AL-HARIRI, Rafeda (1987) 'Islam's point of view on Women's Education in Saudi
Arabia', Comparative Education, 23 (1), 51-57.
and
AL RAWAF, Haya Saad and SIMMONS, C (1991) - 'The education of women in Saudi
Arabia', Comparative Education, 27 (3), 287 - 295.
These two articles form an interesting pair. Al-Hariri presents the arguments underlying
discussion about women's education from a purely Islamic point of view, with
supporting quotations from the Quran. She stresses that the Quran encourages rather
then forbids the education of women, but that Islam does insist "on keeping women in a
position that ensures their stable family life", (p.52). The rapid development of female
education in Saudi Arabia since the 1960's has therefore been within a separate
educational system directed by the General Presidency for Girls' Education. The
economic resources of the country are such that developing parallel systems for boys
and girls has not been a financial problem. The rapid development in provision for girls'
education is outlined and the author shows how the provision is moulded to be
acceptable within an Islamic context:
"the areas of study for male and female students show that the highest
number of female students is in the field of humanities, whilst in
engineering their number is nil. This indicates that females are taking
only subjects which are considered suitable to the nature of Saudi women
& in accordance with the basic teaching of Islam", (p.55).
The article by Al Rawaf and Simmons is far fuller and better documented and although
it acknowledges the huge growth in the provision of education for girls, it is more
objective in pointing out the limitations of that provision in terms of goals and facilities.
There are interesting sections on the reinforcement of stereo-typing in textbooks (p.
291) and on Distance Learning for women.
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