Wooo Hoooo! Saudi Women to Have Right To Vote!
I found this today on Huffpost World; hey four years is not such a long time compared to forever. Getting the vote makes it more and more illogical for them not to be driving . . . think about it. Does choosing national leaders take less brains than driving? Ummm. . . . well . . . (LOL)
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, considered a reformer by the standards of his own ultraconservative kingdom, decreed on Sunday that women will for the first time have the right to vote and run in local elections due in 2015.
It is a “Saudi Spring” of sorts.
For the nation’s women, it is a giant leap forward, though they remain unable to serve as Cabinet ministers, drive or travel abroad without permission from a male guardian.
Saudi women bear the brunt of their nation’s deeply conservative values, often finding themselves the target of the unwanted attention of the kingdom’s intrusive religious police, who enforce a rigid interpretation of Islamic Shariah law on the streets and public places like shopping malls and university campuses.
In itself, Sunday’s decision to give the women the right to vote and run in municipal elections may not be enough to satisfy the growing ambition of the kingdom’s women who, after years of lavish state spending on education and vocational training, significantly improved their standing but could not secure the same place in society as that of their male compatriots.
That women must wait four more years to exercise their newly acquired right to vote adds insult to injury since Sunday’s announcement was already a long time coming – and the next local elections are in fact scheduled for this Thursday.
“Why not tomorrow?” asked prominent Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Hawaidar. “I think the king doesn’t want to shake the country, but we look around us and we think it is a shame … when we are still pondering how to meet simple women’s rights.”
The announcement by King Abdullah came in an annual speech before his advisory assembly, or Shura Council. It was made after he consulted with the nation’s top religious clerics, whose advice carries great weight in the kingdom.
It is an attempt at “Saudi style” reform, moves that avoid antagonizing the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population. Additionally, it seems to be part of the king’s drive to insulate his vast, oil-rich country from the upheavals sweeping other Arab nations, with popular uprisings toppling regimes that once looked as secure as his own.
Fearing unrest at home, the king in March announced a staggering $93 billion package of incentives, jobs and services to ease the hardships experienced by some Saudis. In the meantime, he sent troops to neighbor and close ally Bahrain to help the tiny nation’s Sunni ruling family crush an uprising by majority Shiites pressing for equal rights and far-reaching reforms.
In contrast, King Abdullah in August withdrew the Saudi ambassador from Syria to protest President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on a seven-month uprising that calls for his ouster and the establishment of a democratic government.
“We didn’t ask for politics, we asked for our basic rights. We demanded that we be treated as equal citizens and lift the male guardianship over us,” said Saudi activist Maha al-Qahtani, an Education Ministry employee who defied the ban on women driving earlier this year. “We have many problems that need to be addressed immediately.”
The United States, Saudi Arabia’s closest Western ally, praised the king’s move.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said it recognized the “significant contributions” women have been making in Saudi Arabia. The move, he continued, would give Saudi women more ways to participate “in the decisions that affect their lives and communities.”
The king, in his own remarks, seemed to acknowledge that the Arab world’s season of change and the yearning for greater social freedoms by a large segment of Saudi society demanded decisive action.
“Balanced modernization, which falls within our Islamic values, is an important demand in an era where there is no place for defeatist or hesitant people,” he said.
“Muslim women in our Islamic history have demonstrated positions that expressed correct opinions and advice,” said the king.
Abdullah became the country’s de facto ruler in 1995 because of the illness of King Fahd and formally ascended to the throne upon Fahd’s death in August 2005.
The king on Sunday also announced that women would be appointed to the Shura Council, a currently all-male body established in 1993 to offer counsel on general policies in the kingdom and to debate economic and social development plans and agreements signed between the kingdom with other nations.
The question of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia is a touchy one. In a country where no social or political force is strong enough to affect change in women’s rights, it is up to the king to do it. Even then, the king must find consensus before he takes a step in that direction.
Prominent columnist Jamal Khashoggi said that giving women the right to vote in local elections and their inclusion in the Shura council means they will be part of the legislative and executive branches of the state. Winning the right to drive and travel without permission from male guardians can only be the next move.
“It will be odd that women who enjoy parliamentary immunity as members of the council are unable to drive their cars or travel without permission,” he said. “The climate is more suited for these changes now – the force of history, moral pressure and the changes taking place around us.”
