Oh good grief. I visited Saudi Arabia on business. There is nothing “respectful” about being forced to wear abaya / hijab in 100 degree heat. There is nothing “respectful” about women not having the freedom to go shopping or work out or even take a walk without their husband’s approval. There is nothing “respectful” that I heard from the women I spoke with who would be in big trouble if the kids weren’t well behaved or if their mother in law disapproved of how they kept house. There was nothing “respectful” about having to go down the street to a warehouse to go to the bathroom because the restaurant I was in didn’t have a women’s room because why would a woman be in a restaurant. There was nothing “respectful” in that I had to get a new passport since I had been to Israel.
"Is a maid in the USA treated with the same level of respect as an affluent, white woman here? "
When I was there, a story was going around about a western man who had stayed at a hotel and lost his watch. He told the front desk and asked them to keep an eye out for it. They wound up accusing the maid of taking it, and cut off her hand. He later discovered the watch in a zipped corner of his suitcase. Gee, does that happen here?
Why wouldn’t a maid be treated the same way as an affluent white woman? What, do they go to different lines at Starbucks or something? Oh, speaking of Starbucks, right before I went to SA, an Anerican woman was arrested and thrown in jail for sitting at the Riyadh Starbucks with a male coworker. Funny how both American maids and American wealthy women both have the exact same freedom to go to Starbucks with whomever the hell they like.
“course there are Saudi men who treat women badly. But it’s not ALL Saudi men and no worse than what SOME American men do.”
The existence of nice Saudi men doesn’t make the system not oppressive. I cannot believe you truly argued that it’s no big deal that women can’t drive or work because you personally wanted to do neither.
People are going to believe whatever they want and the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed my stay there, as did my children will never convince you. You are determined to think the worst of an entire country due to the actions of a few. Because women in the US are never raped, tortured or murdered. I give up on you guys
Reminds me of the Saudi Arabia song from the somewhat inappropriate show “American Dad”:
“…but if you have (list of female body parts ending with a rhyming one), stay the hell away from Saudi Arabia”
@3bm103 it’s totally different to have a government and culture that encourages violence and misogyny than to have individuals who behave badly. In the USA, we even teach our hitting/kicking toddlers, “don’t punish crimes against property with crimes against people!”…In Saudi Arabia, it’s the law of the land to do so!!
@3bm103
Your comments speak volumes. Your family was not at the bottom of the expat pecking order.
The pecking order for foreign workers in KSA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia
The respect you got as a woman in KSA was derived from your husband’s position. I’m confident that if you arrived on your own and lived & worked in that country for 5 years on your own (the way female domestic workers do) you would not have enjoyed nearly the same level of respect.
I have no doubt you enjoyed yourself there. I know lots of expats who worked in razorwire & machinegun guarded compounds in crappy countries like KSA and Nigeria, who adored living with their family in the expat bubble. My expat WORKING colleagues (male & female ones) all joke that in our next life we want to come back as an “expat wife”: i.e. living in the white villa, with attendant driver, cook, maids, and “ayi” to watch the kids, and nothing to do but shop, lay by the pool and play tennis (I know of one who ran off w the tennis instructor). We also joke that for “expat wives”, repatriation is going from “mink” to “sink”… I’m sure you enjoyed the mink life very much indeed.
BTW, you should have figured out that your driver treated you well because you were his EMPLOYER.
mom2cK, this was a big issue with certain immigrat groups in mid to late nineties, including some Eastern Europeans. Men could not believe that they could be taken to jail for some stuff like throwing a beer mug at the wife or punching her in the face. The mug missed… and the punch left just a barely visible bruise. Yeah, and spanking the kids was considered normal. Stupid US laws. Stupid.
“People are going to believe whatever they want and the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed my stay there, as did my children will never convince you. You are determined to think the worst of an entire country due to the actions of a few. Because women in the US are never raped, tortured or murdered. I give up on you guys”
So because bad things are done by evil people to women in the US, therefore everything someone does to a woman in another country is equal? The obvious difference is that in some places it is government sanctioned, enforced by religious police, or ignored. That is quite a difference. I’m sure there are many maids in the US treated better than I, because they dress far better, and I wear jeans and sweats. Only my friends and family have an idea of our financial status.
