By Abdulrahman Al-Shalash
Some so-called advocates of women’s rights try to depict our society as patriarchal and male-dominated and accuse Saudi men of opposing any move that gives Saudi women greater rights. They say Saudi men are the reason why Saudi women are lagging behind compared with other women around the world in terms of rights. They compare the Kingdom to other Western, Arab and Islamic countries and claim that Saudi women are not empowered enough. These advocates level accusations at our society without presenting any concrete evidence and statistics to support such accusations.
Let us take a look around the world and see who controls societies in different countries. Men all over the world continue to control leading positions including heads of state, key government positions and CEOs. Only in rare cases do we find a woman as the head of state and I am talking about the world today. Now if we look at old and ancient history, we will find that men controlled all leading roles in societies even in fields such as literature and poetry that were restricted to women. Men ventured into these fields and excelled to the extent that women had to exert greater efforts just to compete.
Western countries, including the United States of America, apply a democratic system in which the president is elected by the people. But how many women have become president or prime minister of a country? Only a few. How many American women have become president? None. Take a look at the pictures of the US presidents and you will see that all of them were men and even today’s president is a man. If we compare advanced countries to the Kingdom, we will see that the Saudi government has empowered women and helped them venture into fields that would not have been possible in the past, in light of the conservative views held by the majority of the population. The Saudi government paved the way for women to be Shoura Council members and hold other senior positions in both the public and private sectors.
Only women can prove to society that they are as competent and capable as men. We do not need advocates to do that because some of them use women’s issues to push ulterior agendas or motives.