___
Hendawi reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael contributed to this report from Cairo.
Cultural Issues as Qatar races Towards 2022 World Cup
In the same issue of The Peninsula (Qatar), this author addresses cultural sensitivity when it comes to dress, but includes some intriguing mistakes. He (or she) states that all women are required to ‘veil their faces’ in Saudi Arabia, which is untrue. There is no law requiring women to cover their faces. Custom drives many – but not all – Saudi women to cover their faces. Western women are asked to cover their hair and to wear an abaya, and must do so when going off compounds or out of their hotels, but no one is required to cover their face.
The Issue: Is Qatar ready for 2022? Well, the country is all set to launch mega infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars in order to have facilities in place to host the coveted event.
But the key question being asked by many is whether the conservative Qatari society is ready to take in its stride the cultural shock that the preparations for the event and it being actually held here would trigger.
With no less than half-a-million international soccer fans expected to descend on the Qatari soil in 2022, Qatar must build the requisite mindset — and not just physical infrastructure — to be able to absorb the social and cultural tremors such an avalanche of people from different ethnicities and cultures would cause.
Or, will the Qatari society rise in rebellion against the onslaught, especially as Western values and traditions are seen gradually overshadowing local customs and the way people dress up and behave in public?
Already, there is widespread fear in the Qatari community about their identity being diluted due to the sheer size of the expatriate population. Official estimates suggest that out of a total of 1.7 million people living in Qatar, an incredible 1.5 million are foreigners. This means that some 90 percent people in the country are non-Qatari.
Since expatriates come from all over the world (unconfirmed reports suggest there might be people from more than 80 nationalities living here) the threat to Qatari identity and culture is real, say social analysts.
Some, though, argue that since Qatar is a small country with a tiny population, its people must pay the social price for development and prosperity. “Given the situation, you can’t have both—prosperity and identity. You must compromise and choose between the two,” says another social analyst not wanting his name in print.
Concerns in the Qatari community about its age-old culture and identity being compromised due to the ever-rising numerical preponderance of foreigners, are growing.
Rising indebtedness in the community due to limited income and growing consumerism has been relegated to the background as fears deepen over the local customs and folklore falling prey to what seems to be unstoppable intrusion of foreign cultures.
There is immense hostility in the Qatari community towards the way foreigners, especially young women, dress up. Foreign cultures have already reached Qatari homes with children being largely raised by foreign maids.
“Things are still under control since we can influence our children, but we are helpless when it comes to stopping outside influences that are causing damage to our society,” says a Qatari requesting anonymity. “The most harmful outside influences are TV and foreigners living in our midst.”
Objections are raised to young non-Qatari women, particularly Westerners, wearing skirts and sleeveless tops.
A number of Qatari mothers have expressed ire and want the state to intervene and ‘discipline’ young non-Qatari women who dress up ‘indecently’ in public. The mothers say they fear that their daughters might ape such negative behaviour.
There are some Qatari women, though, who see the media (read: foreign TV stations) posing a bigger threat than foreign women wearing skirts and sleeveless tops here in public.
Says Wisam Al Othamn, a lecturer at Qatar University: “It’s necessary to monitor the media, not foreign women.”
There are others, though, who feel that dressing up in public is one’s freedom and choice, so no one should impose restrictions.
Qatari social websites are filled with comments from people talking about threats to their identity. Some have called for setting up a ‘religious police’ to especially monitor young foreign women dressing up ‘indecently’ in public.
The commentators argue that Saudi Arabia has such a police and it is compulsory for every woman, whether local or foreigner, Muslim or non-Muslim, to veil her face in public.
But there are others who laud Qatar for the freedom people have in personal matters such as dressing up in public, and claim that foreigners here dress up decently if comparisons are made with neighbouring countries like Bahrain and Dubai.
There are still others who favour Qatar forcing foreign women to veil their faces while in public. They argue that since countries like France and Belgium have banned Muslim women from using face veils in public, Qatar and other Muslim countries should take counter measures and force all women, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, to cover their faces while moving in public.
An interesting comment on the way Qatari women dress is from a man writing on a local social website. He suggests that there is nothing like Qatari attire for women. Abaya is used by women in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, so it has come here from these countries.
As for naqab or full face and body veil, it did not exist in Qatar until 20 years ago, suggests the man. “So there is nothing called Qatari dress for women,” he says.
