Saudi Arabia has some of the most restrictive laws when it comes to women’s rights. Women are not allowed to drive or vote and must get permission from their husbands or fathers to do any number of things the western world would consider normal, day-to-day activities.
As if women in Saudi Arabia needed more restrictions, men can now get text messages when their wives leave the country. Let’s just think on this for a moment. If you were trying to escape an abusive relationship, a violent regime or just wanting to travel abroad, you couldn’t do that without the men in your family knowing about it. Of course, women don’t receive these texts when their husbands decide to travel (assuming women are allowed to have phones to being with).
Saudi women are restricted from traveling, working or attending school without permission from a father or husband. These restrictions have been around for years, and it seems to be getting worse, not better. They do not have the right to vote or hold government positions, although many are claiming this will change in the 2015 local elections.
This doesn’t mean that women have accepted their plight without any fight. Noted women’s rights activist Manal al-Sharif made TIME Magazine’s The World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. She rose to fame after posting a YouTube video of her driving down the Saudi streets (which is highly illegal). She took to Twitter to protest the text messages. So at least there are women pushing back against the male-dominated culture.
Still, it is easy to take the freedoms we enjoy for granted when others aren’t so lucky. It is sobering to consider that there are women in other parts of the world that can’t do things as simple as drive to work (that’s two no-nos rolled into one–driving and working). We hope the plight of women in this part of the world improves, though we expect progress to be slow at best. Who knows, one day maybe text messages will be marketing to women instead of keeping tabs on them.
FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.