Hello friends,
Too often we hear that women are deprived of their rights in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with issues like driving and voting at the foremost. Aren’t you sick of hearing time and again how some people claim it is difficult to live as a woman in Saudi Arabia? I know I certainly am! However, living as a single male bachelor in Jeddah, I can assure you that in the Kingdom, women have it going a lot easier than people think otherwise. Many times it is equally frustrating to be a single bachelor in the kingdom than it is to be a woman.
So, ladies and gentlemen, with the help of my friend Xena, here is a list, if not ‘the’ list of why it is easier to be a woman in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
1. Women have the freedom of being driven everywhere. No parking hassles. No driving in the crazy traffic that is in Jeddah. They can go around anywhere, everywhere, at the summon of their driver.
2. Recent news indicate that a cinema will open in Riyadh. Who gets to go first? women and children! How unfair for the men!
3. At certain fast food outlets, women have a separate queue lines, which is so much better than the regular queue line because women’s line is almost empty so their turn comes fast!
4. Shopping malls are almost entirely dedicated to women’s needs. Check out any mall: 90% of the shops are catered towards women!
5. Many of the places are families only. So if you are a single woman, you can get in anytime any place, but a single man will often be found standing outside. These places include restaurants, shopping malls, theme parks etc.
6. Women are supposed to wear the abayas, which means they can wear anything underneath and just cover themselves up. I know of some females who have worn anything from a skirt, to shorts, to tight jeans to pajamas and go out in the public in their abayas. Also, in Jeddah, head covering is not mandatory, so it’s not as restricted as people living outside of KSA make it to be.
7. Women have it easier at the shops, where the salesmen are drop everything to attend to the female customers, whereas the male customers will not have much attention paid to.
8. A woman will get more telephone numbers or blue-tooth messages from the men, and not vice versa.
9. Female students are not required to do physical sports in school. (This is controversial because as some make students will tell you, they wish to skip sports, but since obesity is on the increase, all students are required to do sports)
10. If you are out on the street driving, and come to a check-point, having a woman with you is a bonus because the police officers will never stop you. As a single man driving, they will often stop you and ask you for your documents. A woman will never be stopped.
11. Last but not least, women have the luxury to ask their husbands, fathers, brothers to do all the paperwork for them. The women can stay at home while their husbands, fathers, brothers etc have to do all the paperwork for them, whether it be at a ministry, company or a bank. How tough for the men!
So, before anyone tells me that women are deprived and oppressed, I think living there will actually show you how much easier it is for women to live there. I have lived there and I have seen how much more importance and preferential treatment women are given.
What do you all think? Do you have any more ideas to add to the list? Do you disagree? What should be removed from the list? As far as I am concerned, the number of females I have to talked to who have lived in the Kingdom, agree with me that women have it easier than the men. Whether they have it better or not is another story!
Mansur
