Saudi Arabia & Societal Roles: The Right to Schooling
The main obstacle that faces Saudi women is the role that they are expected to play within their society. Saudi women are expected to be obedient daughters, wives, and mothers, and most careers are not open to them. As a result, they are severely underemployed and education is seen as a trophy that can enhance social standing rather than a qualification for a career. Saudi Arabia is, in many cases, “a highly male-dominated society that creates many social barriers that challenge women in leadership roles” (Alexander 201). As such, females may only attend school with the permission of their fathers or their husbands (Somers 50). In fact, schooling in Saudi Arabia reinforces these societal roles. Until 2002, males’ education was overseen by the Saudi Ministry of Education, while females’ education was controlled by the Department of Religious Guidance (Hamdan 44). The purpose of this separation was to “ensure that women’s education did not deviate from the original purpose of female education, which was to make women good wives and mothers, and to prepare them for ‘acceptable’ jobs such as teaching and nursing that were believed to suit their nature” (Hamdan 44).
This reinforcement of gender roles in society has contributed to women’s subordination and has created a major obstacle to education and employment. Since only a few careers are accepted as suitable for women, the available labor force is severely underemployed. As seen in Tables 8A and 8B, while in 2014 the nation’s unemployment rate was estimated at 11.2 percent (normal for developing countries), women’s unemployment was 32 percent (CIA World Factbook, “Unshackling themselves”). Meanwhile, in 2012 for young people between the ages of 15 and 24, the national unemployment rate was much higher at 28.3 percent; the young female unemployment rate was an enormous 54.4 percent (CIA World Factbook). While in the Middle East region a gender gap of about 10 percentage points is normal, Saudi Arabia’s gap is about 22 percent nationally, and 26 percent for youths (Mahmood).
Unemployment in Saudi Arabia affects women’s access to education in a different way than in Egypt, since Saudi Arabia’s vast oil resources make it a rentier state that provides ultimate welfare to all citizens. Therefore Saudi families worry much less about how they will be provided for in old age than Egyptian families. For Saudis, female education is more of a title that can confer a higher social status through marriage. It mirrors the situation in Jordan, where higher education is not a “transition for the workplace as much as it is becoming more desirable for marriage,” according to Mayyada Abu-Jaber, founder of a Jordan-based foundation for the advancement of education (Cadei). When women continue their studies to secondary- or tertiary-level education, they are “are less likely to work [but] they’re more likely to marry an educated man with a job that can support them both” (Cadei). This can encourage female education, but discourages female employment.
However, the education that Saudi women have access to is not equal to that of men, which creates a barrier to quality education. This is especially evident in the fact that male and female education is totally segregated in Saudi Arabia after the primary level (Somers 51). Women may not major in architecture, engineering, or pharmacology (Somers 57). The governmental separation, that has its focus on steering females away from careers that are unsuitable for them, is mirrored in the curricular separation that focuses on teaching girls to “buy into an assigned role, a role in which they were subordinate to men, but not enough to challenge it” (Doumato 93). Moreover the education that is accessible for Saudi women totally ensures that “at every level of competence and leadership there will be a place for them that is inferior and subordinate to the positions of men” (Smith 34).
This kind of education is far from equal or high-quality, and therefore this subordinate societal role represents an obstacle to female education in Saudi Arabia. It is hard to identify any single actor that creates or perpetuates these roles or this societal structure, other than the political necessity of maintaining order. Therefore, these societal roles “can be attributed to traditional and socio-economic values, [which] gained legal force in Saudi society by being associated with Islamic teaching” (Hamdan 45). Though they are not directly derived from the Quran, their association with it, in the land where Islam originated, carries strong social influence. Due to this, the actors that perpetuate these values are everywhere and nowhere: it is all people in the society that establish, uphold, and enforce their traditions. However, change is happening in Saudi Arabia. Men and women alike are pushing for the adjustment of laws and rules, and spaces for women only are increasing. If these petitions persist and the Saudi government, which now welcomes more women than ever before to its ranks, may be able to affect and enforce real change to the parts of Saudi society that present barriers to women’s access to education.