There are some who find fault with some schools having co-education and say Qatari girls tend to ape their foreign peers from these schools.
There is ire in sections of the Qatari community over the schools’ regulator, the Supreme Education Council (SEC), giving the freedom to schools on imparting lessons in Qatari history, language (Arabic) and religion.
Writing on social websites, some commentators are critical of the SEC and say that since land, history, language and religion are the four pillars of a society’s cultural identity, the schools must impart lessons in these subjects.
“It’s surprising why the SEC has not made the teaching of these subjects compulsory in schools. It’s a step that would destroy the Qatari identity,” wrote an angered commentator.
About language, the commentator quoted a famous Qatari writer, Dr Mohamed Al Kubaisi, as saying that it is only through their version of English language (different from the British English) that the Americans have built their identity and are dominating the world by popularising it (American English).
Another commentator said he saw the SEC move as a step aimed at diluting the Qatari identity. He even suggests that some teachers are opposing the SEC’s decision individually.
“Go to Germany and France and if you don’t speak the local language you wouldn’t get a response,” the commentator said, hinting that everyone in Qatar must speak the local language, Arabic.
Social analysts believe that Qatar faces a huge challenge over the coming 11 years (during the run-up to the 2022 event) in its struggle to maintain its cultural identity, and much of the onus will be on the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs and the Ministry of Interior.
Talk of a dress code being imposed by the Interior Ministry is going on for a while with analysts wondering if at all it would see the light of day. Despite opposition to foreign women dressing up ‘indecently’ in public, there are some in the Qatari community who say they believe a dress code is unwanted and how people dress up in public should better be left to them, respecting their freedom.
There are some in the community, though, who want the government to act and impose a dress code, particularly as the number of foreigners in the country is quite high. Moreover, the fact that the foreigners come from so many nationalities makes it necessary to have some code in place to help protect Islamic values, they argue.
“If not a dress code, it should be accepted in principle by everyone living in the country that one must dress up decently to respect local customs and values,” says a community source.
“It’s normal for a country to have some say in matters like how people, especially women, dress up in public. This will in no way tantamount to curbing individual freedom,” he insists.
Analysts say that the Ministry of Interior introduced the concept of community policing sometime ago with this vision in mind. The entire concept of community policing where the law-enforcement agencies actively coordinate with different expatriate communities as well as civil societies and the locals is based on the idea of how to help protect and preserve Qatari identity and culture in the midst of threats being posed by the swelling population of foreigners in the country.
The focus of the effort (community policing) is on helping preserve basic social and religious values, knowledgeable sources say. Critics, however, maintain that the effort having been launched quite a while ago, is yet to yield results.
Qatar Women Want Dress Code to Maintain Cultural Norms
Every year around this time The Peninsula (Qatar) runs an article reminding other nationalities to respect Qattari values on modesty, and asking women to wear loose clothing, cover arms and shoulders and wear skirts at least to the knees. This year, there are comments about women wearing ‘indecent’ clothing around the hotel swimming pools, and calling for a national dress code with enforcement.
Qatari women lament disregard for norms
By Huda NV
DOHA: Dress code in any country is a very sensitive topic, for, while it protects the rights of many, it may hinder the rights of many others. When France issued ban on Hijab in public places, many Muslims who used the attire had to let it go. Same is the case in Saudi Arabia where all, including non-Muslims have to wear the abaya.
As of now, there is no strict ruling on dress code in Qatar except that it asks for modest dressing in public. The rules are with loose ends, according to some. With the on going development much have changed in dressing over the last 10 years.
Some Qatari women who spoke to The Peninsula said that due to the lack of awareness or mainly due to disregard for local norms, many people flout with the Qatari Penal Code that “prohibits wearing revealing indecent clothing”. Since no action is taken against the violators, rules or laws are being flouted with.
“The law asks one dress decent lyto protect oneself and the society as a whole. We are functioning in a society in various roles and at various levels. We go out, do what we need to do and go home, as other women do. But it pains to see many women bring with them negative influences into the community and dress in a way which is against the discipline of the community,” said Sheikha Al Naimi, a Qatari woman.
“We are not asking them to use hijab or abaya. We just want them to be modest, by which we mean covering the arms and shoulders, wearing skirts at least up to knee length, and wearing loose clothes. We are asking for respect not hindering their personal choices,” said Asma Abdullah.
