The oil crisis makes a compelling case for women's equality in Saudi Arabia

“Iwant my daughter to be internationally successful. I want her to be whatever she wants. And I want people to respect her.” These words were spoken by Mohammad, a middle-aged Saudi-Arabian partner of a major global management consultancy, during a panel debate I recently attended in Riyadh.

I found his ambitions for his daughter easy to identify with. They parallel with my feelings about the freedoms and rights I expect for my own eight-year-old daughter. 

Sadly, it would seem not everyone shares Mohammad’s sentiments. Saudi Arabia ranks 20th out of 22 for women’s rights in the Arab states, and 130th out of 142 countries measured in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report. The western media has extensively covered women’s disenfranchisement in the country, and I don’t just mean the ban on driving; women cannot travel freely and are mostly excluded from the world outside the home. The biggest issue here is the male guardianship of women, meaning that they need their male guardians’ permission to marry, travel, leave the country and enrol in education.

Many have argued for women’s equality on purely moral terms, and those are valid arguments. But they aren’t the only ones. There is also corporate and national profitability to be considered and for many who reject western morality, a purely financial argument might prove more compelling.