IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Be A Woman In Saudi Arabia
Wajeha Al-Huwaider, 47, is divorced and has two teenage sons that she has enrolled at a boarding school in VA because “I do not want them to grow up to be typical Saudi men.” She is also an activist and co-founder of the Society for Defending Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, and in this Washington Post op-ed, she writes, “I am tired of being humiliated solely because I am a woman”:
Everyone knows that women are denied rights in Saudi Arabia. … [W]e endure a status that most Americans can scarcely imagine. …
Obviously, there is nothing in the Koran that forbids driving. No, the reason we are not allowed to drive is that the power to transport ourselves would give men much less control over us.
Last year on International Women's Day I posted a video on YouTube of myself driving a car. It was filmed by another woman sitting in the passenger's seat. …
I have campaigned on behalf of an 8-year-old girl who was married off to a 50-year-old man. I posted a video on YouTube against child marriages, showing little girls and teenagers voicing their refusal to be child brides. The video was covered by local female writers, then picked up by CNN. This campaign terminated that marriage, and the little girl is free. …
Then there's polygamy. Saudi men are allowed to marry as many as four wives. Polygamy has destroyed many families. In my campaigns, I often feel that I am fighting for my mom.
There are women who don't support our cause - rich ones whose husbands benefit from the system, and religious ones who just don't believe in change.
Why am I different? … Perhaps because I went to college in America and got to experience a life in which women are treated as people, not property.
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