Over 14,000 Saudi women have signed a petition calling on the government to change its guardianship laws which do not give women human rights.
It’s pretty well-known that in Saudi Arabia women aren’t allowed to drive a vehicle, but the country’s laws also also dictate that every woman must have a male guardian - often her husband, father, brother, or uncle, but sometimes even her son.
A Saudi woman must have her guardian’s permission not just to marry, get a passport, or leave the country, but often for things as crucial as receiving healthcare or employment. This, activists claim, leave women extremely vulnerable to abuse and control.
In addition to the petition, the Saudi King’s office was flooded with personal telegrams from an estimated 2,500 women calling for the rules to be changed, and hashtags such as #IAmMyOwnGuardianand #StopEnslavingSaudiWomen became widely used on Twitter. There are even bracelets to support the campaign.
Activist Aziza Al-Yousef told the BBCthat Saudi Arabia’s women have ‘made undeniably clear they won't stand to be treated as second-class citizens any longer, and it's high time their government listened’.
Worryingly, some women continue to support the guardianship system, with an Arabic hashtag meaning #TheGuardianshipIsForHerNotAgainstHer being used on social media. One female journalist has even claimed that although the rules do need to be reformed, the nation needs to ‘correctly apply guardianship to protect and support Saudi women’, because ‘guardianship is part of Islam’.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.