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LSE: Public lectures and events
A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia
01:25:05
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- [00:00]
A
Good evening. My name is Sumi Madhok. I am Associate professor at the LSE Gender Institute. I'm delighted to welcome you all to this evening's talk, and in particular I'm delighted to welcome this evening's speaker, Professor Madhavi Al Rashid. Professor Madhavi Al Rashid needs no introduction to this audience. You've all come to hear her because you know of her work. However, these events have a certain formal structure and so let me say a few words about her. Professor Madhavi Al Rashid is Visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at LSE and Research Fellow at the Open Society Foundation. She was professor of Anthropology of Religion at King's College, London between 1994 and 2013, and previously to that she was Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. She also taught at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and the Institute of Social, Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Among her many publications, numerous books and articles on Saudi Arabia, politics, religion and the Arab world, as well as contributing to various academic journals and edited volumes. Tonight she will be speaking to her new book, which is this one, which is called A Most Masculine State, Gender Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia. And to those of you who haven't yet had a chance to look at it, I recommend it to you in very strong terms. At the end of the talk, Professor Al Rashid has very kindly agreed to sign some copies of her book which are there and available for purchase. So if you should like that, do get yourself to the table. At the end of the proceedings, Professor Al Rashid will speak for 40, 45 minutes, and after which she will take questions from the floor. And I will sort of, you know, give you a little bit of what I'd like you to do when you do ask questions of Professor Al Rashid. So without much ado, I give you Professor Al Rashid.
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B
Thank you, Sumi, for your kind words. First, I must say that many thanks to the Middle east center at LSE for hosting me tonight, but also for hosting me longer than that. For the coming three years, I'll be based at the Middle east center here and I'm looking forward to working with staff at the Middle east center and LSE as well. Tonight it is an event to introduce a new book that was published recently and I was working on it for the last three years. I must say that this book had a very old story and it took me almost a quarter of a century to come to terms with writing a book on what one would believe is Saudi women. The story began in Cambridge in 1985 when I was a student and I went to the Faculty of Oriental Studies, as one does in those days, in order to hear about the Middle East. And. And at the Faculty of Oriental Studies there are eminent scholars, but also they're retired colonial officers, as one imagines. One of them said to me, oh, so you're a young girl from Saudi Arabia. Are you here to study women? And I said, well, absolutely not. My project is not about women. In fact, I was looking at state formation, and that was the topic of my PhD. So that old colonial officer gave me a complex that if you're a Saudi woman, you must study other women in your country. So for the last 25 years, I kept the subject of gender relations away from my research agenda. Yet I found that in every book I wrote since the 1990s, there was an element where the narrative of women were inserted in my books. Whether I was talking about tribal politics, about the history of Saudi Arabia, about Arab migration to London. In every single volume, I felt that there was an unintentional discussion of gender relations of women in society and in politics. So I finished my last book three years ago, and I decided that this time I'm going to write a book on gender relations in Saudi Arabia. So the book is really is not about women. It is about the relationship that an authoritarian state has with women. So my focus is not on women themselves, but on that relationship that shapes the prospects for women's lives and emancipation in any country. It is also a story about how a masculine state feminizes itself. And therefore, there are these two parallel stories that run through the book. And it began after 9 11. 911 was a very important event, not only for the United States, but also for the Arab world and specifically to Saudi Arabia at that stage, as you all probably remember, that Saudi Arabia was heavily accused by the United States and also the outside world in general, of having had something to do with 911 in the sense that its religious tradition, its society, came under scrutiny because it was believed that the 15 hijackers were Saudi. And therefore there was a context called Saudi Arabia, society, religion, politics that produced those 15 hijackers. And at the same time, while the world was trying to come to terms with what happened, the story of Saudi women began to become even more prominent in Western media, among policymakers, and in Saudi Arabia itself. So this also coincided with the increasing interest in the discrimination against women by global feminists. Global feminism almost was strengthened in the 1990s and even more so after 2011, and the question of women became very much entangled with terrorism for some reason that maybe become clearer later. So at that moment, I decided that I really want to write a book that shatters so many myths about Saudi women. Saudi women conjure contradictory images. People are interested in that sort of world. That seems to quite a lot of us here in London is so alien and different. And the media doesn't help in actually giving us a balanced view of the lives and constraints and prospects of women in Saudi Arabia. So anyway, on a spectrum, you have the Taliban at one end, then next to the Taliban comes Saudi Arabia. It is slotted on that sort of access that we have this sort of extreme discrimination against women among the Taliban of Afghanistan. Then next to that, we have Saudi Arabia. And this had been a persistent image that was extremely difficult to actually deconstruct and expose for so many reasons. Saudi women helped to create that other that we in the west here measure our development and our progress against those other women in other parts of the world who happen to be different from us and are subjected to the oppression of their men. So with global feminism, we see that quite a lot of feminists wanted to save that other, that Muslim women who happen to be in Afghanistan or in Pakistan or in Saudi Arabia, and here they come across several problems. So I wanted to demystify Saudi women and look at their lives as normal human being, in their diversity and in their rich experiences, in their suffering and in their success. So the general assumption that in order to understand why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, why if they travel abroad, they have to be accompanied by a male guardian or given an authorization, why they cannot represent themselves in court, There are so many restrictions, their unemployment level is extremely low in the country. So there is a package of indices that demonstrate to anybody who studies that particular part of the world that there is a serious gender discrimination in the country. So people volunteer explanations. Why are Saudi women lagging behind in employment, in citizenship rights, in civil and political rights? And by the way, they're not the only ones who lag behind in political and civil rights, because men too are actually denied any kind of political representation in an elected assembly, or they not denied the right to form civil society? And there are many other aspects of authoritarian rule that are dominant in Saudi Arabia. So what are the question, the answers to this predicament, to this polarized image about Saudi women that is often described as a complete victim of their own society or as a hero? So we are exposed to these two contradictory images of the Saudi women. On the one hand, we have stories about them being denied the right to drive freedom of movement, the right to leave the country, or in fact, the right to have a passport without the permission of their guardian. So these are the victimhood side of the story. But again, the Western media and quite a lot of the Arabic media and Saudi media celebrates the hero. The first woman who is a pilot, she can fly a plane. The first woman who got a research fellowship at Harvard, the first woman who is actually going to practice. In fact, there are four of them. Today it was announced that they were given the license to practice law in