Years ago when I lived in the States, I remember a big deal being made about programs for Displaced Homemakers, mostly middle-aged women who’d spend their lives working at home and were now ready to enter – or in some cases re-enter – the workforce and earn a paycheck. The idea behind the program was that the skills which had served these women well for umpteen years – things like cooking and cleaning and organizing and shuttling and mediating and scheduling and entertaining and educating and an entire litany of other important but unsalaried skills – were no longer needed, so they needed to learn a whole new – and markedly different – skill set.
I bring up Displaced Homemaker programs because I’m hoping something similar might be in order here in Saudi someday soon. But, instead of displaced homemakers, I’m thinking we might want to organize a program for women who have mastered the guardianship system.
Apparently there are quite a few of them – and they’ve decided to make their voices heard through an organization called “My Guardian Knows the Best For Me”.
Yep, you read that right. A group of Saudi women who want to keep – perhaps even strengthen – the male guardianship system.
The system that prevents them from traveling or being educated or even being treated for a medical condition without the express permission of a man.
The system that puts them at the mercy of fathers and husbands, uncles, brothers and even sons.
The system that forces them to seek the approval of a man in order to get a job, dress as they please, visit with friends or marry whom they choose.
The system which, in a nutshell, treats them like irresponsible, unaccountable, naïve and dependent children.
Anyway, when the day comes when the guardianship system goes the way of the Dodo bird – and you have to hope that day is drawing closer all the time! - I’ve an idea the members of this group are going to be caught out without any skills.
Left out in the cold, as it were.
Nesrine Malik would seem to agree. Writing in the Guardian she notes,
“Even under subjugation, women have power, mostly over other women, and that power is drawn from their hard-earned position in the established hierarchy.
Those that have excelled at compliance [i.e. women who have mastered the guardianship system and want to see it maintained in Saudi society] have achieved some status and can then look down on the less honorable and rebellious.
An assault on [the guardianship] system destroys an entire arsenal of survival skills and lifetime of work. Like the chronically redundant, they would have to retrain and re-enter the job market at junior level with all the other upstarts.
In fact, by allying themselves to the male guardians, women are then delegated power that they can in turn wield themselves. They have a vested interest in the status quo and in maintaining their positions as the matrons of propriety.”In other words, women standing on the side of groups like My Guardian Knows the Best For Me, have a vested interest – a deeply vested interest – in keeping the system in place.
Maybe they have lenient guardians, maybe they have enough money so it doesn’t make much difference if they’re allowed to work or not, heck maybe they don’t even live in Saudi Arabia but rather frolic in lands where women are treated like competent, thinking adults.
I'm with Saudi Woman who suggests - well she more than just suggests ;-) - that the women behind this new campaign have never suffered like most Saudi women under the guardianship system. She write:
These campaigners live like princesses and the restrictions that stifle average women daily, do not apply to them. Have they ever faced a PVPV commission member who stole their very breath. If a PVPV commission member even set his eyes on them, he would shake from fear, because the only power that the PVPV recognize is the power of your guardian. These men know nothing of religion.
My guardian knows what’s best for me, seriously?!
They never wonder and they never question. Instead in a naiveness that is to be envied, naiveness reminiscent of Marie Antoinette, they are bothered by the demands of the women who have suffered. And so they send to the king, asking him that this system of injustice be maintained.
Who knows who's truly behind the campaign, but the point is, women who want to keep the guardianship system have learned how to work the system to their advantage.
Take away the guardianship system and you take away their advantage.
No wonder they’re making some noise.
As Malik concludes, “Nobody is stopping women from deferring to their guardians' authority in their private lives, but insisting that this authority applies across the board shows a shocking disregard for other women not privileged enough to have guardians who 'know what's best for them'.
And, I might add, a shocking amount of selfishness and short-sightedness.
How do you feel about the male guardianship system? Who benefits from it? What skills are needed to survive and thrive under the male guardianship system as opposed to surviving and thriving without such a system?
Courtest of http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/SGIME
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