From my perspective there is a lot of concern over the country of Saudi Arabia. Citizens of the United States generally believe that people in the Middle East area of the world are terrorists. This is primarily due to most United States citzens’ experience with Islam occurring immediately after 9/11/2001. It is easy to be a bigot, but to look at everything systematically is something different entirely.
Looking at the CIA’s factsheet regarding Saudi Arabia we find that they have an economy that is based highly on oil. Saudi Arabia has 16% of the worlds verified petroleum reserves and it exports 221.1 billion dollars worth of product. Primarily to Japan, China, South Korea, India, United States, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore
Saudi Arabia’s government is a monarchy. Their monarchy is headed by King and prime minister SALMAN bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud. He personally appoints people to the legislative council.
Heritage.org rates Saudi Arabia’s economic freedom @ 62.4 or the 83rd freest economy in the world. Recently Saudi Arabia has increased property rights.
References:
Saudi Arabia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 07, 2020, from https://www.heritage.org/index/country/saudiarabia
One thing I found interesting in this week’s reading about Saudi Arabia was that Moran, Abramson & Moran (2014) state “Men may divorce their wives with a simple oath, while women must plead before an all-male, extremist Wahhabist judiciary, and mothers have no right to custody of their children” (p. 324) Not being from that culture, and as a woman I am sadden to learn of this, I realized culturally woman’s rights or lack of rights are drastically different but the thought of having to ask my husband if I could “travel, work, or study” (p.324) just floors me. My husband and I discuss important matters, but I would never ask his permission for anything.
I did find while searching that currently it is reported that 51.8% of Saudi University students are females (More women than men in Saudi universities, says ministry, 2020) and there are 551,000 women studying for bachelor’s degrees compared to 513,000 males.
References:
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.).
More women than men in Saudi universities, says ministry. (2020). Retrieved 8 October 2020, from https://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2015/05/28/More-women-than-men-in-Saudi-universities-says-ministry