Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran: All That or Tit for Tat

They both call each other criminals, zealots, hypocrites, and supporters of terrorists. They engage in brutal proxy wars across the Middle East and are accused of meddling in the political affairs of nearly every other Arab country. But now, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has the two countries squabbling about something else much more surprising: women’s rights.

Both countries have, historically, enforced austere interpretations of Islam on their citizens, and it is women who have borne the brunt of the oppression. In recent years, however, the trend of repression has begun to reverse. After decades of gender-apartheid, women in Saudi Arabia and Iran are increasingly being granted more rights. The reason? Certainly not because they have had a sudden revelation about the need to follow basic human rights standards. Many speculate that the recent (albeit limited) relaxation of harsh gender laws could be traced to the two countries’ rivalry.

For the past few decades, women have enjoyed many more rights in Iran than in Saudi Arabia. In Iran, women are allowed to vote in every election and stand as candidates: six percent of Iran’s parliament is comprised of women, which is greater than the rate in cosmopolitan Lebanon, 4 percent.[i] Women work and open businesses in Iran without the need for male approval—either from their male elders or their husbands. In Iran, there has never been a law banning women from driving or riding bicycles, as there was in Saudi Arabia until 2018.[ii]

Until recently, the Saudi government has placed strict restrictions on women, resulting in a more segregated society than Iran. In Saudi Arabia, everything from public transportation hubs to cafes must adhere to gender separation doctrines. The Saudi government has done its best to shackle women through the draconian “guardianship laws” that have defined the Kingdom’s poor women’s rights record: women must obtain the support of male “guardians” to work, open a business, apply for a passport, open a bank account, or even exit prison.[iii]

But in the past few years, Saudi Arabia has started to catch up with Iran. In 2015, Saudi Arabia finally allowed women to vote in municipal elections, and in 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) granted women the right to drive, to much fanfare in the Western media. In 2017, the previous year, MBS stripped Saudi Arabia’s religious police of much of their power to harass women for failing to adhere to Wahabi dress codes, and jailed extremist clerics. Interestingly enough, the Iranian police, which employs a similar vice squad to enforce Islamic dress codes, followed suit. In December of 2017, Tehran’s “guidance patrol” grudgingly announced, under the pressure of moderate reformists in Iran’s government, that it would cease detaining women who wear the hijab loosely.[iv]

Now, the competition has spread to other arenas as well. When MBS announced he wanted to allow women to attend soccer matches (albeit in gender-segregated sections), Iranian women were outraged. Saudi Arabia, which had long been seen as less progressive than Iran, had suddenly one-upped the Islamic Republic. Although Iran did not go so far as to granting women the right to attend sports matches, the government announced they would allow female athletes to compete internationally, a right not given in Saudi Arabia.[v] As many women’s rights activists have concluded, the constant tug-of-war between Saudi Arabia and Iran may have a silver-lining: greater gender equality for women in those countries.

Still, the expansion of women’s rights under Iran and Saudi Arabia may not be causally linked, but rather related to similar trends existing in both countries. Iran and Saudi Arabia both have young populations more liberal than their parents’ generations. Granting women more rights may just be a way to appease the youth and get them on the side of countries’ respective regimes. Or perhaps both countries, after years of ignoring international criticism of their human rights abuses, are trying to brandish their images in front of the world in order to attract international investment. MBS has taken on an ambitious new plan to transform Saudi Arabia from a unidimensional, oil-based economy to one that relies on a number of different industries that would be attractive to a variety of multinational corporations.[vi] In an attempt to woo investors, he has tried to soften Saudi Arabia’s image across the world by partly accommodating the women’s rights cause, especially after facing international backlash following the Saudi-orchestrated murder of journalist and MBS-critic, Jamal Khashoggi. Iran, which has been able to open up its doors to international investment following the nullification of sanctions due to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, wants to improve its image as well.

At the same time, Iran and Saudi Arabia’s deep enmity could further suggest that their tit-for-tat emancipatory moves may be attributed to their rivalry and its historic roots. Iran is the stronghold of conservative Shia Islam, and Saudi Arabia the embodiment of a reactionary Sunni state. Iran is ethnically Persian, and Saudi Arabia is Arab. Iran is a country is an “Islamic Republic” formed out of an uprising against an unpopular autocrat, Saudi Arabia is a monarchy with an autocrat at its helm. Iran’s form of government, an Islamist pseudo-democracy, fundamentally threatens the monarchy in place in Saudi Arabia. Iran, which views the Saudi Arabian system as corrupt, elitist, and un-Islamic, has funded the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East in order to promote Islamic democracy and, in effect, delegitimize the Islamic monarchy in Saudi Arabia.[vii] The Saudi government, which is already worrying about the world’s shift away from oil dependence, fears nothing more than an democratic Islamist uprising.

By granting women more rights, the regimes of each country can proudly claim to an increasingly liberal and youthful Middle East that their system works the best—women included. When all is said and done, however, both governments’ stance on women’s rights is not drastically different today than it was yesterday. Shortly after granting women the right to drive, Crown Prince Salman ordered the arrests of dozens of women’s rights activists and charged them with sedition and “treachery” as if to suggest that reform could only happen under his close watch, and only to drum up popular support for the regime.[viii][ix] Some activists are now being tried in counter-terror courts, facing sentences of up to 20 years in prison.[x] “This unprecedented level of persecution of human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia is disturbing,” says the Middle East’s Human Rights Watch director Lynn Maalouf.[xi] “It’s a sign that reform may be as elusive as ever.”[xii]

Illustration by Samantha Malzahn

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