Press Review of the week

September 26th 2011

Saudi King Abdullah has given the KSA’s women the right to vote for first time in nationwide local elections and to run as candidates in municipal polls. Albeit Saudi women will not be allowed to vote in the comming municipal elections to be held in September -looking forward to 2015. As said The Washington Post, a conservative rule prohibits them from driving, or traveling without permission from their guardian… And in a country where obesity affects nearly 70 per cent of the women, they can’t exercise any outdoor sport activities.

Even if the appointement of Noura Al-Fayez as vice-minister of Education for Girls in February 2009, first woman to join the Saudi Government, represents a significant breakthrough in women empowerment, Saudi Arabia remains a strongly Conservative country where the Oulemas accuse the King of being too progressive. Nonetheless the 87-years-old King wants to leave his name to history and social progress in Saudi Arabia.

As underlined Ellen Knickmeyer, describing the poor conditions of Saudi women, shopping malls were employing only male clerks, including lingerie stores and “ladies’s level”… Last year, a Saudi blogger, Reem Asaad, launched a campaign to boycott these shopping malls in order to apply the very law allowing women to be clerks -more appropriated in women underwear department. The Labor Law was proposed by the Ministry Ghazi al-Gosaibi in 2006, without reaching a consensus among conservative Oulemas defending single-sex education, as said in these days an article from France24.

For Saudi women activists, these measures do not reform enough to meet women empowerment challenges… Boycott campaigns, reports New York Times in Canada, will continue to speak out against Saudi embryonic human rights.