Yemen: The worst place in the world to be a woman
In Yemen, the situation is more serious even than it is among its neighbours. In terms of freedom, it is probably Saudi Arabian women who have the hardest time of all. But even there, females have access to education and healthcare. In Yemen, an absence of citizenship rights for women horribly combines with crushing poverty to create a society in which women are not only the property of men, unable to leave the house without the permission of a male relative and vulnerable to arbitrary arrest on the street even once they have it, but are also likely to be illiterate, to be married before they reach puberty, and to die in childbirth. ‘Our family law is the worst in the Middle East for women,’ says Suha Bashren, a Yemeni who works as a campaign officer for Oxfam. ‘It is medieval.’ Does the fact that the law permits Yemeni women to drive - something that is illegal in Saudi Arabia - make up for any of this?