Sometime in the beginning of this year, my parents started discussing the possibility of a vacation to Saudi Arabia, the country where my dad grew up. This trip had been long overdue and to put it simply, I was thrilled.
To many Americans, the thought of visiting such a conservative country with a culture so radically different from their own is intimidating, scary, and even, downright unappealing. For me, it was simply a long-awaited visit to grandma’s house. This would be my fourth time visiting the country. However, this time, I wasn’t entering Saudi Arabia as a child; I was a woman.
Little did I know that these three weeks would teach me more about myself, my relatives and the importance of feminism than I ever expected. Before my departure, I was eager for a new perspective of the country where I hold my second citizenship, but I didn’t realize how much my perceptions of it would change.
When a lot of us westerners look at photos of Saudi women, one word comes to mind: oppression. We see women covered from head to toe in black fabric, segregated from men. We see them as timid, helpless or even brainwashed. In truth, there is much more than meets the eye. So many of these women feel most comfortable following the rules that their country enforces. It’s part of their religion, something they hold close to their hearts, and the way their government operates simply reflects that. What I learned this summer is that there are other women on the spectrum. Under the veil, women in Saudi Arabia are more similar to us than we think, and often, they want the same freedoms.
Until a girl is about 12 or 13, she can do everything boys can do. After that, laws apply regarding the separation of sexes in almost all aspects of life. Walking around one of Jeddah’s many malls, relishing the air conditioning and taking a rare opportunity to loosen my hijab, I watched kids riding scooters and roller-skating among the crowds. Almost everywhere you look is some sort of mini amusement park, playground, trampoline or go-cart arena, filled with boys and girls. Their older sisters and mothers stand silently on the side, covered in black, some of them showing no more than the skin on their hands. It’s a strange comparison.
I’d never seen the so-called “religious police”, the men who enforce many of the policies that discriminate against women, so I asked my dad about them. “You’d know if you saw them.” He said, “They walk down the street in rows- white thobes, long beards. They have nothing better to do than enforce the most conservative possible interpretation of Islam.” Even though I never saw them, I did see their impact everywhere I went- from stores that were required to close during prayer time, to designated “male-only” sections of McDonalds. As my family and I entered a restaurant through a dark and inconvenient back entrance, I couldn’t help feeling like I was in a racially segregated 1950’s America, but this time, it wasn’t my racial identity forcing me to another section, it was my gender.
Strangely, after about a week, I started getting used to the segregation. It became another aspect of daily life and I dealt with it despite the inconvenience because at the moment, it didn’t seem to be causing me any harm. After a while in a country like this, you might stop questioning why a woman isn’t allowed to sign her child’s paperwork for school, or file for divorce without her husband’s consent, or drive a car without being arrested. It’s just the law, and to many, how the law is meant to be. This way of thinking, though, is the reason Saudi Arabia is “stuck in the past”. People don’t think about these segregation laws or limitations as something discriminatory to women- they’ve become part of the culture, and people accept it.
During my visit, women asked my mom and I about how we liked Saudi Arabia, and when we told them we were enjoying our stay, many of them responded, “When will you return?” or a few, “Why don’t you move here? The government will take care of you, and you won’t have to pay taxes!” Faced with the latter question, we made up excuses about me finishing up my schooling or my parents’ jobs being restrictive, covering up the true facts. What I noticed about these women though (mainly of older age), was that they hadn’t traveled much. They hadn’t seen much more than the inside of their own country, and because of it, they were happy. They believed that they lived in the holiest, most beautiful place in the world- a kingdom rich in oil and gold, where the government gives you everything you need.
What I wrongly underestimated though was the number of women I would meet that weren’t satisfied with the freedoms they were receiving in Saudi Arabia. After completing high school, Saudi teens often travel overseas to attend school in western countries. There, girls are exposed to a whole different type of life and whole new types of freedoms they’d formerly only seen on TV. In the U.S. Saudi girls learn to drive, wear their hair tied up in fashionable scarves, hang out with their male classmates, smoke in hookah bars and share apartments with their best friends. I was surprised when some of my younger female relatives began confessing how much they wished Saudi Arabia had the same freedoms as the western world. They told me they wanted to go back to their “other homes” where they could have independence and the same rights as everyone else. Once they were exposed to life outside the kingdom, they couldn’t get enough.
You may be wondering, if there are so many women who’ve gotten this taste of “western life”, and begin yearning for it, then why don’t more of them become activists? The reason is because activism is dangerous. Even though women have recently gained the right to vote, political opposition of any kind is forbidden in the country, keeping them from truly making a difference since the Islamic, monarchial and patriarchal system is set in stone. But could this threat be overlooked? With the strength of numbers, it could. If Saudi men and women take the initiative to educate themselves and others on the importance of equality, and if the number of feminists begins to exceed the number of super-religious conservatives, then freedom is sure to follow.
After returning home from my vacation, I started considering the value of the little things I took for granted in the United States. Little things like wearing shorts to the beach, riding my bike to the store and back, writing an opinion piece for my school paper, or getting my driver’s license. I now realize now how lucky I am to have these rights. These often overlooked freedoms are things that my cousins and aunts aren’t allowed to practice, and that my grandmother and great grandmothers, and countless other women in Saudi Arabia have never known. It’s truly not fair.
My trip to Saudi Arabia reminded me that the rights we have in the U.S. are not universal. They were fought for and earned by feminists and civil rights activists who courageously defied what was expected of them. Saudi Arabia’s timeline of women’s rights has only just begun, and it’s time for it to continue.