‘Saudi Women Revolution’ makes a stand for equal rights – CNN.com.

http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011/saudi-arabia

The laws as they pertain in women in Saudi Arabia have so much potential for harm it’s difficult to know where to start. I fear for the safety of the brave women in the Saudi Women Revolution movement. It is intolerable in the 21st century that women, all the women in a country, are placed under the guardianship of a man. It doesn’t matter how competent she is, or how incompetent, avaricious, cruel or self-serving her brother, husband, father or son happen to be. The potential for all kinds of abuse is very high.

State-sponsered abuse as detailed in the Human Rights Watch report, such as lashing for the crime of “appearing in court without a male guardian” is abhorrent and primitive.  That woman went to jail as well as receiving 300 lashes. The male population treats its female population as though they were slaves. Some poor women actually seem to have a variation of Stockholm syndrome, claiming to “love their guardianship.”

I think we need to speak out against such human rights abuses whenever we can, as we did over the case of Sakineh in Iran.