What Does It Mean To Be a Woman in Modern Saudi Arabia?

[00:00:00] I get excited just think about it because who would have thought woman would be driving so soon? Can you imagine I attended a football match in a football stadium in Saudi Arabia, women were not allowed.

[00:00:13] The voice that you just heard belongs to Hanan Fez, a yoga teacher from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. But Hanan wasn't always a yoga teacher. In fact, she began her career as a nurse.

[00:00:27] When I entered nursing, I was one of not the first but I was one of the first that did a night shift that was unheard of. Usually the night shifts would go to the Filipinos, the Indians, the Pakistanis, all the experts, not the Saudi girls.

[00:00:41] But Hanan had to quit her nursing job only after two years and then she began to travel around the world. Doing what? You ask? Well, learning and teaching yoga. Shockingly, the Saudis were so excited about it. But was shocking that Indian Muslims responded in a very negative way.

[00:01:01] Yoga is Hinduism and she's non-Muslim and she should be kicked out of Saudi Arabia. What's the one thing that runs faster than we can imagine? The one thing we seem to be running out of? You guessed it right, time.

[00:01:18] For Saudi women, time has been running at a rapid speed with monumental changes in the law. And yoga is only one of the fields in which they've made a global mark.

[00:01:28] Saudi women have been investing their time in sports, beauty and fashion, filmmaking, photography, hospitality and every other field imaginable. But what do Saudi women do in their spare time?

[00:01:42] Do they go on long drives, travel, chill at the beach, go to the mall, watch a football match or maybe even rescue cats? How are these activities viewed by those around them? Do changes in the law necessarily mean changes in social attitudes as well?

[00:01:58] In this episode of Have Voice, we'll talk a podcast series that brings you unique voices on issues that matter. We will try to find out. Our today's guest is the award-winning yogi, Hanan Faiz. Welcome to the show, Hanan. Assalamualaikum and Namaste and all the hellos. Aloha.

[00:02:19] So Hanan, give us an idea. What does a regular day look like in the life of a Saudi woman? What do Saudi women do in their spare time? The average thing that people would do was go to the mall on the weekends.

[00:02:34] If you have access to the beach, let me clarify beach. We have the public beach. Women can't swim on the public beach obviously because there's hijab. Then we have the beach which has private beach cabins and people, private beach homes.

[00:02:47] Some of these resorts don't allow anyone in except members. And then in these resorts you find women in bikinis. It really depends, it even drops down to your last name. How are you brought in up? How religious are you and who is in your social circle?

[00:03:02] You have the average, average Saudi. They make up to 6,000, 7,000 riyals. They live paycheck to paycheck. These people obviously don't have the money to travel a lot or enter these private beach resorts. Then you have people that are making a little bit more, let's say 15,000 to 20,000.

[00:03:20] They work for a bank or a corporate company. These people hit the beach on the weekends, pop over to Dubai every now and then, or go to Bahrain to watch a movie, drink alcohol, come back.

[00:03:33] Hanan, I believe a lot has changed for Saudi women in the past few years and at a very rapid speed too. How do you perceive these changes? How do they affect you personally?

[00:03:45] If you talk to somebody that is in her late 30s, she saw a different part of Saudi which I didn't. I remember being young in the King Fahad days. There was a lot of suppression. Then King Abdullah, God rest his soul, changed things for us.

[00:04:01] King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Sahd sent an annual address to the Shura council that women will be involved in the next elections. It's so interesting that the Crown Prince said it's the women's decision to cover or not to cover.

[00:04:16] The King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz died early Friday at the age of 90. I remember crying when he passed because he had such a huge impact on every single woman in Saudi Arabia.

[00:04:28] Things started to change rapidly and then he passed and then King Salman came with Lameer Muhammad and things over, not over, not over like a month overnight changed. Activists like Dr. Madiha Al-Arjouj have been lobbying for decades for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive.

[00:04:49] Saudi Arabia's king has given women the go ahead to legally drive for the very first time. The country's aging King Salman is due to decree from June next year women can finally take to the roads. For Saudi Arabia, this is huge.

[00:05:04] Hanan, I've noticed this trend and correct me if I'm wrong but social media has occupied a very significant place in the lives of Saudi women. I mean, of course it's very important in all our lives but Saudi women have been using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

[00:05:22] to not only promote their professions but also to assert their identities. How do you feel about that? How has this movement of sorts come about? Women wouldn't put their pictures up on Facebook 10 years ago. Here we are today, their Instagram profiles are open with all their pictures.

[00:05:42] It would be disgrace if you put your picture up, right? That was back in the day. Here we are today where, like I said, Instagram profiles are open, women's pictures all over the place. We have fashionistas, we have bloggers, bloggers

[00:05:55] and Saudi Arabia has the highest Snapchat users in the world. 10 years ago I would look around and we would not be so many. Now I look around, we're endless. We have bakers, we have doctors, we have teachers

[00:06:07] we have every field you can imagine. There's women working in the supermarkets. There were not women working in the supermarkets. All the malls, all the lingerie shops all the shops, women are working. If you were to ever come and visit here

[00:06:19] you can sense this relief happening, happened for women here. Even men by the way. And to open your own business in a rapidly changing environment where though the laws are changing there are certain social ideas that still remain firmly rooted in society.

[00:06:38] To open a business at a time like this I'm sure would not have been easy. How did your family and friends react to you quitting your nursing job and then becoming a yoga teacher? My dad was super upset with me because who would quit a successful job

[00:06:54] and I got promoted, I was making shitloads of money. Let's just put it that way and great medical insurance, great benefits to become a yoga teacher and he was not only angry, he was enraged, he was furious.

[00:07:10] And I remember being petrified but I knew, I just knew in my heart I knew in my gut that I needed to do this, I needed to give it a try. Thank God I did. Alhamdulillah. Gets me emotional thinking about it because he was so scared

[00:07:25] and he was scared because he just, he really didn't know how people would respond to this and you want to know the honest truth. When I was younger I did feel suppressed. I did feel like I was locked up.

[00:07:38] I didn't want to look at things and there's many people like me that didn't want to look at things as oh I'm a woman, I'm being suppressed. I didn't want to be the victim

[00:07:46] and a lot of people like me didn't want to be a victim so we just changed the way we looked at things. I saw women doing things. I saw, I was always exposed to women doing things women that are veiled, women that are not veiled still doing things.

[00:08:00] It's amazing. It's amazing how we're empowering one another, uplifting one another and inspiring one another. That is amazing and perhaps a lesson for women all around the world. Thank you for sharing your incredible story with us Hanan. It was an absolute pleasure to have you.

[00:08:16] There you have it guys. That was Hanan Faiz, nurse-turned-yoga teacher from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia giving us insight into the lives of Saudi women in rapidly changing times. Stay tuned for our next episode where we take this conversation forward with another unique guest.