To quote a question from the article "Or are they just figureheads to appease the IOC and equal rights groups?"
If you want
the answer to that question just be a woman and go wandering around by yourself in Qatar. Assume that you are just a human being walking around in Germany, USA, Sweden, or Greece. Try to get a doctors appointment, get car repairs, go to a restaurant, all by yourself.
Yes, tourist women are put in a different catagory, and there are those Qatar women who have special privileges. But the average woman sits in the back seat of our bus just looking for crumbs.
I have spent time in the middle east, including Qatar and, due to my job, saw both the tourist/privileged side and the this-is-how-it-really-is side.
There was a journalist, I have forgotten her name now, who got a wake up call a couple of years back when she was assaulted by 'the locals'. I guess she figured that she was immune to this kind of treatement but an egyptian female reporter commented that this happens to the middle-eastern women reporters all of the time but no one really cares because it is 'part of the culture'.
I have two big beefs with the whole thing:
1. It is wrong to treat a group this way - we all know that.
2. It is not treated as a gross human rights violation.
I hurt for those women and do hope that every one of them will one day know the
freedom that I have.
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