A Saudi Woman's Voice Is Heard: "I'm Not Oppressed!"

I received a comment on the post I recently wrote entitled "Saudi Arabia Wastes Biggest Untapped Natural Resource: WOMEN." It was written by a modern working Saudi woman. She is a rare breed, since only 300,000 Saudi women actually work in the entire country. When you consider that the whole Saudi population is almost 26 million, she represents only 1% of all Saudis and just 2% of all Saudi women. However, I felt her response should be brought to the forefront, instead of buried deep in the comments section because she made valid points and expressed herself so articulately. I'm sure that many more Saudi women, working or not, agree with her. Her viewpoint may surprise you. I would like to give her the opportunity to let her voice be heard...

I   haven't read all these comments but I do have serious reservations with your post.


"Saudi women are either kept hidden at home or hidden in public beneath loose fitting black cloth, cloaking them from head to toe. They are invisible. They are unapproachable. They are inaccessible. And this is exactly the way the men here want it to be."

I am a woman. I cover. I veil. I have a respectable IT job. I am educated, and while I agree that life would be much better if I were allowed to drive, I fail to see how being beneath loose fitting black cloth can be equated as being invisible, unapproachable, and so on and so forth.

Where I work, we ARE segregated, but I am still one of the most important people in the IT department. I've been given all the facilities required for required communication, so I'm not "cut off" from the good old boys. My dad works at a government hospital. He too has female co-workers, architects and engineers.

It is beyond me why people assume that being "cloaked" is some kind of "oppression." I do it out of choice, not because any "men" wanted me to do it. I do it and I feel liberated, because when I progress, I am respected for my brains and personality. When your women make it to the top, how many of them have to fight the stereotypes that they didn't just make it through by their looks? They still struggle to be respected purely for their SKILLS. Look up the statistics yourself: the good-looking people get more jobs and higher salaries.

But when *I* get something, I get what I deserve. No judgment calls. No men to doubt how I got there.

And while some things in Saudi Arabia are indeed cultural and not Islamic, a lot of the veiling business IS Islamic, and again, that doesn't mean oppression. That Saudi Arabia only just appointed a female is a cultural thing. Otherwise Islam granted women the human rights that any useful citizen deserves. Way back, CENTURIES ago, before your white women could so much as dream of casting votes, Muslim women were running for government positions, and their voices were so powerful they directly influenced state decisions without even being part of it.

*** I must point out that nowadays Saudi women are forbidden from running for or holding any public office, and do not have the right to vote.

And as for why can't Saudi men stop looking at women as sex-objects... while I agree they should get some sense in their perverted heads and stop being the way they are, it's not as if women aren't considered sex objects anyway. Around 70% (if I remember correctly) of rapes in the world don't happen by random strangers - they're usually among people who've already known each other. And... (I think it was) 60% of people in the same office have been involved in extra-marital affairs. Where does this happen? Oh yes, of course - where the workplaces aren't segregated...

And just because a woman cannot be seen in the media doesn't mean she can't do anything worthwhile. I write. And when I do that, my objective is to get my opinions across, to have my ideas heard and valued. My objective is not that you see how I look while I do it. I'm not in the least hindered by a cloak, or by segregation. In fact - actual statistics again - girls who grow up in single-sex colleges are known to be more successful and more confident than girls who study at co-ed institutions.

Women being unseen, protected, loved and respected for their true selves, is not oppression. Women being judged everywhere they go, sized up and down and checked out and treated as objects, plastered on billboards for as long as they're young and beautiful and then forgotten like trash, being judged for superficial factors that don't even last and only respected by a very select few people for what they REALLY are, THAT is oppression of the worst kind.

If you want to talk about certain other legal rights in this country, like female business ownership... yeah, that might be a REAL issue you could cover.

*** Again I refer you to a recent article in the Arab News pertaining to the frustrating status of women business owners in Saudi Arabia.

I want to thank this working Saudi woman for speaking out and explaining her points of view on some issues that many Westerners perceive differently. While not all Saudi women may agree with her and may indeed feel oppressed, we must understand both sides of the coin and realize that not all issues here are clearly black or white.