Oppression of Women in the Islamic World and Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia

• Main Author: AlMofawez, Meshail
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School 2016
• Subjects: Engineering; Systems Engineering
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/347; https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1351&context=etd

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is considered an advanced, developed, and industrialized nation. It is the only Arab nation that is a member of the G20, a group from the world's top 20 industrialized nations. Despite economic advancement, social progress has been stagnant. Saudi women do not enjoy equal rights to men, and gender-based discrimination and mistreatment is integrated into KSA's social, political and economic systems. KSA is the only country in the world which bans women from driving. Additionally, KSA's laws reinforce subservient status of women, such as the "male guardian" legal requirement, which deprives women of autonomy in personal decisions, including the freedom to travel without the company of a man. On the other hand, Saudi women have high literacy rates and education levels by international comparison - more than 57% of Saudi women possess a college degree. In stark contrast, female labor participation rates are among the lowest of any developed nation. There is a glimmer of hope that society is making progress. In 2011, King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and take part in local politics as of the year 2015. This project aims to build momentum and capitalize on KSA's recent societal progress by proposing a comprehensive solution using a system's approach to address gender inequity and women's rights issues in the KSA labor market. Systems Engineering (SE) guides this project's stages and activities. This starts with exploratory research, then defines the problem, identifies key stakeholders and documents requirements. This information will provide the basis for the system concept solution's requirements and architecture. The result of this project is a proposed system solution - a comprehensive program implemented and operated by the KSA government, which has undergone verification and validation to ensure that this system is both "built right" and that "the right system was built."