorce them unilaterally, without putting forward legal grounds. For the fairer sex, obtaining a legal divorce is very difficult. A female heiress can claim a share of the inheritance two times less than the male heir. Residents of the country do not have the right to drive. They have to cover their face, hair and wear an abayu - a long black dress that hides the figure.
Conservative men agreed to expand the rights that women in Saudi Arabia can enjoy
In 2011, King Abdullah issued a decree authorizing women to participate in municipal elections. Moreover, the women of the country were given the right to sit in the Royal Advisory Council, which had previously consisted exclusively of men. Undoubted progress has been made in sports: in the summer of 2012, two women of Saudi Arabia participated in the Olympic Games for the first time in history (photo). In April 2013 the world circulated a message about the new generosity of the men of the Kingdom. They allowed their ladies to ride bicycles and motorcycles, but introduced a number of restrictions. First, Saudi Arabians can not ride without the accompaniment of a husband or another male person who is related to her. Secondly, you can ride only on the bicycle paths of parks and in other specially designated places, located as far as possible from the places where men gather. Finally, the last restriction: a Saudi woman can ride a bicycle or a motorcycle only wrapped up to her head in a national dress - abayu. It remains to add that the observance of these rules is followed by the religious police, which suppresses any attempts to violate the canons of Islam.
Despite some reforms, to some extent improving the legal status of Saudi women, discrimination continues to exist. The stability of Islamic customs and traditions does not allow us to hope for rapid progressive changes in the situation of women living in Saudi Arabia, which is not in line with modern legal norms that fix the status of women in the field of international law.