95% of Saudi women suffer abuse - survey - Culture & Society

Tuesday, 5 August 2008 10:07 AM

As many as 95 percent of women in Riyadh have been subjected to a form of physical or emotional abuse from within their family, according to a new survey.

The survey – which constituted of 80 women being interviewed about their family life - revealed that 75 percent have been abused both psychologically and verbally.

Another 25 percent said they had been sexually abused by a family member, reported the Saudi Gazette.

Several of the women, according to an Al-Riyadh report, said their salaries were withheld from them by their families and they were prevented from getting married. Some said their families did not want them to get married so they would not have to share their salaries with anyone else but the family, the paper said.

Dr Majed Al-Isa, Medical Director in the Family Safety program for the National Guard said verbal and psychological abuse are the main forms of abuse used by families. He told the newspaper that the degree of education has no bearing on how much abuse a person is subjected to.

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Posted by: Candide33 Saturday, 20 December 2008 9:08 AM[UAE]

If they choose 80 women at random and all but one was abused, what are the odds of that? They could keep on for weeks and the results would be the same. Only a handful are NOT abused. Unlike in America where one out of four are abused. But even one abused anywhere in the world is too much, if you care at all about women that is.

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Posted by: annlar Saturday, 9 August 2008 12:11 AM[UAE] - USA

alloverstudent I can imagine your not liking the survey and putting it down as invalid due to the lack of a high number. Shame on you. How many females must be abused before you consider a survey valid. or, how bad does the abuse have to be before YOU accept it. the numbers does not matter in the least. One is too many. But unfortunately, too many males don't care, females are only there to do the males bidding. Yeah, right. Those days are over. and there will come a time that Arabian females are treated with respect. they are becoming stronger in numbers and more vocal already. Brave females, indeed.

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Posted by: mahmoud ali ahmed Friday, 8 August 2008 11:24 PM[UAE] - Sudan

All women across the world face some kind of bad treatment, not only Saudi women. However, the case of Saudi women resembles what we generally hold in Sudan "All people are mad but the unluckiest is the one fettered". Western women suffer a lot from their husband's illegal relationships with women out of the wed-lock. Western husbands push personal freedom beyond very unacceptable limits. Their wives' reaction is retaliatory.

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Posted by: alloverstudent Thursday, 7 August 2008 6:33 PM[UAE]

This article shouldn't even be published! As it says in the beginning of the article, the survey only interviewed 80 women... so 95% of the 80 women reported abuse!!! Why would a sample as small as 80 consider to be representative of all Saudi women?!?! My argument is against nothing but the validity and reliability of the study- not the point they are trying to make, just their representativeness!

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Posted by: steph Thursday, 7 August 2008 1:37 PM[UAE]

If you understood this article as an attack to Islam then you are making a mistake, not the newspaper. As a woman i am glad to see that some people here, muslim or not, agree to the fact that Saudi treat their women in a very bad way. taking away from them every rights even the most simple, like the right to drive... this is not Islam that is concerned here but the version of it that only Saudi chose to follow. Why don't you see this in UAE, Syria, Jordan etc... ?

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