Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia: A Conflict of Laws, Custom and Policy Reforms

Abstract

In the contexts of Saudi Vision 2030 introduced in 2016 as well as moderate Islamic policy reforms introduced in 2017, issues of women empowerment through education and employment occurred in various domains, including health, sport, law, media, economics, politics, and oil and gas sectors, to name just a few. In this climate, there are still no studies that engage with how Saudi women’s rights have been understood, advocated, enacted, contested, justified and even protected from being challenged. This nascent study frames and examines the intersectionality between Saudi women’s rights, Islamic law and customary law in the context of those recent policy reforms. It explores the following research questions: (a) how Saudi women’s rights are defined, practiced and justified in the context of moderate Islamic policy reforms?, (b) what do the stories of Saudi women reveal about their lived experiences in the context of moderate Islamic reforms?, (c) what challenges do Saudi women encounter related to their rights?, (d) what strategies do Saudi women use to negotiate emerging challenges?, and (f) how do the findings of this study help improve women’s law in Saudi Arabia today? The data of this phenomenological qualitative study emerge from two sources: autobiographical narratives and semi-structured interviews with 15 Saudi females with different social-economic backgrounds (married, singles and/or college female students). The findings revealed that although recent policy reforms enabled some women to have access to different educational and employment opportunities, there were still some women struggling to fully benefit from these reforms. This is due to the fact that the boundaries among (i) customary law/practices (ii) Saudi women’s rights, and (iii) social and policy reforms for women’s rights are still not clearly set. The study highlights its contributions to the scholarship of women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim communities. It also proposes a conceptual framework, grounded in Islamic legal theory, for understand women’s rights and its complexities.