HRW report on male guardianship and sex segregation in Saudi Arabia

Human Rights Watch publicou onte un informe sobre a situación das mulleres en Arabia Saudí, que apenas teñen direitos e dependen do consentimento dun varón (normalmente o pai ou o marido) para viaxar, estudiar, traballar, casar…

O informe leva por título “Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia”. Copio un extracto da introducción:

[...] The Saudi government has instituted a system whereby every Saudi woman must have a male guardian, normally a father or husband, who is tasked with making a range of critical decisions on her behalf. This policy, grounded in the most restrictive interpretation of an ambiguous Quranic verse, is the most significant impediment to the realization of women’s rights in the kingdom. The Saudi authorities essentially treat adult women like legal minors who are entitled to little authority over their own lives and well-being.

Every Saudi woman, regardless of her economic or social status, is affected by these guardianship policies and the deprivation of rights that their enforcement entails. Adult women generally must obtain permission from a guardian to work, travel, study, or marry. Saudi women are similarly denied the right to make even the most trivial decisions on behalf of their children.

Male guardianship over adult women also contributes to their risk of confronting family violence and makes it nearly impossible for survivors of family violence to avail themselves of protection or redress mechanisms. Social workers, physicians, and lawyers told Human Rights Watch about the near impossibility of removing male guardianship of women and children, even from abusive male guardians.

Even where permission from a male guardian is not mandatory or even stipulated under the government’s own guidelines, some officials will ask for it, since the overarching system in place in the kingdom transfers virtually all decision-making power to a woman’s guardian. Officials may ask women for their guardian’s consent even where no law or guideline requires such consent because current practice assumes women have no power to make their own decisions. For example, several Saudi women and health professionals told Human Rights Watch that some hospitals require a guardian’s permission to allow women to undergo certain medical procedures and to be discharged.

While the government has taken some steps in recent years to limit the absolute power of guardians, there is little evidence that these measures are actually being implemented in practice. Saudi women told Human Rights Watch that despite a recent Ministry of Interior decision allowing women over the age of 45 to travel without permission, most airport officials continue to ask all women for written proof that their guardian has allowed them to travel.

Strictly enforced sex segregation adds to these barriers and hinders a Saudi woman’s ability to participate fully in public life. The Saudi government is willing to sacrifice a host of fundamental human rights in order to prevent the intermingling of men and women. In 2005 the absence of separate voting booths for women was used as an excuse to exclude them from the country’s first-ever municipal elections. For employers, the need to establish separate office spaces and women’s inability to interact with many government agencies without a male representative provide a significant disincentive to hiring women. In education, segregation often means that women are relegated to unequal facilities with inferior academic opportunities. Female students and professors also told Human Rights Watch that, unlike for their male counterparts, the gates to their colleges and departments are locked during teaching hours. [...]