Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Master's Theses Graduate College 12-2013 Silence, Declaration, and Circumstance: Rethinking Women’s Roles in Saudi Arabia Ashleigh Elizabeth Dunham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Dunham, Ashleigh Elizabeth, "Silence, Declaration, and Circumstance: Rethinking Women’s Roles in Saudi Arabia" (2013). Master's Theses. 432. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/432 This Masters Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SILENCE, DECLARATION, AND CIRCUMSTANCE: RETHINKING WOMEN’S ROLES IN SAUDI ARABIA by Ashleigh Elizabeth Dunham A thesis submitted to the Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Anthropology Western Michigan University December 2013 Thesis Committee: Laura Spielvogel, Ph. D., Chair Bilinda Straight, Ph. D., Co-Chair Mustafa Mughazy, Ph.D. SILENCE, DECLARATION, AND CIRUMSTANCE: RETHINKING WOMEN’S ROLES IN SAUDI ARABIA Ashleigh Elizabeth Dunham, M.A. Western Michigan University, 2013 The canon of academic research on Saudi Arabian women still fails to address the stereotypical images that represent them. While Anglo-American models of feminism may benefit American women, they cannot and should not be a lens through which Americans view Saudi women, as American and Saudi cultures are fundamentally different. Because of this issue, Anglo-American feminism along with the obvious problems of racism and Islamophobia contribute to the American assumption that Saudi Arabian women lack agency and control of their lives. The resulting ideologies continue to influence American ideas about Saudi Arabian women’s access to the opportunities that non-Saudi women may take for granted. Through qualitative ethnographic research, this thesis examines the changing lives of Saudi Arabian women to illustrate that, despite Anglo-American assumptions about their disempowerment, Saudi Arabian women do have access to many opportunities that non-Saudi women take advantage of. Copyright by Ashleigh Elizabeth Dunham 2013 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all of my committee members, Dr. Laura Spielvogel, Dr. Bilinda Straight, and Dr. Mustafa Mughazy, as well as my previous mentor Dr. Allen Zagarell, for giving me their guidance and support throughout all the stages of the thesis writing process. I have learned so much from all of them and am very grateful for their patience and their willingness to work with me through my setbacks. I thank my friend and copy editor Shannon Cunningham, who has helped me continuously by reading, rereading, editing my thesis, and providing me with her feedback, which has helped immensely in conceptualizing my research and how to best lay out this thesis. I also thank my family for their support and encouragement of this work. Finally, I am extremely grateful to the Saudi women who agreed to participate in this research. I sincerely appreciate their willingness to let me into their lives. They welcomed me with open arms, despite our differences. I truly hope this thesis will illustrate the complexity of the lives of Saudi women and will help to dismantle the presuppositions about them. I hope this thesis demonstrates that there is a need for us to rethink our ideas and assumptions about Saudi Arabia, the women and men who live there, the different contexts that exist in Saudi Arabia, and the ideologies that arise from those contexts. Ashleigh Elizabeth Dunham ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………… ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………… 1 Review of Literature on Saudi Arabian Women and Empowerment…. 5 On Representations of Saudi Women…………………………………. 11 Methodology…………………………………………………………… 16 2. IN THE FIELD……………………………………………………………. 24 Fieldnotes………………………………………………………………. 24 Positioning Myself in the Field………………………………………… 27 3. CIRCUMSTANCE………………………………………………………… 37 Wahhabism and the Need for Islamic Rhetoric to Legitimize Reform… 37 The Oil Era: Reform and Women’s First Noted Attempt to Mobilize…. 41 The Era of Globalization: Reform and Women’s Attempts to Mobilize…………………………………………………………………. 44 4. SILENCES AND DECLARATIONS…………………………………......... 55 Alaa and Mona………………………………………...……………….. 63 On Family……………………………………………………………...... 68 On Education, Saudi Cultural Attitudes and Institutions, and Islam ….... 85 5. A MODEL FOR SAUDI WOMEN? ……………………………………… 95 The Women’s Movement in Egypt……………………………………… 96 My Life in Cairo…….…………………………….……………………… 104 No Place for Gender Rights During or After the Revolution……….…..... 109 Victims, Villains, and Vigilantes………………………………………….. 