Al-Jazirah

IN a quick search of the segments of women benefiting from government support, whether in social security, housing or others, we may find a certain category is completely and inadvertently forgotten.

This category is composed of women who society refers to as spinsters, a term that I don't prefer to use unless people understand referring to an individual as a spinster should not be applied to woman alone, but to men as well, or even those who have not reached the age of marriage and have been orphaned or have certain conditions.

Apart from the controversy of names, women who have never married have lost their rights and are more oppressed than widowed or divorced women.

If we consider the conditions to grant social security benefits, we find that unmarried women are excluded. Moreover, this aid is granted only after the age of 35 and is required that her family must get the social security in order for her to get it.

Here I say that it is not a condition that the unmarried woman who is entitled to the aid to have a poor husband or guardian. We live in the age of egoism and self-serving. The guardian of the family could be on paper only, but this unmarried woman is poor, so why is her access to aid tied to her family's receipt?

The Ministry of Housing, which did not stipulate any equality between men and women in obtaining mortgage loans, has completely forgotten this category of women, restricted the right to housing aid to divorced women and widows, while unmarried women have no such rights.

In the past, unmarried women could not obtain a driver's or domestic worker's visa. Today, the system has changed and the visa has become a legitimate right for them. This is important to mention in the advancement of efforts to empower Saudi women.

We are moving backward in time, and it is not acceptable for women's rights to remain inequitable. They are citizens and they are entitled to all the rights that the citizen receives, whether married or unmarried, widow or divorcee.

I look at the full half of the cup and I am full of hope for changing the formulation of systems that reduce the access of women to the opportunities obtained by their partners at home at a time when many of the economic and family understandings have become a full partnership between men and women. Man is no longer the sole breadwinner of the family as it was in the past. Many of the houses are owned only by women and this encourages us to rewrite all the systems that subordinate women or deprive them of access to equal opportunities with men.