court. So we have the victim and the hero. But the majority of Saudi women are neither heroes nor victims. They're just ordinary women like you and me. Now, in order to understand this polarization, these two persistent images, most people would volunteer two reasons. First, that comes to mind, it's the Wahhabi Salafi religious tradition. And it is an easy answer, because you could blame everything on the Saudi religious tradition that is known as the Saudi. The Wahhabi Salafi movement, which had its roots in the 18th century but survived over the last 250 years. And any kind of problem can be blamed on the Saudi Wahhabi Salafi tradition. So if there is low level of employment, participation in the labor force, it is the Saudi Wahhabi Salafi movement that prohibits women from work. If women can't drive, then it is the Saudi Salafi Wahhabi movement that prohibits women from driving. So religion, basically, we're talking here about a religious tradition that grew out of a particular context in the Arabian peninsula in the 18th century. And one could have volumes of religious opinions called fatwa in order to support the argument that religion oppresses Saudi women. Islam, basically, in its Wahhabi Salafi tradition. Now, this is a problematic interpretation. And in the book I try to go beyond essentializing religion, essentializing Islam. The Saudi religious Wahhabi, Salafi scholars do not actually invent religious opinion. They rely on religious opinion that had existed for centuries in the Muslim world. They rely on multiple sources. The Quran, the tradition of the Prophet, and also the interpretation of other male religious scholars. And they provide the most extreme interpretations in terms of the prohibitions. They abide by certain principles in Islam that are not specifically Saudi that they have developed in order to prevent greater sins or greater temptation. And therefore they sort of verge on the extreme case of prohibiting certain activities that are, in other Muslim countries, regarded as lawful. So religion and Islam becomes an umbrella against that covers everything, almost all social, political, and religious ills, including Gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia. And my book tries to go beyond this argument because first of all, it is reductionist. And second, it doesn't actually talk about the context in which religion is appropriated by people, developed, interpreted or reinterpreted. So religion itself is not the cause of discrimination against women in my book, but it is the conversion of religion into a religious nationalist ideology that allows the appropriation of women as an object in order to represent something other than themselves. So I'll try to explain the Saudi tradition. Saudi Wahhabism, if you like itself, has become a nationalist, a religious nationalist ideology. Let's here distinguish between two types of nationalism. There is the order, the nationalism that we have encountered in Europe, mainly a secular kind of nationalism that some other Arab countries have adapted in the form of nationalism in the 1950s and 60s. But that nationalism was secular. It was appealing to the nation, to its culture, to its identity, language, et cetera, in order to appeal to context whereby both Muslims and non Muslims lived. So for example, in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt, there was a religious diversity that that secular nationalism to tried to incorporate in the construction of the nation. But without going into how it felt in that project, women were appropriated as symbols for the modernity of the nation. So these nationalist leaders, such as Nasser and the others, appropriated women in order to promote the modernity or the so called modernity of the nation. Very much like in other post colonial situations, such as for example in India, where women within the family became idealized as the cornerstone for the development of the nation. In Saudi Arabia there was no secular nationalism. Instead, the construction of the nation took the form of religious nationalist ideology in order to homogenize people, people and construct them as one people. Now, whether they succeeded or not, that's a different question. But in this project of religious nationalism, the state became important and the state objective was to maintain the morality of the nation. So the state becomes the guardian of the nation. It has to demonstrate its piety because it is a religious nation, unlike in the secular variant of where the modernity of the nation had to be visible and the visibility required the visibility of women. Ironically, in Saudi Arabia, the visibility of piety, of religious compliance and religious observance. So the visibility of piety was dependent on the invisibility of women. The more you segregate your women, the more you do not allow them visible space in the public sphere, the more the pious the visibility of the nation. And therefore this is extremely important to understand because one could say, well, it's religion and then move on, but it is not Actually, that it is this transformation of a religious tradition, the Wahhabi tradition, into a religious nationalist ideology that created this situation. A second factor that is always quoted or cited as a reason behind the extreme, perhaps discrimination in some cases against women in Saudi Arabia is culture. And again, here we move into the sort of cultural argument that that is often reduced to tribalism. So society is tribal. Tribes are patriarchal. They want to keep their women inside the tribe, and therefore the tribalism in that culture contribute to the marginalization of women and to some extent, their discrimination against them. But Saudi Arabia is not the only tribal country in the region. At least in the Arabian Peninsula, it is not less or more tribal than Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Yemen and other countries. In fact, quite a lot of the tribes or the tribal element is divided across different countries. So there is a continuum of tribal groups from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait. You'd find that all of them have relatives in Kuwait and vice versa. The same thing in the south of Saudi Arabia. You see the same pattern between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. So the tribal element is not unique to Saudi Arabia. And therefore, questions about employment of women or even driving is not an issue in countries like Kuwait or in Qatar, United Arab Emirates and other places. So why is it an issue in Saudi Arabia? And therefore, tribalism cannot be held responsible for this unique situation. I think both Saudi Arabia and its neighbors belong to what Deniz Kanjotti calls the patriarchal belt. And this patriarchal belt stretches from Morocco to Asia. And therefore there's nothing unique about Saudi Arabia. And there are variations. What is unique is that Kuwait, Qatar and the other Arab neighbors of Saudi Arabia do not, as states, do not, build their legitimacy on creating the pious nation. So it is easier and more flexible to negotiate gender roles and gender rights in countries like Kuwait or Qatar. Whereas in Saudi Arabia, the state itself builds its legitimacy on this religious nationalism, and therefore it has become a prisoner of its own ideology, of its own religious nationalism, and cannot maneuver without actually losing some of its legitimacy. So in a way, these two factors, religion and culture, have to be taken carefully into account. And I cannot say that they can be held responsible for discrimination against women or the gender gap in Saudi Arabia. You have to look at them, including other factors. So what do I look at in the book? I look at oil. Oil is extremely important, and it has become a mixed blessing. Oil was an enabling factor in the sense that it allowed the state to have the resources in order, for example, to introduce mass education in the 1960s, improve the health services for women, build a welfare state that Caters for women's needs. But at the same time, oil has become a constraining factor. Oil itself, like the Saudi state, is a masculine industry. How oil is not an industry that is comparable to, for example, textile or factories, even car building. Oil tends to be in distant locations, away from urban centers. And it is a male dominated industry. Even among the early American oil company, the workers, they brought their secretaries with them. And apart from that role, there wasn't really scope for women to work in the oil industry. So there was a specific job for women. American women who went to Aramco camp in Saudi Arabia, where the oil, the first oil camp was established. And later Saudi Arabia had maintained the fact that oil is a masculine industry and it does not generate substantial employment for women. So in a way, women were not recruited