Progress is All Relative

With thanks to DoshDosh on Twitter, for this one:

A BBC News Report about how Saudi women are being "kept in childhood" with severe restrictions limiting academic and professional lives and even limitations on their rights as parents.

A recent UN Report, calling for basic rights for women in Saudi, condemned the patriarchal society's record of violence against women and complained that Saudi men and women "do not have equal rights when it comes to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance and says female illiteracy is still high in the world's top oil exporter."

Pressure for reform (for men as well as women) is mounting in Saudi, leading to an increase in arrests of reformists.

So, relatively speaking, women in Western society (at least, those women who are white, middle class and straight - more about that in my next post!), have indeed come a long way. We have much to be thankful for. On fundamental issues like education and marriage, Western women have attained a position much more like equal.

And on the issue of parenting, women usually have more rights than men in our society (and that's a whole other post too!)