6 ms·

Some Saudi women are secretly deserting their country

106 points by protomyth 10y ago

libeclipse 10y ago
How do you bypass the economist's pay wall? Googling it doesn't seem to work.
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  Incognito mode, and then google the article.
- nickez 10y ago
  Use a different browser worked for me.
- maskedinvader 10y ago
  using incognito mode on firefox seems to work for me. I got a 'youve hit your 10 article limit' msg otherwise
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  I wish HN would shun pay wall sites, even if there's a workaround available. It's clear they don't want you reading their stuff unless you're a subscriber, respect their wishes.
  - jmts 10y ago
    I've been pondering a self-imposed boycott of websites with paywalls, and ads that interrupt user experience. As time goes on I am valuing my time more and more, and that five second delay mid-read (that costs me another ten to find where I was up to) when I move my cursor off the current window and end up with a pop-up, or some ad mid-article that disappears half-way resulting in a quarter screen shift in content is becoming increasingly frustrating. Of course the flip-side is coming up with a better way. I haven't yet thought of anything glaringly obvious, but surely it involves making people happy, and not pestering them and treating them as just another set of eyes.
    - jasonkostempski 10y ago
      "I've been pondering a self-imposed boycott of websites with paywalls, and ads that interrupt user experience." I made an FF add-on for myself for that exact purpose, here's a comment thread about it from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949693
- ddinh 10y ago
  You can block all cookies on the website if you want a paywall bypass that works without needing incognito - an extension like uMatrix [1] does this persistently (click on the plugin icon when your browser is navigated to The Economist, then click on the bottom half of the "cookie" box in the "all" row. The column should turn red, indicating that cookies are blocked). [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
throwaway420 10y ago
People are certainly free to talk about whatever they want to talk about. But I think feminists would find nearly universal support if they'd spend more time talking about real life and death issues such as this rather than going around with vagina hats on their head and complaining about video game characters being too sexy or manspreading on trains or any other first world problems.
- Fauntleroy 10y ago
  Do you try this hard to discredit other movements by focusing on their more annoying fringe elements—or is it just feminism?
  - dang 10y ago
    Please don't feed these—it leads to pointless flamewars. When a comment is egregious, flag it and move on. To flag a comment, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before flag links appear.)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwaway420 10y ago
    I support women having equal rights as men. I want movements that support equal rights for men and women to be taken seriously. So somehow by wanting to support the rights of women who are actually suffering, I am trying to discredit feminism? How does this work exactly?
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for ideological trolling and ignoring our requests to stop.
  - throwaway420 10y ago
    Ideological trolling? What does that mean? No offense intended, but it's a bit confusing knowing what topics/opinions I'm allowed to discuss and which ones I'm not. For the record, you're criticizing me for a post where I suggested that everybody had the right to voice their opinion (even those I disagree with) and suggested a tactic that would help give respect to a movement that voices concern for at-risk people. I feel very strongly about equal rights for all humans, and I'm not sure why this is so offensive here.
kchoudhu 10y ago
My wife teaches in a coed university in the region. Her female students are without fail more industrious than their male counterparts (who are generally guaranteed government sinecures). The women, many of who have children at home, are motivated to educate themselves, work hard once they have jobs, and ultimately realize that anything that they want, they have to do for themselves. These countries are not risking only losing their women; if they do not mend their ways, they will lose the most productive half of their populations.
- creaghpatr 10y ago
  >Her female students are without fail more industrious than their male counterparts Do you think that is the cause or the effect of SA's policies regarding women?
  - gragas 10y ago
    I would guess that's the effect. It's not as if women outperformed men to such an extent that all the men in Saudi Arabia conspired to oppress women; I'm quite certain that Wahhabist culture---"justified" by the Quran---is the root cause of the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia. That oppression forces women to have to work infinitely harder than men to achieve anything.
- differentView 10y ago
  > male counterparts (who are generally guaranteed government sinecures) > These countries risk not only of losing their women; if they do not mend their ways, they will lose the most productive half of their populations. Sounds like they're also losing the potentials of many of their male population with such guaranteed government sinecures.
  - kchoudhu 10y ago
    Yeah, there is definitely a motivation gap between the genders brought on by relative government subsidies.
tn13 10y ago
There is no productive half in this country as most of those ridiculous barbaric restrictions have rendered women to be completely useless than having sex and producing babies. It totally wish USA and other countries could offer these women an avenue to dessert their country and Islam and chose a better life. It must be noted that Saudi Arabia is a great friend and ally of the liberty loving USA and despite several Saudi supported/funded terrorist attack has not received even 1% of contempt which is bestowed by Uncle Sam on an Indian or Lebanese person. Without that reserve of Oil Saudi would have been a complete shit-hole which any civilized person would avoid. Part of the reason why I want Musk and other people to succeed in killing the Oil industry by giving us better alternative fuels.
- dang 10y ago
  This comment crosses into national and religious flamewar. That's not ok on HN, and we've asked you before not to do this. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941743 and marked it off-topic.
aerique 10y ago
So, while sounding like a creep, one could help these women by marrying them and having them come over? I don't understand the Australian honeymoon the article is talking about.
- xyzzy4 10y ago
  You can also get a fiancé visa and marry in the United States.
applefarmer 10y ago
I personally don't believe the US or any major corporation should deal with countries that deny human rights like this without having some ongoing process of reform. This is only tangentially related but are any of these chauffeurs who drive Saudi women Uber drivers? If so, that's kind of an astonishing circumstance. "In 2002, The Economist magazine estimated that the salaries of the approximately 500,000 chauffeurs driving women in Saudi Arabia came to 1% of the national income."
Pica_soO 10y ago
Could a woman in saudi arabia have a western worklife if working remote? Are they allowed to enter contracts, without consulting a male relative?
- xherberta 10y ago
  No. Male relatives have control over whether and where they can work. It even sounded as though it's the male relatives who complete the job applications for the women, and often come to the job interviews.
jimmywanger 10y ago
This will be very interesting. You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and once these women realize what is possible, many of them will want the freedoms. What'll probably happen is the government/authority will crack down harder and be even more restrictive, leading to a vicious cycle where women who might have put up with some restrictions will rebel entirely.
- xherberta 10y ago
  Agreed. Yet, there will be prices to pay. Last December the courts sentenced a man caught denouncing the wilaya [guardianship rules] on social media to a year in jail. Another Saudi study, at a university in Mecca, acknowledged that some runaways might be fleeing physical abuse, but said that most had been influenced by the “misuse of social media, copying other cultures and weak beliefs”.
xherberta 10y ago
Key point: women in Saudi Arabia are subject to male guardians who control whether they are allowed to "travel, work or study abroad, receive hospital treatment or an ID card, or even leave prison once a sentence is served." Iman, a hospital administrator, has her 17-year-old brother for a guardian. He pockets her earnings and spends them on drugs and massage parlors. When she hears other women say that their brothers don’t beat them, Iman assumes they are lying “because they are scared of social housing [a jail-like place where women can seek refuge from domestic violence]”. <whoa>