initially in the oil industry, but later on, their numbers started to increase. Most Saudi women are employed in teaching and in health services. So the oil allowed the Saudis to in a way, create a kind of mass education, health and services. But it was restraining in many other respects. One respect is it instilled in the minds of society that the Saudi woman is a jewel that needs to be protected. So she needs not, she doesn't need to work if, for example, she can afford not to. Oil allows Saudi women to bring foreign drivers to drive them everywhere. Also, it allows the country to employ almost 10 to 11 million foreign workers who are, while it has resources, women's expertise at hand. But the government decides not to rock the boat too much and not to draw women into employment on a massive scale. There are reasons why foreign labor is still dominant in Saudi Arabia, but that's another story that I can't go into now. More recently, the state tried to introduce or expand employment of women. And ironically, they were recruited in jobs that require interaction with other women. So one of the jobs that might seem bizarre to you is that shops that sell women's underwear have to have women saleswomen so that a woman feels comfortable when she goes and buys these clothing items. And therefore there was a feminization of lingerie shops in Saudi Arabia. Also, more recently, women were allowed to work as cashiers in order to create employment opportunities for a cross section of Saudi society. Not all of them have higher education in order to increase their participation in the labor force. So the economy is important to take into account specifically if this economy is an oil based economy, and what the consequences of that on gender. Now, of course, there are other countries that produce oil, do not have this issue of gender discrimination. But I think with the exception of some of the Scandinavian countries, oil itself does not seem to be favorable to women's emancipation in many countries, especially in South America, for example, and in other places. So let me move into the final cause that I think is extremely important to explain why Saudi women have lagged behind over the years. I think it is policies and it is politics that is entangled with this religious nationalism and politics of an authoritarian state that patronizes women and derives a certain kind of legitimacy from claiming to protect them and guard them against intrusions from outsiders, from religious or Western trends. Because the Saudi state builds its legitimacy as the guardian of the soul of its nation, the guardian of its morality, then it is forced to take certain steps that prove that. So the segregation of women, or sex segregation, the visibility, the visible signs of women being protected and guarded citizens, is extremely important for the state, for state legitimacy. But the state politics is not always the same. It follows a certain kind of historical trajectory because politics changes and the state legitimacy changes. And therefore, the Saudi state has oscillated between restricting women and empowering women, depending on the political context. So to give you examples, the establishment of the state itself, from 1932, we begin to have narratives or historical narratives about how the state was established and what kind of acts that led to the establishment of the state. Of course, there is the story about the hero, the founder of Saudi Arabia. There's the story about British colonial officers of the type that I mentioned earlier, who were more active actually, than the one I met in the 80s. There is the story of battles, of raids on other groups. And the masculine foundation of the state is actually embedded in history textbooks. So it's a story of courage and chivalry. But also we have the story about women. The whole project was to protect the honor of women, to demonstrate that women are not contaminated by blasphemous or sinful others. And therefore the creation of the state becomes a project entangled with femininity and protecting the feminine person. But that came to sort of a change in the 1950s and 60s. Remember, in the 50s and 60s, this was the age of sort of Arab nationalism, and each state was trying to show that it's more modern than the other. So Saudi Arabia had to compete with, at the time, Egypt, which was under Jamal Abdel Nasser, who is a secular, supposedly nationalist leadership. And him and many others wanted to demonstrate how modern they are. And therefore they tried to promote women's causes in their education, employment, etc. And Saudi Arabia had to do the same, despite its own religious, nationalist ideology. So it introduced schooling, women, the education of women on a mass scale. And there was obviously resistance because the modern school, school for women specifically, was regarded as a deviation from traditional teaching and traditional learning methods. But that's not the reason. The schools that were introduced in Saudi Arabia had to import non Saudi teachers from other Arab countries. So Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian women had to be brought into the communities in order to teach Saudi women. And obviously the worry was that these teachers would bring new lifestyles, new ideas, and contaminate the purity and piety of local women. But also these modern schools marginalized up to a certain extent the traditional religious scholars who used to teach women basic knowledge about language and also religious education. So for many reasons, there was rejection of the modern school simply because it competed with the local tradition that had been going on for years. And therefore the state was able to force women's schooling on society. And at the beginning it was, it wasn't. People weren't very excited. Quite a lot of girls had to be grouped together, regardless of their age in a particular class, until almost like a decade. And there was quite a lot of dropout because societies families did not want their girls to stay in education for a long time. So you have people just finishing elementary school, then taken out of the school in order to help with large families or to marry. Then we come to the 1980s and all these kind of initiatives that were introduced in order to empower women and move. Women's education had a setback in the 1980s, and the policy of the state was to reverse the openness of the previous decades and move towards greater restrictions on women. It is the state doesn't suddenly sort of decide to do that. There was an international and regional context that pushed it to use the gender card in order to survive quite a lot of challenges. One of the local challenge was the 1979 seizure of the Mecca Mosque, whereby a group of radical Islamists moved into the mosque and held people hostage during the pilgrimage season. That made the government aware of a rising Islamist trend that criticized the government for its Westernizing impact on society, for allowing Saudi women, or for being also a close ally of the West. So the Islamist threat that started in 1979 was also using women as a symbol for its opposition to the government from both sides. We find this reinforcing each other. So the government managed to eliminate the rebels in the mosque, but at the same time, after its success, it incorporated their own demands and implemented them. So there were restrictions on women in the 1980s that the previous generation of women didn't experience the rise of Islamism as well contributed to greater restrictions and also the gender issue becoming a topic for debate. So the 1980s were the period of greater restriction, and the situation continued until 2000 and 2001, when the government decided to reverse its policy and empower women. So these are conditions that push a particular government to either move in the direction of empowering women or restricting them. And I think the quest for legitimacy is extremely important in a country like Saudi Arabia. And women, as I said earlier, become the visible sign of all sorts of things, although they may remain invisible today. What I have, I bring the story in the book to what is going on now. And the interesting outcome of the last decade is that both the Saudi state and Saudi sustainability are almost in a race for the quest to become cosmopolitan, modern. And this is extremely interesting because it has certain consequences for gender issues. The cosmopolitan modernity is now a kind of legitimacy narrative that we are modern, we have modern installations. If you, if you go to the country, we have modern roads, modern hospitals, construction boom, et cetera. And therefore we are also cosmopolitan in our own way. In terms of cosmopolitanism, if you think that cosmopolitanism is to have people from multiple nationality coexisting, this is not cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is something else. But the visibility of pluralism is there, and therefore gender becomes important. And in order to capture how women themselves respond to this, I look at women's literature in the last 10, 15 years. And this literature in the form of novels is extremely important in a country like Saudi Arabia. I was amazed how many novels were published over the last two, the last 10 years by Saudi women. And as I interviewed women novelists such as Omay Malhamis, Badri Al Bisher and many others, I found that literature plays an important role in an oppressive country like Saudi Arabia. Saudi women are not allowed to have a real civil society on the ground to promote their causes. And therefore they are prohibited from organizing a civil society with a clear agenda to promote women's empowerment. Any women's empowerment must come from the top down. And therefore, if you have associations, they have to be patronized by the leadership. In fact, they have to be patronized by some princesses in order for them to function. So patronage of the state or women in the state, usually their daughters or the sisters or the mothers of the royal family, have to patronize these societies, such as charities, or even they themselves are founders of charities. Independent space is very limited, and it is very suspicious. So charitable organizations that are not under the patronage of some royalty become suspicious and sometimes they are repressed. So I look at two generation of women and their writing that represent a window of opportunity to read these, to read Saudi society and women's voices in Saudi society. I chose these two generations because they write differently. One generation, I call them the generation of women in search of themselves. And these women are trying to reflect on their own society in ways that are unusual. So for example, they tend to deconstruct the religious nationalist narrative which claims that we are all the same, we are all Muslims and Arabs, and there are no variations between different parts of Saudi Arabia. So these women are trying to deconstruct this and look at the roots of the pluralism in Saudi society. Basically, they are saying that we are not one nation. Some of this literature undermines the religious and political narrative about Saudi Arabia that is promoted by the state. So they look at the foreign wife who comes from, let's say, Syria or Lebanon and brought to live in Saudi Arabia and her experience of Saudi Arabia. So through the voices, through fictive voices, they narrate experiences. And sometimes this literature is actually bridges the gap between fiction and reality. In my interviews with these novelists, I realized that what they were describing is actually drawn from their own experience. One of them said to me that we live in a limited circle among women and we have no exposure or experiences that we could talk about. But some of these novelists actually document either biographical information or experiences that they have encountered in their families. So if you buy the book, you'll find the references. And some of these novels are really interesting because simply they bridge that gap between fiction and reality. A second generation that is younger than this generation of novelists. These are the product of that cosmopolitan modernity. In inverted comma, it is about the shopping center. It's about traveling to London and California, San Francisco, hanging around in Chicago, or even going on holiday in Sharm El Sheikh. So this new generation of young celebrity Muslim women novelist is promoted in the west and it's promoted in Saudi Arabia as the new face of the Saudi women. But let's face it, these are privileged, truly cosmopolitan globetrotters, novelists who have actually become a product of the neoliberal economy that dominates Saudi Arabia. So they hang around in shopping malls and drink cappuccino, like we all do here. And therefore they write about their experiences. They, they write about men and women in Saudi Arabia. And some of them actually write about flirtation, about sex. And some of them are even more daring. They talk about same sex, love and relationships. So this has become the celebrity novelist And I'm sure, you know, one famous one is Raja Asana, but there are others who have actually focused more than her on sex in Saudi society. And obviously they get in trouble simply for saying what Saudis are not used to being said by women novelists and made public. There's quite a lot of talk in Saudi society about sex, but that talk comes within a framework. It is the framework of religious education. In Islam itself, there's quite a lot of talk about sex in terms of purity, ablution, pleasure as well. This may come to a surprise to many people, but there are manuals in religious studies about how a woman can please her husband and how her husband can please her. And therefore, that talk is taught to school girls at a very young age in their education curriculum, how to please your husband, how you purify yourself, how you make yourself actually a good Muslim woman in that domain. So this new literature challenges that. They do not want Saudi audiences to learn about sex from novels or read about sex in novels, because that erotic theology that I call erotic theology will lose its relevance in a cosmopolitan, modern society. And therefore these novelists get in trouble, but not to the extent of harassment or other kind of oppression. But these are not the representative of Muslim women. They are simply one voice among many others. So in the book, I look at the Islamist women, what is called the da', Iat, the preachers, who also are extremely modern. We'd be surprised. They may be modern because they are product of the modernity of Saudi Arabia in the last three, four decades. They are a product of the religious education system, system that produces literate religious. Religiously literate women as much as it produces religiously literate men. And they have a different vision of how society should be. One would be surprised that some of them may sign a petition against allowing women to drive. So we would think. I was surprised, you know, why would another woman want to drive and doesn't want other women to drive? Or, for example, if there is mixing between men and women in an office, they tend to object to that, and they think that mixing between the sexes would actually reduce the employment of women in offices. So in conversation about driving, I asked one of them, why do you object to women driving to the extent of signing a petition? So she said, I do not want my husband to rely on me for everything, to take the children to school, to do the shopping, to do all the household issues, running the household with a car. He should be around and present to take me to places. If I can drive, then he would rely on Me. So from the outside, we think that they have a serious religious reason for objecting to women's driving. And in fact, it turned out to be a very practical reason about family dynamic and division of labor within the family. Another example is women and mixing in an office. Obviously, there is a problem with polygamy. And a veiled woman told me that she does not want her husband to hang around in an office with unveiled women simply because he will be exposed to women and he might actually take a second wife. So remove religion out of it. And then the argument and the reason becomes actually very simple to understand and relate to. Another example, a veiled woman argued that she does not want her future husband to see her before the wedding. And this may seem really difficult to understand. In our own society, there is one kind of look that is allowed, and it is called the legitimate look at a woman before marriage. And nazra sharia, that is within the Islamic tradition. And that is you meet with the family around and you show the face, but you can't have sort of privacy. You have to be surrounded by other members of the family. And a woman said that I'm not even allowing my husband to have a future husband to have this look. And I said, why? And she said, what if he doesn't like what he sees and changes his mind? And then everybody would know that he came to see me and he didn't like me. And therefore, that would actually impact on my chances of seeing. Of being proposed to again. If I become sort of available for those men to come and have a look, then they go without the look leading to marriage. And therefore, to protect her honor and reputation, she does not want her future husband or fiance to see her. So we have to go beyond this sort of rigid, essentializing way of looking at Islam as the cause of. Of every single issue that we are not familiar with. We cannot simply rely on that argument to explain everything. Now just let me conclude, I think.
