RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) ― Within their female-only campuses, women at Saudi Arabia’s universities let loose. Trendy sneakers, colorful tops, a myriad of hairstyles. Some experiment with bleach blonde or even dip-dyed blue hair. The more adventurous ones have cropped their hair into short buzzes.
In their bags, the textbooks vary, but one item is mandatory: a floor-length black abaya robe that each must cover herself with when she steps through the university gates back to the outside world of the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to improve women’s education, part of a broader drive to empower young Saudis for the marketplace. That has meant improved campuses, better facilities and research programs and a slight expansion in the curriculum for women. For years, Saudi King Abdullah has been making startling, if incremental, moves to ease restrictions on women in the kingdom, where the word of strict ultraconservative Wahhabi clerics is virtually law.
But a look inside the women’s universities that have sprung up over the past decade illustrates how change only goes so far.
Within the campus grounds ― a world of strictly female students, teachers and staff ― women have some greater freedoms. But outside, women remain bound by a web of customs and religious strictures. Women are kept segregated from men, are barred from simple rights like driving and required to adhere to strict dress codes that often require them to cover their hair and face with a black veil. They are ruled by the whim of male relatives whose permission is required for a woman to work, get an education or travel under “guardianship laws.”
With those restrictions in place, women’s rights advocates say, the king’s drive to modernize the oil-rich nation will always hit a wall.
“No matter what happens, women are still bound by male guardianship laws and strict cultural norms,” said Aziza Yousef, a professor at the women’s college of King Saud University.
“If you are lucky and your male guardian is good, you will move ahead in life fine. If you are in a family where the male guardian is strict, your life will be paralyzed.”
Women also face limited job opportunities once they leave the university. Women’s participation in the workplace is minimal, in part due to segregation requirements and traditions that encourage women to focus on marriage and children. Although girls make up almost 58 percent of undergraduates, or around 474,000 students, women hold only a third of the jobs in the public sector, and in the private sector the percentage of working women is in the low single digits.
The education push fuels young Saudi women’s ambitions, but they still struggle to navigate the limited possibilities.
“I want to be independent and work before I get married,” said Shaden el-Hamdan, a 22-year-old studying an English degree at Riyadh’s Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University. She’s lucky in that her family is not pressing her to get married ― her father tells to wait another six years before thinking about it.
But she said she knows getting a job is difficult. She doesn’t want to be a teacher, the job of an estimated 78 percent of the women who work. So she talks about trying to find a position at one of the multinational corporations operating in the kingdom. If she can’t, she’ll stay in school for a master’s.
