PLATFORM : Respect for Women

Mexico-born PATRICIA L. ALIREZA of Pasadena lived in Saudi Arabia with her Saudi husband and their three children for seven years. She decries what she considers a negative portrayal of the role of women in Arab culture by the Western media. She told The Times:

(In Saudi Arabia) you always feel secure, you always feel safe, you always feel respected. All you have to do is wear the veil.

It’s true that you won’t see many women being part of their everyday public life. But you also find university graduates there that are very much in the present. You have doctors and engineers, although they are not as much in public life as men are. That is also part of their traditions.

I know many foreign women who live there, married to Saudis or not, who are very happy. And nobody ever talks about those, but they do make movies about the ones that have their kids taken away. I haven’t seen a movie about the women being treated well. Of course it makes a big headline--people watching a movie about a tragedy. I am from Mexico, and you could make many movies there about women who are abused. Nobody cares about the normal ones!