Turki Al-Dakheel

Okaz

There are two major hurdles facing women in the workplace: The absence of a law that criminalizes harassment and a lack of suitable transportation facilities. The latter forces a large number of female teachers to commute hundreds of kilometers every day with an unrelated male driver in order to reach their workplace.



There is no specific law that deals with sexual harassment in the Kingdom. Such a law, when passed, should be stricter than the newly-enacted law to prevent domestic violence. Women teachers need safety and security while traveling to work; they are constantly worried about being involved in an accident at the hands of the Kingdom’s accident-prone, male-only cadre of drivers or of being subjected to the lustful gaze of the men driving them to their place of work.



Earlier, local newspapers published a survey which was conducted by the Division for Public Opinion Polls of the King Abdul Aziz Center for National Dialogue. The survey revealed that the main factors that contribute to sexual harassment in Saudi society are a lack of religious awareness and the slow pace in taking penal action against harassers.



The Center recently published the results of a survey which showed that 91 percent of respondents considered the lack of religious awareness to be the main reason behind the rise in sexual harassment cases in the Kingdom. At the same time, 76 percent of respondents felt that the lack of stringent laws to punish offenders leads to an increase in such cases.



There is no doubt that the religious element is extremely significant but it is not the only factor involved in this issue. The religious element is something pertaining to a human being’s relationship with God. But the legal deterrent, in the form of a law, is significant as it governs the relations between man and man.  

While there are people who describe themselves as atheists in countries, such as Sweden, France, and Norway, these countries have the lowest number of sexual harassment cases. Therefore, the main issue is not religion, it is the absence of stringent laws to punish those guilty of sexual harassment.