Justice for Loujain Al-Hathloul
Saudi Arabia is a nation well known for its unequal treatment of men and women. Legally, Saudi Arabia is governed on the basis of their interpretation of sharia law, which includes a male guardianship law that basically requires male family members — typically husbands or fathers — to approve women’s basic decisions and actions. This includes male approval of women doing things as essential as applying for a passport or getting married, which undermines women’s ability to actively participate in society.
Recently, however, there have been significant changes in regard to women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. In 2019, Saudi Arabia underwent legal changes to ostensibly help improve the issue of gender inequality. These legal changes were part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) long-term development strategy known as Vision 2030 and were adopted by the Council of Ministers and endorsed by royal decree.
One of these reforms included allowing any Saudi citizen to obtain a Saudi passport without the approval of others, meaning that women can obtain their own passports and men’s passports will no longer include their wives and unwed daughters. While women were previously prevented from traveling at all without a male guardian, they can now travel without their guardian’s permission if they are over the age of 21. Saudi women are also now allowed to drive.
The Saudi government also implemented protections against gender discrimination within the workplace. They legally clarified that a “worker” can be female as well as male, that women can work without the approval of a male guardian, and that all citizens will be considered equal in regard to the right to work without experiencing discrimination, including entitlement to equal pay. This law also protects women workers against unlawful dismissals due to maternity leave or pregnancy.
Saudi women can now also inform the civil status office of death, marriage, or divorce, as well as attain family records, register the births of their children, and be considered the “head of the household” when it comes to decisions related to their children. They can now also check their marital status online to protect them from having a divorce without their knowledge, and are no longer required to live with their male guardians.
But while some of these gender reforms seem progressive, they are still quite limiting. For instance, women above the age of 21 can travel abroad without a guardian’s approval, but male guardians can still seek court orders to restrict their travel. Male guardians can also still find legal avenues to limit a woman’s ability to be independent, like filing cases of civil disobedience and absence from home, which are both considered crimes and punishable by imprisonment and flogging. Furthermore, even though the law does not require employers to require the woman’s guardian’s permission to work, it does not do anything to prevent employers from doing so. Moreover, women are still unable to marry, divorce, or go to a domestic violence shelter without the permission of a male guardian, which makes it extremely difficult for women to seek help and protection in cases of domestic violence and abuse.
Beyond limitations, these laws also distract from a clearer hypocrisy: that real harm is still happening to Saudi women at the hands of the government — namely, what is currently happening to Loujain al-Hathloul. Al-Hathloul and several other prominent women’s rights activists were arrested in May 2018 for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. They were charged with engaging in activities that “undermine the kingdom’s security, stability, and national unity.” The very next month, the ban against women driving was lifted, but the detainees remain in jail to this day.
After being detained for three years, al-Hathloul finally had her first day in trial under Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court on December 10, 2020. It was only 18 days later that the trial was over and al-Hathloul was found guilty of “spying with foreign parties” and “conspiring against the kingdom.” She was sentenced to five years and eight months in jail, but the court did suspend two years and 10 months of her sentence, and backdated the start of her jail term to May 2018, meaning that she only has three months left to serve. Even though this seems hopeful, as al-Hathloul will finally be released from her detainment, this is a truly disappointing showcase of the unlawful treatment of women activists in Saudi Arabia.
During her three-year detainment, her family has expressed great concern over her mental and physical health as they’ve stated how inhumanely she was treated, which included solitary confinement, hunger strikes, torture, including electric shocks and whippings, and sexual harrassment, and have called for her release as trial dates were postponed multiple times throughout this period. Her experience in trial was no better, as it was not only rushed, but possibly unlawful as the activity that was deemed to be an attack on the kingdom and royal family were simply peaceful steps toward activism for women’s rights. The fact remains that even though her charges all relate to her activism, she was still charged under the counterterrorism court. The greatest insult is that the reforms she actively fought for and what are deemed as terrorism in the eyes of the Saudi court are the same reforms that the government proudly publicized.
This hypocrisy begs the question: What will be next for Saudi Arabia? Are the small legal steps being taken to distract from the dark truth of what is actually happening to women’s activists? Does the government hope small legal compromises will fix its international image and keep domestic activists and foreign allies at bay? Will the government continue boasting about the reforms that they punish activists for pursuing? One thing we know for sure is that the fight for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia still has a long way to go.
