Saudi Arabia has announced that women in the country are now allowed to participate in the military. Empoword Journalism investigates to see if this move is as much of a step forward as it seems.
The conservative Muslim nation of Saudi Arabia has been known for its restrictive rules on how Saudi women can behave and what they can wear. It is believed that women’s rights in Saudi Arabia have been limited in comparison to the rights of women in many neighbouring countries because of Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation and application of Sharia law.
Sharia law, also known as Islamic law, is the basis for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. It includes laws such as the requirement that any woman, despite being an adult, must have a male guardian; women have to ask permission from their guardian to get married, divorced, receive an education, travel or even open a bank account. The Sharia law also allows girls to get married as young as 10 and controls what they wear with rules surrounding the wearing of the niqab (a veil) and a hijab (head covering).
Human Rights Watch has even described women as being of the same status as children in Saudi Arabia.
However, since Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Crown Prince in 2017, a series of social reforms have been witnessed regarding women’s rights. Some of the most notable changes have included the order for women to be allowed access to government services such as education and healthcare, without the need for consent from a guardian, and the lifting of the world’s only ban on women drivers with the decree that allows women to drive.
In addition, the Saudi supreme court issued a law in January 2019 that requires women to receive a text message from the court when they have officially been divorced. Before this, the guardianship and divorce laws meant that many women were not previously aware when their husbands divorced them, leading to confusion and unexpected homelessness. New laws issued in August 2019 have now granted women the right to register a marriage or divorce and apply for official documents without needing permission from their guardian.
The latest change, in a bid to further modernise and improve the rights of women, means that women in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 21 and 40 will now be allowed to join the Kingdom’s military forces.
Previously, in 2018, the country opened applications for women to join the military for the first time, but instead of allowing women to work in roles that involved combat, they were only given the right to apply for roles to work in security.
Even then, the hopeful women were given a list of 12 requirements including that they must be Saudi citizens with a high-school diploma, and that both the women and their male guardians must have a place of residence in the same province as the job’s location.
However, the new rules mean that women will finally be able to join any of the army, air force, navy, missile force, and armed medical services, at any rank between soldier and sergeant, provided that they don’t have a criminal record, have been high school educated, and aren’t married to a non-Saudi citizen.
These positions being opened up to women were previously limited to men only.
Whilst this seems like another big step in the country’s reformation towards a more equal society for women, some believe that women are still being silenced, and perhaps this ruling is all “for show”.
For example, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, Rothna Begum, told The Independent that “Saudi Arabia is trying to grab headlines for women’s rights, but they are still detaining and silencing women’s rights activists.”
She added that “If the Saudi authorities want to show how serious they are on women’s rights reforms, they should immediately and unconditionally release such women, and lift travel bans and suspended sentences on all women’s rights activists.”
It has also been noted that the authorities have not yet abolished the male guardianship system which resigns women to being “perpetual minors”, a policy that needs to be eradicated for the full progression of women’s rights.
On the surface, it seems that Saudi Arabia allowing women to join the military is a progressive action, and whilst this may be true, there is still a long way to go before the status of women in Saudi Arabia matches that of the status of women in countries such as the UK.
Holly Hostettler-Davies
Featured image courtesy of SofiLayla via Pixabay. Image licence found here. No changes were made to this image.