106 points by protomyth 10y ago

libeclipse 10y ago

How do you bypass the economist's pay wall? Googling it doesn't seem to work.

kchoudhu 10y ago
Incognito mode, and then google the article.
nickez 10y ago
Use a different browser worked for me.
maskedinvader 10y ago
using incognito mode on firefox seems to work for me. I got a 'youve hit your 10 article limit' msg otherwise
jasonkostempski 10y ago
I wish HN would shun pay wall sites, even if there's a workaround available. It's clear they don't want you reading their stuff unless you're a subscriber, respect their wishes.
- jmts 10y ago
  I've been pondering a self-imposed boycott of websites with paywalls, and ads that interrupt user experience. As time goes on I am valuing my time more and more, and that five second delay mid-read (that costs me another ten to find where I was up to) when I move my cursor off the current window and end up with a pop-up, or some ad mid-article that disappears half-way resulting in a quarter screen shift in content is becoming increasingly frustrating. Of course the flip-side is coming up with a better way. I haven't yet thought of anything glaringly obvious, but surely it involves making people happy, and not pestering them and treating them as just another set of eyes.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    "I've been pondering a self-imposed boycott of websites with paywalls, and ads that interrupt user experience." I made an FF add-on for myself for that exact purpose, here's a comment thread about it from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13949693
ddinh 10y ago
You can block all cookies on the website if you want a paywall bypass that works without needing incognito - an extension like uMatrix [1] does this persistently (click on the plugin icon when your browser is navigated to The Economist, then click on the bottom half of the "cookie" box in the "all" row. The column should turn red, indicating that cookies are blocked). [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

throwaway420 10y ago

People are certainly free to talk about whatever they want to talk about. But I think feminists would find nearly universal support if they'd spend more time talking about real life and death issues such as this rather than going around with vagina hats on their head and complaining about video game characters being too sexy or manspreading on trains or any other first world problems.

