Women's rights in Saudi Arabia and the Question of Democracy
Are gains in women’s political rights in Saudi Arabia a reflection of changing attitudes to democracy and gender equality in the Arab World?
While women having recently been given limited political rights in Saudi Arabia, a study published in Democratization, found that although women and men showed similar levels of support for democracy, there was little support for gender equality, with over 30% of those surveyed supporting democracy but opposing gender equality, or vice versa.
Veronica Kostenkoa and her colleagues found that although younger Arabs men (25–34 years) are both better educated and more urbanized, they show less support for gender equality and democracy than middle aged or older Arabs. This indicates that the younger generation are showing a regression in certain social values. Despite this, female attitudes towards gender equality are the same across all age groups, with women across all countries expressing a higher demand for more egalitarian roles both in public and private life.
Interestingly, although women and men show similar levels of democracy support in every country of the Arab world, the older generations are more pro-democratic. The younger generation showed they are the most conservative, with levels of education having little effect on their views, in contrast tothe older age groups for who higher levels of education tended to accompany a more liberal outlook.
Kostenko and her colleagues conclude that analysed data from the Arab Barometer project (a study of social, political and religious attitudes) in Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza Strip), Lebanon and Yemen, indicate that despite the Arab Spring, we ‘cannot expect a shift towards liberal democracy in the Arab world in the near future’.
“[These results] may lead to a tentative conclusion that the perception of the term ‘democracy’ in the Arab world might differ from that in the West,” they observe. “If equal rights are not considered to be a part of the democratic system, we should be very suspicious about the claim that the majority of the Arab population strives for democracy.”
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