Hundreds of Thousands Join Saudi Women-Led Campaign to End Male Guardianship in the Kingdom · Global Voices
▻https://globalvoices.org/2016/09/04/hundreds-of-thousands-join-saudi-women-led-campaign-to-end-male-guardi
As part of the efforts to end the draconian laws against women in the Gulf state, Saudi women launched a campaign demanding an end to male guardianship for basic practices such as work, property ownership and travel.
Using the hashtag #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship and its Arabic version #سعوديات_نطالب_باسقاط_الولاية (which translates to ‘Saudi women demand the end of guardianship’), hundreds of thousands of supporters worldwide took part in this campaign.
The campaign was sponsored by Human Rights Watch and follows the release of its lengthy report entitled “Boxed In: Women and Saudi Arabia’s Male Guardianship System”. In it, the international human rights organization explains that:
In Saudi Arabia, a woman’s life is controlled by a man from birth until death. Every Saudi woman must have a male guardian, normally a father or husband, but in some cases a brother or even a son, who has the power to make a range of critical decisions on her behalf. As dozens of Saudi women told Human Rights Watch, the male guardianship system is the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the country, effectively rendering adult women legal minors who cannot make key decisions for themselves.