RIGHTS?
So would not any law or dress code be against personal rights? Then, is not smoking or drinking a personal choice and a law banning these are against the so called rights, ask some.
“There are laws banning smoking and penalties for violating traffic rules, which are issued in public interest and these are strictly followed, for fear of heavy fines on violations. So a dress code is also needed for public security. We all have our own freedom, but in public we need to check the rights of public too. One’s freedom should not hinder other person’s rights and people should realise that rights come along with duties,” said Mariam Al Ali.
However some argued dressing in skimpy clothes is not freedom, but rather lack of self respect. “We would say the western idea of freedom and right is twisted and is not based on truth. For example, when it comes to dressing, the so called right is more or less like what men want to see,” said Tammy, a US expatriate.
“Our policy is you see what we want you to see rather than you decide what you need to see. We choose to whom we show our beauty. It is not for public attention,” one of the Qatari women said
THE WORRIES
One of the key problems, most of the Qatari women who spoke to The Peninsula, was on encroachment on their identity. “We are a minority in our own land; this does not mean we leave our identity. We are trying to pass it over to next generation and all these influences is a threat to our identity as Muslims, Arabs and Qataris,” Al Naimi said.
“All the expats come here for a reason, mainly financial, and hence they need to respect the culture here but now its more on destroying the society,” she laments. “Even in some schools and colleges, teachers dress badly. Even if it’s a girls-only school, it does not mean teachers show their body parts which we ourselves do not show to our children. Wearing translucent dress, shirts which are waist length and short skirts are in no way modest for a teacher,” said Al Ali
PROTECTING IDENTITY
Some Qatari women revealed the measures they take to ensure their children are not influenced by the changes. “My children have gone to the malls or shopping centers only few times. I want them to know what the Qatari identity is. They are not usually taken for shopping here. For their amusement and entertainment, I built a house away from Doha with all the amenities.
“So the question would be how will they learn to live in the society if they are kept isolated? Its just that we do not want these influences at very young age. After they get to know their roots, children will go out and understand the world,” said Asma.
“Earlier, when I was young, we used to go out to the beaches and enjoy as a family. But now we cannot take our children to the beaches as people wear indecent clothing even in public beaches,” said Sara Yousuf.
“Even some of the Qatari media post almost nude pictures, especially when it comes to movies. So we do censoring at home so that our children at young age do not have to distinguish between the right and wrong,” Sara said. “I would love to take my children to hotels here and enjoy time with them in the pool. But how can we do it when many are indecently dressed,” said a Qatari woman.
DRESSING WHEN ABROAD
Even when dress code is debated here, Qataris are much criticised for not abiding to the Qatari customs while abroad. “These are mainly people who are ashamed of their identity. Abaya or hijab is part of culture and our culture is based on Islam, which is same throughout the world. Hence, indecent dressing while abroad tarnishes the whole Qatari community. I have gone abroad, and even recently when I visited Thailand, I was wearing the exact costume – abaya — which I wear here. They should respect laws of other countries when abroad but at the same time try to protect their identity,” said Sara.
“I was educated in the US. I did face few problems but I knew the influences were coming from all directions and made sure I held on to my traditions,” said Asma.
THE CULPRITS
Majority of the Qatari women say that some of the Arab communities themselves are responsible for violating the dress code. “We feel that majority of the westerners and Asians know and understand us and respect the culture. People from sub-continent culturally they have their own modesty which is almost similar to ours. If these people are dressing badly it is because they think ‘if Arabs can do, why not we’,” says Al Ali.
“The sad part is that there are some Arab communities who mock themselves and us wearing skimpy dresses. Also some are so talented that they know how to dress exactly as Qataris and impersonate — they actually tarnish our image. They also talk indecently when faults are pointed out,” said Hessa Al Kuwari.
“Worse is when many dress indecent inside the abaya and pose as Qataris. The very purpose of abaya is to cover, but now it is turning into something that is used for showcasing the body,” Sara said.
