Women's rights in Saudi Arabia are also crucial for the nation's economic development, wellbeing and even security, says scholar and activist Dr. Hala Al-Dosari, a former fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Washington Post. "The government wants people who can generate revenues, who can be engaged in a workforce who can be independent, who can contribute really to GDP. So you want to translate that into a woman who is able to control her fate, her reproductive rights, her choices of employment, her choices of work...You need to allow people of caliber of merits to be able to compete and to use their talents and their potential to generate the revenues, to generate development...I don't understand, for instance, the argument that says that we can forsake development...for the sake of maintaining regional security. Because in order to have security in any nation, you need to have those nations engaged, fulfilled and occupied. If they're not, there are going to be...a lot of negative things that can happen."
This interview is from the FPA archives.