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A minute or two.
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A minute or two, yes. So in a way, the book concludes by saying that there is an intimate connection between gender discrimination and in Saudi Arabia and authoritarian rule. And this is very clear to me as I did this research and tried to understand the many causes that are often listed. But what surprised me was also that the different voices of these women looked for the authoritarian state to deliver. So it is interesting that quite a lot of women seek an authoritarian state to give them certain rights. And this goes across the board, from the most liberal women to the most religious. Basically, women need authoritarian state in society. Where they haven't had consensus over their rights. Gender issues remain volatile in a country like Saudi Arabia and therefore any kind of change is expected to be initiated from the top. The state can only do it for them. And interesting, the Saudi state has tried to move women, as most states do, from the private patriarchy of their family, of their kin, their fathers, their, and put them under its own patriarchy through legislation and through the welfare services. In a way, the welfare state marginalizes men and the state becomes another source that the women must seek in order to protect themselves against men, other men. And therefore it's a very common story that is not unique to Saudi Arabia that men, that women seek the authoritarian state when they lack the consensus of their own society and when they are deprived of mobilizing, of becoming an active civil society. It's very difficult for them to actually gain any rights without seeking the authoritarian state that patronizes them and deliver certain kind of rights, although these rights may be limited. And this had coincided with the Saudi king who wanted to shift the legitimacy of the ruling family to a new level by feminizing the Saudi state, the masculine state, simply because this coincided with the the Saudi state seeking international legitimacy. It was important for the Saudi state to be seen as doing something about gender. And therefore at the same time, the mobilization of women in Saudi Arabia has increased over the last five years in terms of staging campaigns to drive, although unsuccessful so far, but they are mobilizing and the authoritarian state has to hijack women's mobilization before it gets out of hand. And therefore it is important to co opt women's activism and women to be seen as seeking more rights from the state rather than taking these rights. And therefore, from the point of view of the government, women are needed as a group in order to file political dissent among men. And once the Saudi scene was dominated by Islamist politics, women become extremely important to launch attacks against the Islamists because we still have this idea that whenever Islamists dominate, women are the losers. But again, women can be used to fight Islamists. And this is exactly what happened in Saudi Arabia over the last 10 years. Years where women writers would undermine the dominance of religious scholars or extremist ideas on matters that relate to them. So this new mobilization of women from driving to employment rights has preempted the outcome by patronizing women's rights and channeling women's activism, activism towards state controlled objectives. So I won't go on, but I could elaborate on certain points in the discussion. What I just want to conclude with is I think Saudi women Through their writing and through their activism on the ground have already started a long and arduous journey. But I think it has already started. The voices of the. The many Saudi women discussed in this book represent, I think, a light at the end of the tunnel. But my attempt was to capture glimpses of this light and not to sort of blame one group or one cause for the perpetuation of discrimination against women in a country like Saudi Arabia. Thank you.
- [52:27]
A
Thank you very much, Professor Al Rashid, for this wonderfully nuanced, exciting, thought provoking, illuminating talk. I'm sure you're buzzing with questions. I certainly have used up my sheet here with all possible questions to ask of her, but I now invite questions from the floor for her. When you ask a question, can I please request you to give your name and affiliation as it would help for Professor Al Rashid to know who she's talking to. And also if I could, given how big this audience is tonight, could I also request that you ask only one question, please, because this is only so that we can get as many questions as possible to her.
- [53:14]
B
Thank you very much.
- [53:18]
C
Hi, my name is Mohammed Rahman. I'm from Deutsche Bank. I had a question. Fascinating talk, Professor. I really enjoyed it. The question I had was how much do Saudi women, and indeed the rest of the women in the area, in the region, see Turkey's model as an example, both in terms of women's rights and just generally.
- [53:40]
B
You'Ve said.
- [53:42]
C
My name is Baraka Jasm. I'm an Arab media analyst. And my question is that the issue of Saudi women rights creates a widespread international solidarity and support. And by doing so it plays into the regime hand which uses this issue to mask and secure what could be considered bigger issues such as political reform and participation, participation, human rights, both for men and women, and, you know, the treatment of human rights activists such as Hassan and. Or constitutional monarchy activists. And I just wonder if Professor Modawi wants to warn against this.
- [54:23]
A
Thank you. There's a question right at the back. Right at the back. Sorry, just. Could you wait for the mic, please? Thank you.
- [54:29]
D
Thank you very much. I was reading about the history of Saudi Arabia because as well as the creations, it goes right back to the art of Islam. I don't know if you know anything about the Carmation sect in the 10th century that promoted a very radical social program and also the emancipation of women. It was, I think, one aspect of Ishmaelism. I wonder if you know anything about that.
- [54:50]
B
If you do, I'd be interested in what you have to say about it.
- [54:53]
A
Thank you. And we'll take one more question and then we'll start a new round. So there's a question here in the third row.