SUGGESTIONS
1. Set up a new committee to establish and implement specific regulation with regard to dress code
2. Define exactly what modest dressing means
3. Malls should have individuals to warn people as they have people to keep out bachelors on family days.
4. While issuing visas, embassies should inform people about the dressing. They should also make strict rulings.
5. The existing laws on dresses should be activated by the authorities.
URGENT ACTION
Few of the women say there is an urgent need for a law or enforcement of existent regulations, as the situation is getting worse. “Over last three to four years, we are seeing women wearing very-short shorts in public places. I would ask what next? Will we have to see ladies in bikinis in malls in the next few years? It can happen if there is no enforcement,” said Sara.
“The identity change that we talked is not going to happen today or tomorrow. We will see the effect in some 10 to 20 years — majority of our people will not know what being an Arab or Qatari means. The values what we have will be lost,” Asma said. “We need development, but it should be framed in our identity. It’s not fair to cut our roots and establish on top of us,” she said.
The Peninsula
Thelma and Louise in Saudi Arabia
An editorial cartoon from my friend Grammy, in Texas, from today’s paper:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has compiled a series of elegant vignettes in her most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck. I had just read Half of a Yellow Sun, and was still wallowing in stunned admiration, when I heard an interview with the author on BBC, and learned she had written this book, The Thing Around Your Neck.
I loved Half of a Yellow Sun. I loved Purple Hibiscus. I felt I began to understand just a little bit about life in transitional Nigeria, with all the social and political forces blowing to and fro, straining the very fabric of nationhood.
In The Thing Around Your Neck, something else happens. It shares with Cutting for Stone and other books I like the impressions of those who come to live in the USA for the first time.
“Would that the wee wee giftie gi’e us, To see ourselves as others see us . . . ”
I’ve had a lot of experience going to live in foreign countries. One of the things I learned is that most of what I learn the first couple years isn’t much. You learn a lot of things wrong. You filter everything through your own cultural biases; you judge, you interpret, you try to make sense of things that just seem wrong.
I love to watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters do this in reverse, come to America and make judgements based on their own cultural expectations. I love to see us through these eyes.
Once, many many years ago, we entertained a Nigerian in our home, and when we served dinner, steaks, he looked at his plate and said “This would feed my family for a week.” We kind of laughed. We kind of thought he was exaggerating, or even kidding. We just didn’t know. We had never seen anyone truly hungry, we had always lived in this land of plenty. We had no idea what we didn’t know. We saw only what we knew.
Each story is a gem. Each treats the expat experience, coming here, or the reverse, coming to America and then going back and seeing Nigeria through eyes which have changed.
One story I had read before, in the New Yorker magazine and loved reading again, The Headstrong Historian. It starts with a smart woman, weaving her way among the ways of her people, whose husband’s family wants her husband to take another wife. He doesn’t want to. These two chose each other, and managed to live their lives together as best they could, by their own standards. Her son disappoints her, but her granddaughter – she sees her husband’s brave, courageous spirit in the eyes of her little grand daughter. You’ll have to read the story to find out the rest.
Other stories have to do with newlyweds, with students, with love and marriage and affairs – the full spectrum of human experience, through Nigerian expat eyes. There are settings common from all three books, the college campus at Nsukka, a prison outside of town, small villages outside the city. If you read all her books, you recognize place: “Aha! I’ve been her before, in Purple Hibiscus!” You learn how to bribe the guards so you can bring in food for your imprisoned family member, you learn to keep your eyes down to show respect, you learn how Nigeria smells when the rains come, and how dry and dusty it gets during the harmattan.
I’m just sorry there isn’t another book by this author – yet – that I can read!
I guess these books that I love deal with a theme dear to my heart – that we are culturally blind to so many things, and that as human beings we are more alike than we are different. Short of packing up all our lives and our assumptions and moving to many different countries, the best we can hope for in learning different ways of thinking is for books like these by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which show us how differently we perceive things, depending on our cultures, and how alike we are in the things that we feel, as human beings.
Jeannette Walls: Half Broke Horses
About a month ago, I picked this up off the stack of “Read Me’s” . . . ummm . . . errr . . . one of the stacks of “Read Me’s.” (If there is some sort of emoticon for mild embarrassment, insert it here; one of my fatal flaws is acquiring book I WANT to read and having more books than I have time to read.)
I think Amazon recommended Half Broke Horses to me, and I didn’t know why. They keep track of what I buy and make recommendations, which over the many years I have been using Amazon.com to buy books has become more and more relevant to the kinds of things I actually buy and read. So I bought Half Broke Horses, and another one recommended by the same author, then put them in the stack. It is only because I had read whatever I put on top of them that I ended up reading.
