Women and media in Saudi Arabia: rhetoric, reductionism and realities

Contradictions inherent in restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia have been shown to create space for renegotiation of women's personal and political status in the kingdom. The Saudi media offer a window onto this renegotiation process, not because there is any automatic correlation between women's visibility in the media and their status in other areas of public life, but because analysis of media institutions can shed light on the contingent and historically specific nature of legal and social constraints on women. This paper, by examining multiple developments in women-media interaction during the period 2004-06, uncovers an uneven picture, whereby heightened visibility for women in the media was accompanied by rather little change in promotion of female media professionals to decision-making positions. Nevertheless, modest breakthroughs occurred due in part to initiatives driven by the domestic and foreign policy interests of influential elements in the Saudi ruling establishment. Beside these was a parallel process of renegotiation for the status of all citizens, male and female, vis--vis government and the state