"It's very shameful," said Manal Al-Sharif, who became an icon of female empowerment in 2011 after defying the conservative kingdom's driving ban and encouraging other Saudi women to do the same.
Al-Sharif was one of the
first prominent Saudis to start tweeting about the electronic monitoring
issue -- describing the shock experienced by a couple she knew after
the husband received a text message alerting him his wife had left Saudi
Arabia, even though they were traveling out of the country together.
What surprised and
disturbed them most, Al-Sharif told CNN, was the fact that the husband
had not registered with the Interior Ministry to begin receiving such
notifications.
"It shows how women are
still being treated as minors," added Al-Sharif. She went on to explain
how, even though a notification system has actually been in place since
2010, before last week, a male guardian would have had to specifically
request the service from the country's Interior Ministry before
receiving such messages.
In recent years, much has
been made of the fact that Saudi Arabia is the sole remaining country
in which women still have not been given the right to drive. But
restrictions experienced by Saudi females extend to far more than just
getting behind the wheel. In the deeply conservative kingdom, a woman is
not allowed to go to school, get a job, or even travel outside the
country without first obtaining the permission of her male "guardian,"
or mahram.