I casually started reading, without a lot of anticipation. The first chapter starts off in the early early days of our country, in the wilds of West Texas, as a girl and her younger brother and sister are out checking the cows, who suddenly go crazy, even jumping over fences which under almost every circumstance successfully pen them in. The young girl recognized something strange was going on and figured it was a flash flood coming, got her siblings up in the tree and keeps them awake all night, as the flood hits, hoping the tree will hold and not wash away.
What is your first thought, reading that? Mine was – Where are her parents?? No one is out searching for them?
The next day, the flood recedes enough for them to make their way home back to a primitive dwelling hollowed out in the high side of a riverbank, dirt floors, dirt crumbling down on them, dark, small, smokey. Yes, there is a mother and a father, and they love their children, but these are very different times. These are hard times, where there is no grocery store, no nearby doctor, where babies die and children have fatal accidents all the time. Life can be short and brutal. The kids have some schooling, mostly at home, they learn to read and write and add and subtract, so they can keep track of home related business. They also work hard, every child has work around the ranch that needs doing, and work comes first or the family won’t survive.
The heroine, Lily Casey Smith, is a real person, the grandmother of the author, Jeannette Walls. This is called a true-life novel. From all the stories she heard about her grandmother growing up, and from knowing her grandmother, and from all the legends about her grandmother she was able to verify, she built a skeleton, and then filled it in with conversations and even a few events that she had to imagine.
Lily Casey left her family at 15 to ride her horse 25 days across Texas to take a teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse. (My jaw dropped, too!) After several years of teaching, she goes to Chicago to become educated and licensed as a teacher, marries, annuls the marriage, returns home, finds a teaching job, races horses, marries again, has children, has a huge ranch, loses the huge ranch, manages a huge ranch . . . her story is bigger than life, but so is the person of her grandmother, who never falls apart, but looks life in the eye and copes with it. Better than coping, she dominates.
Her major opponents are tough economic times, and dramatic and devastating weather conditions. Rain can fail to fall for months, cattle can die in an unexpected cold snap. At the best of times, you have enough to eat and a roof over your head.
I never wanted the book to end, and, in a sense, it didn’t. Jeannette Walls big best seller, The Glass Castle, takes up with just a little overlap where Half Broke Horses leaves off.
Here is what I loved: I loved the voice of Lily Casey Smith. She’s the kind of woman I want for a friend. She’s smart. She has a sense of how things work in the world. She experiences tragedies, but she doesn’t let them hurt her self-confidence. She can be beaten, but she always gets up again. She’s a problem solver. She never once lets being a woman get in the way of being the person she was born to be. She overcomes. She doesn’t sugar coat; she tells it as she sees it. And you know you can count on what she says to be the truth as she believes it. I truly hated for this book to end.
You can find this book at Amazon.com used under a dollar to new hardcover around $15. It is worth every cent.
Saudi Women Drive Today
From today’s BBC News:
Saudi Arabia women drive cars in protest at ban
Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel.
The Women2Drive Facebook page said the direct action would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.
Last month, a woman was arrested after uploading a video of herself driving.
Manal al-Sherif was accused of “besmirching the kingdom’s reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion”, but was released after 10 days having promised not to drive again.
“All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers,” said one woman in the first film posted in the early hours of Friday morning.
The film showed the unnamed woman talking as she drove to a supermarket and parking.
We can’t move around without a male”
Maha al-Qahtani
Female driver
“It is not out of love for driving or traffic or the experience. All this is about is that if I wanted to go to work, I can go. If I needed something I can go and get it.
“I think that society is ready to welcome us.”
Another protester said she drove around the streets of Riyadh for 45 minutes “to make a point”.
“I took it directly to the streets of the capital,” said Maha al-Qahtani, a computer specialist at the Ministry of Education.
Religious fatwa
On Twitter, Mrs Qahtani described the route she had taken around the city with her husband, saying: “I decided that the car for today is mine.”
Her husband said she was carrying her essential belongings with her and was “ready to go to prison without fear”, AFP news agency reported.
One woman who asked not to be named told the BBC driving was often considered to be “something really minor”.