- [55:01]
E
Hi, I'm Nikita. My question is, can you, can you put some light on the fact that if the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia subject to different economic classes, I mean, considering everybody in Arab countries is not rich, or is it, I mean, is it just. Is it just discrimination or just restriction of women? Or is it restriction of women from a certain class more or less compared to the others? And I would also like to make a comment. It was really interesting to know what you said about the cultural argument and how it relates to tribalism, which is related to keeping more control over your women. Because if I relate to it to the Indian tribal population, it has, in fact, it contradicts the tribal women in like the traditional tribal tribes in India. They have been known for equal distribution of work and, you know, higher mobility of women. So it was just interesting to know. So I just wanted to point it out.
- [56:13]
A
Thank you very much. I'll come back for a second round of questions. And so would you like to.
- [56:17]
B
Okay, let's start with Mohammed's question on Turkey. I think Turkey offers an interesting model and I think quite a lot of Saudis initially flirted with the idea that this is interesting simply because it's a significant other and just do anecdotal evidence is the success of Turkish television series in the Arab world and specifically in Saudi Arabia, to the extent that one religious scholar issued a fatwa against watching them and against putting Noor or one of the actors photos on T shirts, simply because they offer a model of a modern middle class family where husbands and wife are in the kitchen together. It blurs the gender roles that are well established and therefore they're appealing. But Turkey had gone through different history and I think any kind of imported model is not going to work. I think societies find their own model which is not pure. It is basically a combination of different trends, different ways of living. So in terms of the second question on the regime and women's rights, how they divert from political human rights. Women's rights, I think, are part of this big political project. They cannot be isolated. The driving itself is human right, freedom of movement, and it is part of the wider political spectrum of rights. But in my view, I don't think real rights can come without a political change. I cannot be confident to say that authoritarian repressive states that do not allow men to be represented in a national elected assembly, for example, can deliver Rights to women. And as I showed in my historical analysis that whatever is given this decade may be taken away next decade. I mean, in the 50s there was a good sort of spirit of empowering women, educating them. In the 1980s they refused to give them scholarships to go abroad to study the whole. And then later on they were allowed to. So there was a zigzag sort of trajectory of rights. And without rights being embodied in institutions, it's very difficult. But even now the state itself is not coherent about what women should do or shouldn't do. There are multiple state institutions with different projects. So for example, the education or the religious institutions say something, then the media says something else, and then the labor ministry says something else. There's no consensus. There are multiple actors in the state, each one with a vision and therefore things lag behind. And women cannot drive in the 21st century. The third question, I didn't actually hear it about the history of the 10th century, history of the Karamaton. Yeah, I don't think we could go into that. It's quite ancient history and I'm not sure what aspect I should actually talk about. Yeah, yes, the question about the economy. In the book I try to focus on how women are not one. Even the restrictions tend to be imposed on every woman. There are certain classes that get away with things that other women can't get away. So some also would argue that the campaign to drive has become a middle class campaign for women who are employed. In one interview I had a woman said to me, the question is not whether I can drive or not, the question whether I could afford the car. And therefore for her, she can't afford a car. Whether they can drive or not, she still has to go on public transport or with these minivans to go to work. So yes, there is a class element. And you can never think of Saudi women as a homogeneous mass. They experience the oppression differently. And some women get away with certain things that other women can't. And therefore class is extremely important. The tribal element. The tribal element. I think this was a very strong debate in the 70s and 80s about whether tribes oppress women or are more oppressive than other social organization. I think it's not a straightforward answer. Definitely the tribes in Saudi Arabia insist on endogamy, but more recently in urban context, they are marrying out. The tribe may disinherit women, but then Islam may give her inheritance if she goes to a court. And therefore tribe and Islam, we can't take things for granted and say, well, if you're a tribal society, you're definitely oppressing your women. There are different contexts in which women can gain certain rights. For example, in Dagumi itself, there are arguments that if you're marrying your cousin, you can't beat her up and therefore domestic violence increases. When women marry out in big cities, when they go and travel and are based away from home, away from the control of the extended family and the husband could actually do all sorts of things and nobody would know. Whereas if you're marrying your first cousin or a relative and you're living in a small society, social control is extremely more obvious than in a very big city. So, yes, I mean, it is difficult to say and it's not one answer, really.
- [62:42]
A
Okay, thank you. We'll now take another round of questions. There's a question in row three here.
- [62:54]
F
Hello, my name is Zahra. I come from Saudi Arabia and I just have a question. Like, as a Saudi woman, I interact with my.
- [63:03]
A
Could you hold the mic towards you?
- [63:05]
G
Yeah.
- [63:05]
F
As a Saudi woman, I interact with my people in my own society and they come from different classes and from different backgrounds. And I'm just like. Even when we interact or try to understand what is really happening, like, it seems that we crash and we are unaware of the various reasons. So the overall picture seems that there is no possibility for us even to agree on something and even to raise our voices to have our rights. So do you think from your point of view or from academic point of view, is there any realistic approach that for the women can have their rights or civil rights in our society?
- [63:48]
A
Thank you. There's a question in the second row just here.
- [63:55]
H
Good evening, Professor Madawi. Thank you so much for the lovely lecture. Very interesting and informative. I'm Mona and I'd like to ask you a question, please. With regard to the women. Can you hear me? All right. With regard to the women that chosen not to learn, not to drive or to go to work for their convenience, I mean, what is the ratio for those who actually want to drive and want to go to work? And.
- [64:25]
B
If.
- [64:27]
H
And also with regard to the Arab Spring that we've been witnessing in the last few years where people are demanding a change and equality and change of, you know, the content of the constitution and so on, Is there any indication that the Arab Spring is affecting the mentality, if you like, of Saudi women, Are they now, you know, demanding more? Is there any movement? Can you see it?
- [65:00]
A
Thank you. We've got quite a few questions. I'm just going to get the mic to the questions because I think it's important to get them heard. So there's one question here in the purple and then there's right in the front. And I'll come to the ones at the back.
- [65:12]
B
Hello, my name is Tricia and I'm a student at the lse. I would like to thank you for this presentation. Well, my question is, do you think that having women in politics might be a solution to the breaking down of this gender gap? And also, do you think that those women who are actually against the legalization of women driving could be a real problem and that the government, the state, might use that as an excuse not to legalize it? Thank you.
