ONE SWALLOW does not a summer make, nor a few crumbs of royal concessions to women, a Saudi spring. King Abdullah’s announcement on Sunday that women will be allowed to vote and stand in the next municipal elections, in 2015 – not, please note, and despite previous promises, this week’s polls – and to vote in the appointed, toothless consultative assembly, the Majlis ash Shura, is a belated, paltry advance that will do little except draw attention to the mountain still to be climbed by Saudi women.
Only this week, campaigner Najla al-Hariri was again pulled in for questioning by prosecutors for defying the ban on women driving. No question of his “reformist” majesty addressing that even more contentious issue, or indeed the reality that all women have essentially the legal status of minors, subject to the whims of a male chaperone’s permission for almost any public activity, from choosing to marry, travelling abroad, to working, receiving healthcare, attending university or starting a business. Concealing dress remains obligatory in public. In court, a woman’s testimony counts for less than that of a man. Violence against women is rarely prosecuted, marital rape, unrecognised.
Although Saudi women make up 58 per cent of graduates, they still comprise only 14 per cent of the workforce and are largely confined to “suitable” professions. The legal profession, for example, is a no-go zone, and even where reform has been brought in, it is often thwarted by Wahhabi zealots.
Abdullah, allegedly a reformer who has appointed a woman as minister for women’s education, is said to have to fight for every change both with his conservative brothers and the powerful ultra-orthodox Sunni clergy. And, although he claimed on Sunday that religious scholars had endorsed the change, their resistance is clearly ongoing. The most senior, the Grand Mufti, in an undated web posting, has warned that involving women in politics could mean “opening the door to evil”.
In response to the Arab Spring, in a bid to preserve social peace after the first governments in the region were toppled, Abdullah announced $130 billion spending over a decade on measures like affordable housing. To curry favour with the clergy, money was also poured into building mosques, strengthening the morality police, and he moved to ban media criticism of senior clerics. Sunday’s reforms were in a similar vein – not about change, but, balancing between competing pressures, and, above all, preserving the status quo in the kingdom.