The ban is one of a number of restrictions Saudi women face in daily life
“It’s not one of your major rights. But we tell them that even if you give us all the basic and big rights, that you are claiming are more important than driving, we can’t enjoy practising those rights because the mobility is not there.
“We can’t move around without a male.”
The motoring ban is not enforced by law, but is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics. It is one of a number of severe restrictions on women in the country.
Supporters of the ban say it protects women and relieves them of the obligation to driver, while also preventing them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.
But the men and women behind the campaign – emboldened by uprisings across the Middle East and Arab world – say they hope the ban will be lifted and that other reforms will follow.
Amnesty International has said the Saudi authorities “must stop treating women as second-class citizens”, describing the ban as “an immense barrier to their freedom of movement”.
The last mass protest against the ban took place in 1980, when a group of 47 women were arrested for driving and severely punished – many subsequently lost their jobs.
The women were angered that female US soldiers based in the kingdom after the war with Kuwait could drive freely while they could not.
Oral Sex More Lethal to Men than Women
This article from AOL Health News makes the point that while all females in the USA are encouraged to be vaccinated against HPV, young men, who are statistically more vulnerable, have not been vaccinated. Many women find themselves unexpectedly at risk when they are exposed to HPV by an unfaithful husband or boyfriend who has picked it up during oral sex.
Research: Oral Sex Puts Men at Risk for Oral Cancer
Mara Gay
Contributor
Rates of oral cancer are on the rise among men, and researchers say the culprit isn’t the devil you might think.
The rising rates of oral cancer aren’t being caused by tobacco, experts say, but by HPV, the same sexually transmitted virus responsible for the vast majority of cases of cervical cancer in women.
Millions of women and girls have been vaccinated against HPV, or human papillomavirus, but doctors now say men exposed to the STD during oral sex are at risk as well and may have higher chances of developing oral cancer.
About 65 percent of oral cancer tumors were linked to HPV in 2007, according to the National Cancer Institute. And the uptick isn’t occurring among tobacco smokers.
“We’re looking at non-smokers who are predominantly white, upper middle class, college-educated men,” Brian Hill, the executive director of the Oral Cancer Foundation, told AOL News by phone.
Tobacco use has declined over the past decade, but rates of HPV infections have risen and affect at least 50 percent of the sexually active American population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
HPV-16, the strain of the virus that causes cervical cancer in women, has become the leading cause of oral cancer in non-smoking men, Hill said, citing research in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“When the No. 1 cause of your disease goes down [tobacco use], you would expect that the incidence of disease would go down, but that hasn’t happened,” he said. “In our world, this is an epidemic.”
Dr. Jennifer Grandis, the vice chairwoman for research at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on head and neck cancers, said doctors have been seeing the HPV virus in most oral cancer tumors. She said the massive push to vaccinate girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 against HPV should have included boys and men from the beginning. Gardasil, one of the two major vaccines used to prevent HPV, wasn’t approved for use in males in the United States until 2009, three years after it was approved for women.
“The thinking is changing,” Grandis told AOL News in a phone interview. “But at the time [the vaccine] was licensed, there wasn’t such an awareness about head or oral cancers or a willingness to accept that males played a part in the transmission of the virus,” she said. “I think this idea that we only protect our daughters with the vaccine is nuts anyway, particularly because they’re having sex with our boys.”
Men have a greater chance of contracting the HPV virus from oral sex than women do from the same behavior, though researchers aren’t exactly sure why. Oral cancer has a low survival rate because it is generally not discovered until it has spread to other areas, according to the CDC. Only half of people who’ve been diagnosed with oral cancer will live longer than five years.
The YaYas
I see them everywhere. Small groups of women, usually three or four, sitting in church together, heads together over lunch, power walking down the boulevard, at coffee after their tennis matches. You can see the intimacy, the trust – these are women who have grown together over time. They share their secrets. They prop each other up in the bad times. They laugh over their faux-pas.
No, I don’t envy them, nor do I want to become a part of their group. I know my own YaYas will build, and I will have women I love sharing my life here. Meanwhile, I miss my old YaYa’s.
I’ve been here a year now. The one year point, for me, is usually when things start happening. The real friends come along. I start committing and getting involved in my new community. When I think of all the details we have overcome in one year, all the anxieties I had, all the details over which I agonized, I thank God for his mercy and for the peace of mind we have now. Truly, he answered every prayer, and brought us to a good and spacious place.
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