- [65:47]
A
And there's a question right in the front row. Gentleman in blue.
- [65:50]
B
Hello.
- [65:51]
C
Hi. Rafa Thani, thank you very much for your informative talk. Throughout your analysis, your historical analysis, I.
- [65:59]
B
Got a gist that there was a sense of calculation.
- [66:02]
C
Do you really think the regime is clever enough to be as.
- [66:08]
B
Well?
- [66:08]
C
I think as clever enough to kind of calculate these scenarios where to empower than to unempower.
- [66:16]
D
Is it just not a causal link.
- [66:17]
C
Of time and different pressures, internal and external?
- [66:20]
A
Okay, I'll take two more questions and then we'll go on to the final question round. So there's a question right there in the middle there. The lady with her hand up. Yep.
- [66:31]
G
Thank you for your talk. Joanna Cook, King's College, London. I thought I was interesting that you opened with the issue of post 911 security and particularly terrorism, and addressing the issues of security in Saudi Arabia, but particularly in this context. Do you think women could maybe use their traditional roles or create unique roles for themselves to perhaps create a stake for themselves in addressing some of the more serious issues like this in society? Or would you say some of the most effective means would be, as you said, engagement with writing and activism? Thank you.
- [67:03]
A
Sarah, there's a question right there. Yeah, no, no, right on top with that.
- [67:13]
B
Hello, my name is Natasha Janner. I'm a clinical specialist. I was wondering whether the Saudi men having desert mentality, somehow wanting to be in charge and the state goes along with that because mostly are men. Therefore they infantilize the willing victims that they are women to be dependent and not having freedom. And there is always fear of that dependency. Also interdependency as well, that women are dependent on men and men, they are afraid to be abandoned by women. Therefore restriction.
- [67:52]
A
Okay, just one last question. And this is because the question has been waiting for a very long time. Then there will be a final round.
- [68:02]
B
Okay.
- [68:03]
A
So you can just answer them very quickly. Thank You.
- [68:10]
B
Hi, thank you.
- [68:11]
A
My name is Eva. I'm a student here at the lse.
- [68:13]
B
A master's student.
- [68:14]
A
Given what you described as the co opting of the women's movements and in both directions and the co opting, do you. Would you claim that women in Saudi Arabia do have agency? If so, how would you describe that agency and what do you see for changes in the position of women over the next five to ten years? Thank you very much.
- [68:35]
B
Would you like to respond?
- [68:37]
A
Yeah.
- [68:38]
B
Okay. There's a long list. Zahra first about how could they do it. Is that your question? Yeah, basically I think the main, I mean we can only look at other struggles in other parts of the world where women did achieve some serious political and civil rights. I think that the critical thing is increasing women's participation in the economy and then you become a pressure group without which it is very difficult. But the interesting thing is the Saudi government resists increasing the employment of both men and women. And there is a deliberate policy here to keep the foreign workers because it is safer to have a non indigenous labor force that you could actually kick out of the country if they cause trouble. And therefore keeping the employment of men and women down is a political strategy regardless of all the schemes to increase the employment record. And therefore once women become so, for example, teachers, teaching is the profession that absorbs quite a lot of women and they have no right to organize a teacher's professional association that when they are not treated well, they could stop the schools from functioning. And therefore without organizing in old fashioned civil society, it's very difficult. You know, some people say campaigns on Twitter, campaigns on Facebook. Yes, but you really need to go beyond that. These are means to spread the world, but they do not organize society. So that's very quick answer. In terms of the ratio of. I think we really don't have statistics, but I think if you have an independent survey to see who would support women driving and who wouldn't, I would say that quite a substantial section of society would say no. But it is not something, you know, freedom of movement is a right and you can't ask people whether they want it or not. It is something that you don't have an opinion poll on. If it's a human right to move, then you can't. If 70% of society doesn't want it, you say we suspend it. I think that's a simple answer. In terms of the Arab Spring, yes, it did have an impact, but women's mobilization was going on before. I remember in 2005 when the municipal elections were introduced in Saudi Arabia. Some women were campaigning. They want to be included as voters, at least as voters, if not candidates. And that was before the Arab Spring. So the Arab Spring actually just gave an example, a lively example of people mobilization and the power of the masses, the power of the people. And this is extremely important. But so far Saudi women have joined in, and it depends where we're talking, which region of Saudi Arabia, we find two types of activism. So for example, supporting prisoners of conscience in both the eastern province of Saudi Arabia where a Shia community lives, and in the central part, women have been demonstrating, Saudi women have been demonstrating in support of the right of political prisoners to fair trials. But again, we do not see that kind of activism. If, if there is a campaign on Twitter to say on the 26th of October we're going to drive, then international media would be following that story. But if like, you know, 20 or 50 Saudi women demonstrate in front of the security services asking for the release of their relatives from prison, that doesn't make big news. Unfortunately, women in politics, yes, women in politics, they should be part of the decision making process. And unfortunately, in the appointments that had taken place in recent times In Saudi Arabia, 30 women were appointed to the Consultative Council, which is a consultative council, an unelected consultative council. The interesting thing is that there is even segmentation at that level that women should only speak about women's issues. They should not be talking about foreign policy, they should not be talking about politics. But you cannot have that situation. In fact, Saudi men are not allowed to talk about foreign policy or for example, military contract or corruption. And therefore it's like a decor of pack power to have women in the Consultative Council. The Consultative Council itself doesn't have any powers. It can give its opinion. But if the government, the king, doesn't take any notice, that's it. Women against driving is a problem. As I said, to drive is a human right, is to move, to be able to move. And if other women don't want to drive, they don't want to drive. You know, there are quite a lot of allowed things in our society. Not all women take them up. But there is a difference between a gift and a right. So you could not take it, you could not drive if you don't want to. In terms of your question about do I think who is clever? The government, you mean? Well, yeah, it not like they sit down and think, oh now we let's empower women or you know, in 10 years we're going to take that right away from them. No, but this is a historical analysis that shows how the policies change and therefore it makes me doubt whether the government is actually serious simply because it is following a political agenda. But it's not like they sit and conspire against women. It just happens like that. It's a response to urgent political agendas. So in the last 10 years, the political agenda was that Saudi Arabia should open up to foreign CNN journalists, Fox News to go and interview Saudi women. And why is it only after 911 that CNN journalists would go into Saudi women's house to interview her? Why? So basically, when you have your data saying that this has happened after 9 11. So what was the context of 911 that pushed the Saudi government towards opening up or giving the impression that it is opening up, empowering women? It's not like a plan or a conspiracy. There was a question about 911 and how women create ital it creates a platform for engagement. Sorry.
