An Evening to Discuss Women's Rights Abuses in the Arab Gulf

On Thursday night, GW's Project Nur, a student-led initiative of the American Islamic Congress, and the Al Waref Institute hosted three women activists to discuss women's rights abuses in the Arab Gulf.
It was a time to express "the voice for the girls who are oppressed in my country," said Maliha Ahmed Alshehab, one of the night's speakers and a Saudi feminist and activist, "To educate what they see as oppressive nature onto women in our countries."
Held in the Marvin Center, young female students made up a majority of the audience along with a sprinkle of those who came, ranging one from George Mason University to the Iraq Embassy.
Each speaker spoke about her particular country's situation with its women population.
Alshehab told of women's harsh reality in Saudi Arabia. Being there is no minimum age for girls to be married in Saudi Arabia, exploitation and abuse of young women is common in these marriages. The relationship between a man and a woman is solely "guardianship." The "guardian system," which Alshehab argues, handicaps Saudi Arabian women, is "the woman needing a male shadow in all stages of her life or losing her personhood."
The societal condition of women in Oman is a "better situation than in Saudi Arabia," but women do not have the freedoms that women have in the United States. There is currently no law dealing with domestic violence, which is difficult when living in a male-dominated society such as those in the Arab Gulf.
The speakers opened up the floor for Q & A after the lecture where discussion of the politics and future of women in the Arab Gulf region took place.