21 All I Want Is Equality with Girls

ALL I WANT IS EQUALITY WITH GIRLS: GENDER AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GULF By Sean Foley* This article explains how women in the Gulf states have harnessed political and socioeconomic changes over the last decade to alter their standing at home and abroad. It argues that Gulf women have benefited from investments made by Gulf governments in higher education since the 1970s, the war on terrorism, the ever higher costs of employing expatriate workers, and the inability of their male colleagues to fill either skilled or unskilled positions. It also argues that the position of women today is consistent with their position historically in Gulf society, and that questions of gender are not limited to women. INTRODUCTION Olayan did not wear the full hijab (head- scarf) and covering traditionally worn by In January 2004, Lubna Olayan stepped up women in Saudi Arabia in public settings. Pic- to the lectern to deliver a speech to the Jeddah tures of her and other businesswomen, many Economic Summit. She was a natural choice of whom wore no veils and freely interacted to be the first woman to address the forum in with men in public, appeared on the front pag- the Saudi port city because she headed one of es of Saudi newspapers. Olayan and her col- Saudi Arabia’s best-known conglomerates, the leagues had broken social taboos and chal- Olayan Financing Group. Lubna was a daugh- lenged the authority of Saudi religious elites. ter of Sulayman Olayan, who had risen from It is not surprising that the reaction of these humble circumstances to become one of Saudi elites was one of profound shock and anger. Arabia’s most successful businessmen. Yet the The highest religious figure in the kingdom, organizers of the conference might have re- Grand Mufti Shaykh Abd a-l Aziz bin Abdul- thought their decision to let her speak had they lah al-Shaykh, immediately released a state- known what she would say and the controver- ment in which he condemned the summit, es- sy it would spawn. Throughout her speech, pecially the public mixing of men and women. entitled “A Saudi Vision for Growth,” Olayan He argued that such behavior was the “root” outlined a vision of a Saudi Arabia that was at of every evil and catastrophe, along with the odds with what the kingdom’s religious elites sins of decadence and adultery. He also ex- sought (and still seek) to project to the outside pressed his bewilderment and sorrow that world. For nearly twenty years, they had rigid- “such shameful behavior” could have ever ly enforced social norms that aimed to exclude taken place in Saudi Arabia. Although he did women from virtually all public settings and to not mention Olayan or the conference orga- create a workforce that was overwhelmingly nizers by name, he nonetheless made it clear male, even if that meant importing thousands that he felt that they should be reprimanded. of expatriate workers. Instead, Olayan argued The mixing of men and women, he said, “is that any Saudi, “irrespective of gender,” who highly punishable” and “prohibited for all.” 2 was serious about working should have the These were not idle threats. Fourteen years opportunity to “find a job in the field for earlier, in November 1990, the government which he or she is best qualified.” 1 The reac- delivered swift retribution against 45 elite tion of the audience, which was composed of educated women who deliberately dismissed Saudi and foreign men and women, was en- their drivers and drove through the streets of thusiastic and electric. Riyadh—an act that at the time was legal un- Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2010) 21 Sean Foley der Saudi law but frowned upon by the reli- To understand contemporary Gulf society gious establishment. The government imme- and the gender relations that will shape it in diately dismissed the women from their jobs, the future, one must start in the period before confiscated their passports, and sought to the 1930s. During that time, women, like men, shame them and their families by labeling lived in very poor societies, in which pearling them infidels. Some were even forced into ex- was the chief means of livelihood. Within that ile. It took years for the 45 women to regain milieu, the tribal, clan, or socioeconomic sta- their rights and privileges in Saudi life. To tus of the women’s husbands or male relatives make clear how seriously the government had defined their freedoms and horizons. Women taken the act, it formally outlawed women had limited social freedoms everywhere in the from driving in the kingdom. Those women Gulf. They could not choose their husbands who contemplated driving would now face the and were generally expected to wear the veil wrath of both the state and the religious au- and the long cloak ( abaya ). Significantly, the thorities. 3 use of the veil in coastal communities reflect- Because Olayan had violated social taboos ed the presence of Iranian and South Asian and challenged religious elites in the same merchants, both of whom saw the veil as a way as the 45 female drivers, one would have symbol of female decency and propriety. 4 expected the grand mufti’s words to bring a (Veiling was far less common in rural and swift retribution against her. Quite the oppo- other areas of the Gulf, where these groups did site occurred: the Saudi government did not not exist in large numbers.) Male relatives had take action against Olayan, who has continued considerable power over women and were al- to this day to advocate for women’s rights and lowed to use capital punishment if one suffi- to appear at home and abroad without the tra- ciently dishonored her family. 5 Dowries were ditional Saudi covering and hijab. modest and it was not unheard of for families This article seeks to explain how Ms. to limit women’s inheritances, thereby violat- Olayan and other women in the Arab Gulf ing a chief tenet of Islamic law. states have harnessed political, economic, and Yet the wives of wholesale or retail mer- social changes since 2000 to alter their stand- chants from the Iranian side of the Gulf, where ing at home and abroad. It contends that wom- social mores regarding gender were more re- en are well-positioned to take advantage of laxed, did not face the same social restrictions these changes, owing to their advanced educa- and often received some education. The wives tions, the ever-higher social and financial costs of pearl divers, fishermen, grocers, black- of employing expatriate workers, and the ina- smiths, carpenters, and other skilled traders bility of their male colleagues to fill either had even more freedom. From Unayzah in the skilled or unskilled positions. It also argues Najd to Dubai in the Trucial Coast, women that questions of gender are not limited to bought and sold a host of products with men women . Just as women are expected to dress and women. 6 The central role of women in the and act according to established social norms Gulf economy is well-illustrated by the public and obligations, men are also expected to ad- reaction to a decision by the Dubai legislative here to social expectations. It is ironic that as council in 1931 to ban women from selling women gain a greater role in Gulf life in com- fish. 7 Much to the surprise of the legislators, ing years, they will attain a position that will male fishermen, who presumably would have be closer to that of their grandmothers and benefited the most from the new law, called great-grandmothers in the 1920s than to that of for it to be repealed. Male fishermen argued their mothers in the 1970s and 1980s. that they could not simultaneously catch fish and sell their goods in markets—a clear indi- MEN AND WOMEN IN THE GULF BE- cation of the importance of women in the local FORE 1970 economic life. The law was repealed, but as Fatima al-Sayegh notes, the fishermen’s pro- tests had little to do with time and everything 22 Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2010) All I Want Is Equality with Girls: Gender and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century Gulf to do with money, because women could sell tice Zar and other similar traditions were se- fish at far higher prices than their male col- verely curtailed, and the abaya emerged as the leagues. 8 They simply had a better understand- national Saudi female equivalent of the thob .14 ing of the market than did their husbands. Besides the sheer size of Saudi Arabia vis- Since fishermen would want to strive to get à-vis its neighbors, a significant factor in the the best price for their fish, they understood kingdom’s ability to shape the culture and pol- that the best people for the job were their itics of peoples beyond its borders was the women. discovery of massive oil deposits in the 1930s. Throughout the Gulf, women also worked This discovery brought wealth into the king- as seamstresses, shop keepers, and Koranic dom, especially after the international price of instructors. There had been schools and tutors, oil quadrupled in 1973. Flush with unprece- known as mutuwah, for both boys and girls in dented revenues, the Saudi state came to do- Gulf communities since the 1890s,9 while minate the socioeconomic and political struc- daughters of merchants in the Hijaz studied in tures of the kingdom as never before via infra- elite British schools in Egypt.

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