- [76:14]
G
Or create niche ones to have a stake in things like counterterrorism and being involved in security sector.
- [76:23]
B
This is a security issue that I remember quite well after 911 that a lot of the global feminist industry wanted to enlist women to fight terrorism because they thought that they could actually have contact with the young generation. They bring them up and they could deal with that situation. I have very doubts about this kind of agenda, whether it will actually help women themselves to gain rights. You know, turning a woman into yet another, it splits the women. I mean, you know, for that problem to be resolved, you are entering into the confines of the family and playing with roles that may not lend themselves easily to fighting terrorism. So it's very difficult. I'm not sure about a Saudi desert mentality. I'm not sure what that means. There isn't really such a desert mentality. I'm not sure what that means. Actually. It seems like it goes against what I said about culture. And here we're talking about geography. Sorry. Yes, I'm not sure what is Saudi desert mentality? Well, I mean, there are quite a lot of men who fight fierce battles in forests and anyway, I don't think I want to go into the desert mentality because it really doesn't explain to me at least anything interesting about Saudi men or women. Do women have agency? Yes, they do. I mean they do have agency, but this agency is enabled and constrained by a structure like all agency. And they try to work, they try to gain rights, I think, and work with the structure. And how much the structure allows them is a political question. And therefore they struggle like every woman. Some of them are more privileged than others. Some are at the mercy of state welfare services. Some have no access to state welfare services. So the agency also is actually subdivided into categories. There isn't women agency in an abstract way.
- [79:07]
A
Okay, I'm very tired. Can we take one or two or shall we close?
- [79:12]
B
What time is it?
- [79:13]
A
You've just got about three minutes.
- [79:15]
B
Okay, I'll take one or two.
- [79:17]
A
Okay, we're going to. I'm afraid we will only be able to take two questions and I'll come right at the back because I haven't been able to do so thus far. Just two questions and then I'll have to draw the proceedings to a close. Just two questions. Yes, Right at the. Yes, the two corner questioners. Yep.
- [79:42]
D
My name is Jamel. First of all, I want to know about everyone else, about the traditional rules of the tribe in Saudi Arabia. First of all, if you say I belong for another tribes, it's against the rules of the tribe. For example, the professor Al Rashid, for example, if you belong for the tribes of Al Rashid, you can say I belong for another tribes. Is it true or not in Saudi Arabia culture? What would you mean about Saudi women? If you say Saudi woman means from the royal family of the Al Saudi, I think this woman is treated better than another citizenship in Saudi Arabia. And another question.
- [80:26]
A
No, no, sir, sorry, you're allowed only one because I'm only taking two questions. So I'm really sorry about that. We're running out of time. The next questioner.
- [80:34]
I
Hello, my name is Wasil Ahaz. Really interesting lecture. Thank you so much. I'm actually also very much interested in the gender issue here in that respect. I'm wondering, in your research, have you come across the comparison between the older generation of women and men, Saudis, baby boomers, that is, and then the generation y, the younger generation, those young men and women, Saudis who are very much exposed to higher education, universities, social media, blogging, and obviously world travel around the globe. Would that possibly affect the way in the future Saudi might be modernized and become more secular? Exactly like Turkey.
- [81:26]
A
Thank you very much.
- [81:30]
B
I'm not sure about the tribal question at the beginning. I didn't hear it, actually. And I'm not sure what you meant on the. To say that Saudi is going to turn into a secular Turkey. I mean, Turkey itself is. We have this image about Turkey. I've traveled Turkey several times of Turkey as the epitome of the Muslim secular society. But I didn't really find that it is quite a myth that is perpetuated There are sections of Turkish society that are like that, but there are other Turks who are actually very conservative, even more conservative than the Saudis in some respects.
- [82:11]
A
I'm afraid. I'm sorry, I cannot allow it. I'm really sorry. We run out of time. Sorry.
- [82:17]
B
Yeah, but it's oppression is. Yeah, but then again, as I said, Jira, that you have to look at oppression and see how it unfolds among different sections, different categories of women.
- [82:32]
A
Yeah, okay. I'm afraid we really. I'm really sorry, but. Well, I'm afraid that is the prerogative of the speaker. I'm afraid that is a prerogative.
- [82:45]
B
One word about it. Yes. I mean, the Saudis have been traveling, but again, you get now probably a wider group going abroad, traveling, studying abroad, but doesn't always follow that when they come back, they're going to spread these ideas. In fact, sometimes it is possible to have this experience as a counterproductive. An early generation traveled abroad and saw things that they do not want to duplicate in their own society. So traveling, yes, opens your horizon, makes you see new, new experiences, but doesn't necessarily mean that you want it when you go home. What about that blue? Yeah, the blue about tribalism. Could you just say something more about it? Again?
- [83:38]
D
Because the society of Saudi Arabia is based on tribes. So if you belong for the tribal.
- [83:45]
B
Answer, you treat it less, you are treated better. So what's the question? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes, I agree with you that, you know, this is what I tried to put forward, that there isn't just the women. There are certain rules and regulations that apply to all women, but some women are able to get away with and have certain freedoms that other women don't have. I agree with that.
- [84:18]
A
Okay. I'm afraid now we really have run out of time.
- [84:22]
B
Okay.
- [84:22]
A
So. And I must draw proceedings to a close. And therefore. But before I do, let me draw your attention to the cup table here. Professor Al Rushi's book is here, and she has sort of kindly, sort of consented to sign a few of them, should you be interested in buying the book. Okay, so thank you very much for all your questions, And thank you very much, Professor Al Rashid, for answering and responding to those questions with such clarity, concision and patience. And all that's left for me to do is to thank the speaker. So again, a round of applause, please, for the speakers.