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Why I’m returning to Saudi Arabia

BY MANAL QUOTA

Americans have a hard time understanding why, after living in Southern California for four years and graduating from UCLA in June, I want to return to my native Saudi Arabia, even if it’s just for a year before heading back to the states for graduate school.

It’s true that at home I won’t be able to do what I usually do here — like driving to the bookstore or catching “Pirates of the Caribbean” on a Friday night. I am returning to a place where it’s illegal for women to drive and where tradition dictates I spend Friday nights with family. I will have to wear an ‘abaya’ — a coat-like garment that covers women’s bodies.

It’s not that I don’t have options. As an honor student in political science, I have job choices both here and abroad that have vastly exceeded my expectations.

But I am going home to experience firsthand new opportunities that are opening up for women. I am optimistic about the agenda of King Abdullah, who stepped into the breach when his half-brother, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, died a year ago.

Early on, King Abdullah made clear that he hoped social attitudes toward women would change. And so far, he has given more than lip service to the idea that empowering women is not only just, but economically vital for the nation.

Within this past year, the king’s “Shoura” council — a parliament of sorts with only advisory powers but influential nonetheless — hired six more women as part-time consultants, twice as many as in the past. True, they have no power, but they can give their opinions. For the first time in the history of Jeddah’s prominent Chamber of Commerce and Industry, women were allowed last March to vote and run for office. Of 71 candidates, 17 were women, and two now sit on the chamber’s 12-seat board of directors. New professions have opened to women; new colleges and universities have been established for them. And new labor laws have improved working conditions for women.

Alas, change is not something that simply flows from a king’s decree. A multilateral act engaging all of Saudi society will be required.

For generations, women have been collectively struggling to find their place within Saudi society. That struggle occurs out in the open as well as deep within the Saudi mind.

Officials can set the wheels in motion. Yet it is up to women to take the next step and commit themselves to those roles. I couldn’t look at myself if I didn’t return to do my part.

Quota was the student speaker at the College’s commencement ceremonies on June 16.