Saudi Arabia gives women the right to vote

I have to say, I was taken aback when I read the front cover of the Arab News today - but in a good way.

Only a short update here; I felt it was necessary to write a post on the major breakthrough in Saudi society that has happened recently. Yesterday, King Abdullah announced that women will be given the right to vote and run in municipal elections come 2015, and this is most definitely a step in the right direction.

Many criticise Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women and their role in society, but forget that the country was only formed 79 years ago (an anniversary recently celebrated on Saudi National Day on Friday). Since then, it has undergone rapid development and modernisation to form one of the most stable economies in the world today. For countries such as the USA and UK, industrialisation has taken 200-300 years, and, for the UK, it wasn't until 1928 that all women above the age of 21 were allowed to vote.

So when you put it into this context, Saudi's progress to reach this stage in just 79 years from the country's formation seems quite remarkable. Hopefully the right to drive and a reduced need for male guardianship will follow.

Read more about this story: Independent, Arab News (Saudi newspaper)

Just to note, there won't be any posts up for a week or so. I'll be writing new content soon!

Beginning New Ends

I have one more year left of living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

All going well, in a year's time I'll be at university, studying for a degree that will hopefully lead on to a career in journalism. My ideal degree (though not necessarily the one I will end up in) is Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I feel its principles are in almost all areas of the media today, and as I look further it seems that the decisions we and those around us make are governed by the social, political and economic aspects of society.

Whether we like this or not is immaterial. But having an awareness of how these principles affect our lives means we have the ability to change them. We are not made to be cogs in a machine. We have our rights and our responsibilities, and as members of our local communities and citizens of our countries we should adhere to both. For a long time, my parents have been emphasising the need for the recognition of both rights and responsibilities; freedom does not lie in the Land of Do-As-You-Please. People (and when I say people, of course I am making a generalisation) are quick to spout the phrase "It's my right!" but very rarely do I hear the words "It's my responsibility!".

So yes, I've started to take an active interest in freedom. Political freedom, economic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of thought. This issue of freedom first struck me whilst reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and has stayed at the back of my mind ever since. I consider myself to be 'free' and not in spite of the laws, rules and codes of practice that I have to abide to, but in part because of them. If freedom is made up of rights and responsibilities, then following these regulations whilst retaining my rights grants me freedom.

Of course, it is never as simple as that. Read anything about the DR Congo in the past twenty years and you'll see personal liberties stripped away like confetti. Do they have freedom?

Then there's the issue of religion and spiritual freedom, a matter which is so large in itself that I have no plan in the immediate future to venture into!

Finally we have Saudi, a country which I have so much to learn from, and so much to learn about. There are many misconceptions about Saudi, but as the spotlight draws ever closer to the country in this age of oil, what is fact and what is fiction needs be cleared up. Western misconceptions here are popular thought in the States, or in the UK.

So I hope you find this blog interesting. Intriguing. Entertaining. Or, at the very least, not a waste of your time.