120 iii Table of Contents—Continued CHAPTER Beyond Saudi Women’s Failed Attempts to Mobilize………………….. 145 APPENDICES A. List of Saudi Respondents…………………………………………………… 149 B. HSIRB Approval Forms……………………………………………………. 150 C. Arabic Transcript and English Translation for Ala al Tayer TV Show…………………………………………………………………. 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………. 155 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Despite the critical impact of Said’s Orientalism (1978) on scholarship dealing with Muslim and Middle Eastern cultures, deeply seated assumptions surrounding Islamic practices and Islamic actors persist. -Sherine Hafez, An Islam of Her Own In America, ideas about Saudi Arabian women have become associated with Muslim women or women from the Middle East, and vice versa—this is a problem. The presuppositions made about Muslim or Middle Eastern women collectively, and Saudi women in particular, contribute to the stereotype that they are oppressed victims of a male-dominated society and religion. It is common hegemonic “knowledge” in our Anglo-American society that Saudi Arabian women face discrimination in many forms, but when it comes to the idea that Saudi women have access to power many disagree. Unlike women in Saudi Arabia, many women in other parts of the Middle East, and women in other Islamic countries, have already experienced empowerment in ways that Saudi Arabian women have not. Furthermore, the way American women experience and understand empowerment seems to be at odds with the way women in Saudi Arabia do. For example, it is common knowledge that Saudi Arabian women cannot drive and need a male’s permission for educational and work-related opportunities. This is not the case for many non-Saudi women, and many Saudi women see this as disempowering. In America's post 9/11 context, rhetoric concerning the "war on terror," along with liberal feminist discourses, continue to affect and prolong misguided ideologies about 1 Muslim and Middle Eastern women and their access to different forms of liberation. Hafez agrees and asserts that: [A]lthough deeply committed to raising awareness of the plight of oppressed women in the Middle East and elsewhere, feminist literature still fails to articulate their condition in ways other than the obvious dichotomy of state versus Islam or modernity versus tradition. (2011: 75) Presumptions about Middle Eastern and Muslim women that stem from these dichotomies fail to acknowledge the multiple ways these women, and more specifically Saudi women, can become empowered on their own terms. Anglo-American models of feminism, while beneficial to American women, cannot and should not be a lens through which we view Saudi women—our cultures are fundamentally different, and we need to adjust our ways of thinking in order to do the situation justice. Because of this issue, Anglo-American feminism, along with the obvious problems of racism and Islamophobia, contribute to the American perception of Saudi women as oppressed, which stands in opposition to the idea that Saudi women can be empowered in specific contexts that will be mentioned throughout this thesis. In this thesis I argue that Saudi Arabian women do have access to power through many different avenues. These avenues wherein Saudi women can exercise control of their lives can be partially attributed to the shifting material conditions in Saudi Arabia— conditions that have influenced social relationships to the benefit of Saudi women. Additional avenues to power exist in areas where Saudi women are making headway in Saudi Arabia—via their active participation in Saudi society and through social networking sites, television programs, and Saudi publications. 2 I analyze the experiences and exchanges I had within the Kalamazoo, Michigan Saudi Arabian female community to learn about the ways women’s roles in Saudi Arabia are changing. From these experiences and the research done for this thesis, I learned that although there are many instances where Saudi women are oppressed, there are also many instances where they are liberated. Saudi Arabian women are demanding the right to become more fully integrated into Saudi society and are actively challenging and raising Saudi consciousness with regard to things that Saudi women are concerned with. This nuanced perception of women in Saudi Arabia must be brought to the table to break down the misconceptions about Saudi women that portray them in only one light. The questions I attend to in this thesis are: How have the circumstances and developments in Saudi Arabia transformed the lives of Saudi women? What avenues of power do Saudi women