Honestly, I can’t actually believe that a woman who has spent time in Saudi Arabia would argue how “respectful” men are to women there. What a rich, protected little bubble you must have lived in.
I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I was during my short stays in Saudi Arabia. Definitely not treated with respect, but contempt. Maybe would have been treated with more “respect” if I was fully covered from head to toe, instead of dressed like a military officer. Or if I’d been a wealthy expat.
In America, wife-beating was once considered okay, too. Thankfully, we have progressed beyond that, and codified that progression in our laws. Sadly, two things are still true: 1) women still get beat in the US. and 2) in some other cultures, sadly, that’s still okay and legal.
So my conclusion is twofold: first, appreciate that we don’t “allow” this in the US anymore, so false equivalence arguments that it still happens here, too, aren’t tenable or accurate–that it happens is different from it being legal, and it’s certainly not universal.
But second, let’s not get too high and mighty and incredulous about what men from other countries think is okay, because not so long ago, that was true here, too.
And a third–yay for continual progress on combating horrible attitudes about abuse, wherever it happens.
Edit: and this goes to other sorts of abuse against women, too. We are certainly more enlightened than we used to be, but all cultures have had to or still need to move away from pervasive anti-women norms.
“The respect you got as a woman in KSA was derived from your husband’s position. I’m confident that if you arrived on your own and lived & worked in that country for 5 years on your own (the way female domestic workers do) you would not have enjoyed nearly the same level of respect.”
At any time if I wanted to, I can hop a plane and go wherever the heck I like and my husband doesn’t “own” me. If I were to move to France and marry a Frenchman and the relationship went south, I could mosey on down to the airport and hop a flight from CDG to anywhere I wanted and no one could stop me. Tell me, can a Saudi woman do that? Of course not. So don’t talk to me about “respect.”
Of course on an individual level most Saudis are perfectly nice people - the men I met were perfectly fine. But their culture is rotten and medieval. There is just no moral equivalency.
Regarding Bill Cosby - no one is defending him, but note that our society doesn’t decree that women need to cover themselves up from head to toe because otherwise they are “tempting” him and he can’t resist.
There are still a few states in the US where spousal rape is still pretty much legal.
There are also over 30 states where a rapists can try to obtain custody of a child conceived as a result of rape. (And rape is about power. This is another form of power over a woman.)
Unfortunately, there are still many, many communities in the US where violence against women is completely normalized and will almost never be prosecuted. I used to work in an IPV shelter and had way too much contact with people from those communities.
@romanigypsyeyes: What’s IPV?
lol @Pizzagirl You should what Saudi girls wear in Dubai. To this day I haven’t seen shorter shorts or skimpier tops 
We have a friend who worked for a while in Saudi Arabia and had to commute by bus - no driver, no male protector. Women sit in the back of the bus, and each day, even covered head-to-toe, she was groped and grabbed while passing through the gauntlet of men. Yes, wealthy white woman, every single time she got on a bus.
Groping in public transportation must be universal. I heard in Japan, they designated a subway car grope free car.
@Magnetron That is disgusting.
I agree. My cousin in Ohio was once groped in public transport. Nasty behavior. Like I said, lessons for EVERYONE.
“ol @Pizzagirl You should what Saudi girls wear in Dubai. To this day I haven’t seen shorter shorts or skimpier tops”
Yes, I know. I’ve been to Dubai as well. The fact that the (wealthy) Saudi girls / women can travel abroad and wear what they like doesn’t mean they aren’t oppressed in their home country.
Oh, speaking of alleged respect - isn’t Saudi Arabia the country where girls in a school burned to death because the firefighters wouldn’t enter since they weren’t modestly dressed? Yeah. Go ahead and tell me about respect, 3bm103.
“I heard in Japan, they designated a subway car grope free car.”
It’s a female-only car, not a “grope-free” car. Females are not required to use that car, though – only if they choose.