Who's Got it Worse?

Every time I meet someone unfamiliar with Saudi Arabia, I inevitably get some question along the lines of, "Is it hard to be a woman there?"

And, of course, the answer is "Yes." But they're asking the wrong question, because it's not just hard to be a woman here. It's hard to be anybody here, if you're not surrounded by a strong network of friends and family (and sometimes even if you are). And being single and male in Saudi is arguably harder than being single and female.

Whenever I get in a taxi and find a non-Saudi driver (which is fairly common; most of the drivers around here are South Asian), they generally start a conversation. So we talk about where they're from, and whether they have family, and what part of America I'm from, and then we get around to whether I'm Muslim. And once it becomes clear I'm an American woman, non-Muslim, here by myself, then they assume I will agree when they begin complaining about Saudi. And they do; almost every taxi driver I have spoken to hates it here. HATES it here. They are lonely, they are bored to tears, their families are back home and everyone they know here has business interests, there are no "real" friendships. And I can spend a lot of time complaining about how hard it is to get out, how hard it is to go wherever I want, how isolated I sometimes feel, but at least I have a community of ex-pats I can go to, I have a community at my job I can go to, and if I talk to strangers they do not immediately assume I am creepy. I would say ethnicity, religion and social class are all MUCH bigger determinants of how happy you are here than your gender.

But, like I said, it might even be harder for men than for women. Saudi Jeans is responsible for getting the word out that, in Saudi, single men are frequently kept out of malls by security guards, on the assumption that the only reason single men would want to be in malls is to hunt down the single women. And when they're not kept out, apparently they're sometimes charged money to enter (thanks to Saudi Jeans, here's the original Arabic article if you're interested). Again, because the single women inside are...worth it? But no, even if they pay to enter, they can't do anything that would be construed as flirting, or they risk being arrested. Women get arrested for this sort of thing too (as last year's famous Starbucks arrest proves) but it's much less common. And, as the idea of gender equality picks up steam here, women are moving more and more into the public sphere, but the private sphere hasn't become very welcoming to men. More on that below. Suffice it to say the young men particularly are getting bored. More than 60% of the Saudi population is under 25, and sometimes the young men go crazy. The same goes not just for Saudi men, but for taxi drivers and, from my experience, also the poor Marines (all five of them) who guard the American consulate here.

This is because women have a lot of power. First off, most men are a little bit afraid of us. We're mysterious, exotic, and have the power to draw them into sin. What's not to love? Plus, the dress code means that men (particularly the religious police) are likely to get flustered if they see anything other than the abaya. There are urban legends about Western women who get out of trouble by threatening to open their abaya and scaring the men away. In addition, the entire society is organized around the goal of protecting women (and their "virtue"). For a long time (I dunno whether it's still in the rulebook or not) police didn't pull over cars with women in them. When you walk into a store full of men, you frequently go to the front of the line. If there are no seats available, someone gets up to let you sit down. You get driven everywhere you want to go, dropped off and picked up at the door so you never have to walk, and people will fall all over themselves to carry things for you.

And finally, because of the restrictions on mingling with the opposite sex (and because of the nature of young men), single women are in VERY high demand. VERY high demand. If you make accidental eye contact with somebody (as happened to me once when I was in the car with Melvi), you risk having him follow you home in his car, laughing and honking and acting like a lovestruck maniac. The Washington Post and the New York Times (love from the girls' side, from the boys' side) have both done series on flirting and dating in Saudi Arabia, but the general message is this: if women want to find a boyfriend, it's pretty easy to do. I'm not going to say you'll get fantastic quality, but if I walked down the street towards the supermarket I could probably find a boyfriend before I got there. It gets downright uncomfortable sometimes; I have even gotten this sort of attention from Westerners. It's like those cartoons they used to show where the starving guy on an island looks at his companion and sees him suddenly as a giant turkey dinner. I am the turkey.

The same cannot be said for the men. You could certainly argue that all of these "advantages" that women have merely showcase the skewed, paternalistic, commodity-driven view that men hold of women here, and I'm not necessarily going to disagree. But if I have to choose between not being allowed to do anything because I might sin, and being treated like I'm an object on a pedestal because someone might sin against me, I choose the pedestal.

The situation is in some ways analogous to some of the debates going on in the US about the difficulty men have in finding their roles in society now that women can do anything men can do. Now that the concepts of gender equality are spreading here, and almost everyone here now feels that women belong in the public sphere to some degree (though obviously with protections to ensure their privacy and modesty), women are encroaching more and more on what used to be the male sphere, the public domain. But, because modesty and privacy are still considered essential for the protection of women, that means that the public sphere must adapt to permit women to enter. Many companies who want to hire women (banks and government agencies in particular) are required to completely retrofit the infrastructure to create a separate, protected place for women to work: separate bathrooms, separate elevators, separate work space. Men are required to be considerate of women and their needs in their place of work, in stores and restaurants, and other public spaces.

But men have not likewise made inroads into the private sphere. Where there are women, women's needs rule. Women can enter their male colleagues' work spaces freely; men are constrained to warn the women of their approach before entering the women's areas. Women can use predominantly male bank branches, but they also have branches specifically for women. Coffee shops (Starbucks, for example) don't really enforce the singles/family divisions, so women can sit in the male areas in malls and outside, for example, but they still have their own area if they wish it.

This whole thing is eloquently visible where I work. It's a primarily female environment, where women study and with mostly female employees. Thus, the main area of campus is free from abayas and headscarves. However, we employ maybe 20 men in the faculty and IT (there are many more maintenance men who work after hours). Those men are kept in a small, separate area, and before they leave they need to have an escort and the women in the building he is going to will be warned by email of his approach. If he is coming to the admin building, he follows a hidden tunnel to a locked door, where he waits, knocking more and more urgently, until someone on the other side finds a key to let him out (but not until everyone is properly covered).

As I hope I have made clear elsewhere, I don't feel like my freedom or my lifestyle is hugely curtailed here; somewhat curtailed, yes, but if you find a good group (or groups) then life is wonderful. I guess I mean only to make the point that gender is really not a deciding factor in whether life is good or not here. There are arguments to be made on either side, but life is not all roses for the men.