By KATHERINE ZOEPF

JIDDA - Roughly two years ago, Rowdha Yousef began to notice a disturbing trend: Saudi women like herself were beginning to organize campaigns for greater personal freedoms. She was particularly disturbed last summer, when she read reports that a female activist in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, Wajeha al-Huwaider, had been to the border with Bahrain, demanding to cross using only her passport, without a male chaperon or a male guardian’s written permission.

Ms. Huwaider was not allowed to leave the country unaccompanied and, like other Saudi women campaigning for new rights, has failed - so far - to change any existing laws or customs.

But Ms. Yousef is still outraged, and since August has taken on activists at their own game. With 15 other women, she started a campaign, “My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me.” Within two months, they had collected more than 5,400 signatures on a petition demanding “punishments for those who call for equality between men and women, mingling between men and women in mixed environments, and other unacceptable behaviors.” Ms. Yousef’s fight against the wouldbe liberalizers is part of a larger tussle in Saudi society over women’s rights that has suddenly made the female factor a major issue for reformers and conservatives striving to shape Saudi Arabia’s future.

Ms. Yousef is a 39-year-old divorced mother of three (aged 13, 12 and 9) who volunteers as a mediator in domestic abuse cases. A tall, confident woman with a warm, effusive manner and sparkling stiletto-heeled sandals, her conversation, over Starbucks lattes, ranges from racism in the kingdom (Ms. Yousef has Somali heritage and calls herself a black Saudi) to her admiration for Hillary Rodham Clinton to the abuse she says she has suffered at the hands of Saudi liberals.

She believes firmly that most Saudis share her conservative values but insists that adherence to Shariah law and family custom need not restrict a woman seeking a say.

Female campaigners in the reform camp, she says, are influenced by Westerners who do not understand the needs and beliefs of Saudi women.

“These human rights groups come, and they only listen to one side, those who are demanding liberty for women,” she said.

Every Saudi woman, regardless of age or status, must have a male relative who acts as her guardian and has responsibility for and authority over her in a host of legal and personal matters. Ms. Yousef, whose guardian is her elder brother, said that she enjoyed a great deal of freedom while respecting the rules of her society. Guardian rules are such that she could start her campaign, for instance, without seeking her guardian’s permission.

Ms. Yousef’s effort might seem superfluous. After all, Saudi women still may not drive or vote and are obliged by custom to wear the floor-length cloaks known as abayas, and headscarves, outside their own homes. Women may not appear in court, and though they may be divorced via brief verbal declarations from their husbands, they frequently find it very difficult to obtain divorce themselves. Fathers may marry off 10-year-old daughters, a practice defended by the highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al- Sheikh.

The separation of genders in Saudi public life is difficult to overstate - there are womenonly stores, women-only lines in fast food restaurants, and women-only offices in private companies.

Members of the hai’a, the governmental Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, patrol to ensure that ikhtilat, or “mixing” of the sexes, does not occur.

Where conservatives like Ms. Yousef attribute the recent volubility of rights campaigners to Western meddling, liberals say King Abdullah himself cautiously supports more freedoms for Saudi women .

The 85-year-old monarch has appeared in newspapers alongside Saudi women with uncovered faces, a situation that once was unimaginable . Last year, he appointed a woman to deputy minister rank .

Sheikh Ahmad al-Ghamdi, the head of Mecca’s branch of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, caused a sensation when he told The Okaz, a newspaper, that gender mixing was “part of normal life.”

In February, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barrak issued a fatwa that proponents of gender mixing should be killed. Hatoon al-Fassi, an assistant professor of women’s history at King Saud University in Riyadh, said change will be slow.

“People had lived their whole lives doing one thing and believing one thing, and suddenly the king and the major clerics were saying that mixing was O.K.,”

Ms. Fassi said. Ms. Huwaider, who so incensed Ms. Yousef with her attempts to cross into Bahrain, did agree, notionally, with Ms. Yousef’s claim that many if not most Saudi men try to be fair .

“Saudi men pride themselves on their chivalry,” Ms. Huwaider said, “but it’s the same kind of feeling they have for handicapped people or for animals. “

In a blog, Eman Fahad, a 31-year-old linguistics graduate student, called Ms. Yousef’s campaign an effort to “stand against women who are demanding to be treated as adults.” Yet Ms. Fahad conceded that most Saudi women cleave to tradition.

“If you actually talk to ordinary people,” including in her circle, she said, “you’ll find that most people want things to stay the same.”


Some women in the Middle East deplore Western-style equality, while many nations struggle to give it to their citizens. A human sculpture on a beach in Sydney, Australia. / ROB GRIFFITH/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

It often takes years for reality to catch up to changes in attitude. A veiled woman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. / CHASSAN AMMAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE—GETTY IMAGES