Fauntleroy 10y ago
Do you try this hard to discredit other movements by focusing on their more annoying fringe elements—or is it just feminism?
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't feed these—it leads to pointless flamewars. When a comment is egregious, flag it and move on. To flag a comment, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before flag links appear.)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway420 10y ago
  I support women having equal rights as men. I want movements that support equal rights for men and women to be taken seriously. So somehow by wanting to support the rights of women who are actually suffering, I am trying to discredit feminism? How does this work exactly?
dang 10y ago
We've banned this account for ideological trolling and ignoring our requests to stop.
- throwaway420 10y ago
  Ideological trolling? What does that mean? No offense intended, but it's a bit confusing knowing what topics/opinions I'm allowed to discuss and which ones I'm not. For the record, you're criticizing me for a post where I suggested that everybody had the right to voice their opinion (even those I disagree with) and suggested a tactic that would help give respect to a movement that voices concern for at-risk people. I feel very strongly about equal rights for all humans, and I'm not sure why this is so offensive here.

kchoudhu 10y ago

My wife teaches in a coed university in the region. Her female students are without fail more industrious than their male counterparts (who are generally guaranteed government sinecures). The women, many of who have children at home, are motivated to educate themselves, work hard once they have jobs, and ultimately realize that anything that they want, they have to do for themselves. These countries are not risking only losing their women; if they do not mend their ways, they will lose the most productive half of their populations.

creaghpatr 10y ago
>Her female students are without fail more industrious than their male counterparts Do you think that is the cause or the effect of SA's policies regarding women?
- gragas 10y ago
  I would guess that's the effect. It's not as if women outperformed men to such an extent that all the men in Saudi Arabia conspired to oppress women; I'm quite certain that Wahhabist culture---"justified" by the Quran---is the root cause of the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia. That oppression forces women to have to work infinitely harder than men to achieve anything.
differentView 10y ago
> male counterparts (who are generally guaranteed government sinecures) > These countries risk not only of losing their women; if they do not mend their ways, they will lose the most productive half of their populations. Sounds like they're also losing the potentials of many of their male population with such guaranteed government sinecures.
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  Yeah, there is definitely a motivation gap between the genders brought on by relative government subsidies.

tn13 10y ago

There is no productive half in this country as most of those ridiculous barbaric restrictions have rendered women to be completely useless than having sex and producing babies. It totally wish USA and other countries could offer these women an avenue to dessert their country and Islam and chose a better life. It must be noted that Saudi Arabia is a great friend and ally of the liberty loving USA and despite several Saudi supported/funded terrorist attack has not received even 1% of contempt which is bestowed by Uncle Sam on an Indian or Lebanese person. Without that reserve of Oil Saudi would have been a complete shit-hole which any civilized person would avoid. Part of the reason why I want Musk and other people to succeed in killing the Oil industry by giving us better alternative fuels.

dang 10y ago
This comment crosses into national and religious flamewar. That's not ok on HN, and we've asked you before not to do this. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941743 and marked it off-topic.

aerique 10y ago

So, while sounding like a creep, one could help these women by marrying them and having them come over? I don't understand the Australian honeymoon the article is talking about.

xyzzy4 10y ago
You can also get a fiancé visa and marry in the United States.

applefarmer 10y ago

I personally don't believe the US or any major corporation should deal with countries that deny human rights like this without having some ongoing process of reform. This is only tangentially related but are any of these chauffeurs who drive Saudi women Uber drivers? If so, that's kind of an astonishing circumstance. "In 2002, The Economist magazine estimated that the salaries of the approximately 500,000 chauffeurs driving women in Saudi Arabia came to 1% of the national income."

Pica_soO 10y ago

Could a woman in saudi arabia have a western worklife if working remote? Are they allowed to enter contracts, without consulting a male relative?

xherberta 10y ago
No. Male relatives have control over whether and where they can work. It even sounded as though it's the male relatives who complete the job applications for the women, and often come to the job interviews.

jimmywanger 10y ago

This will be very interesting. You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, and once these women realize what is possible, many of them will want the freedoms. What'll probably happen is the government/authority will crack down harder and be even more restrictive, leading to a vicious cycle where women who might have put up with some restrictions will rebel entirely.

xherberta 10y ago
Agreed. Yet, there will be prices to pay. Last December the courts sentenced a man caught denouncing the wilaya [guardianship rules] on social media to a year in jail. Another Saudi study, at a university in Mecca, acknowledged that some runaways might be fleeing physical abuse, but said that most had been influenced by the “misuse of social media, copying other cultures and weak beliefs”.

xherberta 10y ago

Key point: women in Saudi Arabia are subject to male guardians who control whether they are allowed to "travel, work or study abroad, receive hospital treatment or an ID card, or even leave prison once a sentence is served." Iman, a hospital administrator, has her 17-year-old brother for a guardian. He pockets her earnings and spends them on drugs and massage parlors. When she hears other women say that their brothers don’t beat them, Iman assumes they are lying “because they are scared of social housing [a jail-like place where women can seek refuge from domestic violence]”. <whoa>