Political Participation and Political Repression: Women in Saudi Arabia
In 2015 Saudi Arabian women were for the first time in history granted political space through electoral suffrage. To evaluate whether the new political opening for Saudi Arabian women has improved women's rights and equality in the Kingdom, I sought to conduct interviews to acquire their views and attitudes. In the process my encounters with Saudi Arabian women revealed their fear, cautiousness, and unwillingness to participate politically, which impelled me to discover the relationship between women's political participation and political repression. In the course of this research I learned that political repression inhibits women's political participation, and in Saudi Arabia women remain voiceless despite the new political space political participation did not account for political freedoms. This thesis provides analysis of the relationship by demonstrating the prevalence of Saudi Arabian women's lack of freedom in political participation.