« Droits de la femme » et développement personnel : les appropriations du religieux par les femmes en Arabie Saoudite

Abstract

A field study in Saudi Arabia has revealed how modes of appropriating the religious domain among Saudi women have contributed to modifying the relationship between state and familial power relations. In doing so, they have increased autonomy for women at various levels vis-a-vis their families without necessarily calling upon or challenging dominant interpretations. In the 1990s, sex segregation allowed relatively autonomous religious spaces for women to develop within which women preachers expounded a discourse specifically addressed to women. Since 2003, the rhetoric of “women’s rights in Islam” as opposed to “traditions and customs” has frequently been employed by the government in the framework of its “reform” strategy as well as by several types of female actors. “Liberal” and Islamist intellectuals disagree as to the content that is to be given to these “rights”. Yet, despite these disagreements, their discourses have helped promote an approach that consists in demanding rights for women in the name of Islam. Young Saudi women thus draw upon this rhetoric in negotiating access to professional activity with family members. They also appropriate the Islamic discourse of personal development promoted in religious spaces to legitimate the pursuit of individual objectives and activities outside of the sphere of the family. These various modes of appropriation contribute to pushing the boundaries of the possible for women. ■