Gender and Technology in Amish and Saudi Arabian Cultures
Having lived in both Saudi Arabia and the United States, I noticed similarities and differences in the way gender is represented in the two countries, and in the way gender and technology are interconnected. Saudi Arabia has a 100% Muslim population. America, on the other hand, holds several religions and sub-religions, groups and sub-groups and it is difficult, if not impossible, to look at America as a whole. I will concentrate on the Amish society – a group that holds gender roles that are similar but is not as impacted by technology as that in Saudi Arabia. Both the cultures are conservative. How is gender defined and how does technology define or refine gender roles? Does technology help make gender more fluid, or does it in turn enforce that it can be one of two possible answers?
The Amish are an American Protestant group1 and form a traditional subgrouping of Mennonite churches. They believe in living in harmony as a community and work close to nature, soil and weather.1 Gender roles are clearly defined and divided for males and females – the wives in the families take care of the household responsibilities like cooking, cleaning, sewing and gardening, while the men are usually the bread winners. Only 3% of Amish women work outside the household2. Amish men wear suits that include a vest, suspenders, coat, hat and trousers, and women wear dresses, capes, aprons and head coverings.3 Until the age of one, however, both boys and girls generally wear dresses to make it easier to change diapers.
Gender roles in Saudi Arabia are very similar – the women usually stay at home while the men go out to work, although the number of working women is increasing. Currently, about sixteen percent of women are working in Saudi Arabia.4 Women’s attire is also significantly different. Women dress modestly and cover their entire body in loosely fitted outfit that shows only the face, hands and feet – a garment called the abbaya. Men traditionally wear an ankle-length shirt called the thobe with a turban called the shimagh over their heads. The abbaya is mandatory for women in Saudi Arabia, although the thobe is not for men.
In terms of duties and responsibilities as well as the kind of clothing worn, there is a distinct division between men and women in both Amish and Saudi Arabian cultures. Each member in both communities are born with one of two genders and they are expected to dress and act accordingly. What happens to those people who do not feel part of their assigned gender? Are intersexed and transgendered people forced to any one of the two genders? What happens when they do not conform? Is it acceptable to use technology to de-construct or reconstruct that gender? In Saudi Arabia, anyone attempting to do so faces the immense wrath of family and society.5
When we take a closer look at technology in relation to gender roles, it seems to play very different roles in Amish and Saudi societies. In Amish cultures, technologies such as telephones, cars, electricity, in general are avoided1 by both men and women. “The Amish share death, birth, and wedding announcements as well as everyday news through personal visits. Telephoning reduced visiting. If one can phone, why visit? Although quicker and handier, the phone threatened to erode the core of Amish culture: face-to-face conversations.”3 It is not seen as masculine but rather as unnecessary. Technology does not create a greater divide in gender roles and expectations since neither men not women are expected use it. However, it does it help minimize the problem of having gender as two sides of a coin and not a continuum.
In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, women are not allowed to use certain technologies like cars. Only men can drive and women have to be accompanied by a male relative wherever they go. The problem does not arise from religion, since there is no ban on driving for women in Islam. It is rather a deeply rooted problem in the society. If children grow up with the notion that men should drive and women should not, and they are discouraged from questioning authority, then they will grow up relating technology to males only. I myself lived in Saudi Arabia for the first seven years of my life, and distinctly remember the initial shock I felt when I moved to a different country and saw women driving cars since I was not used to seeing it at all. The regulations make men appear technologically superior and capable. Thus, since women are being forced away from certain technologies in Saudi Arabia, this only adds to the technological gap between men and women that already exists.
Amish people also reject technologies related to cosmetics or beautification which Saudis do not. Changing one’s appearance with make-up, shaving, curling or straightening hair are all generally related to females. Amish people do not believe in making such changes to one’s body. “Cutting or curling hair, shaving legs, and trimming eyebrows are prohibited because they are viewed as irreverent tampering with God’s creation.”3 In Saudi Arabia, under the abbayas that they wear over their bodies, women generally dress fashionably, style their hair and shave regularly. It is not acceptable of a man to do those. They are considered to be for women only and add to the list of activities or technologies that are gender specific, creating further gap between males and females and constructing greater gender expectations and roles. Technology is used to create femininity in Saudi cultures, whereas the lack of use of such technologies in Amish cultures makes people to leave their bodies they way they are.
In both Amish and Saudi cultures, children are born with a gender and raised accordingly. Gender is not a spectrum, but rather a choice between two possibilities – male or female. The difference between the cultures come in when we look at how technology constructs that gender and its roles. Technology, in general, is rejected by the Amish people and thus is does not contribute in widening or reducing the gender gap. In Saudi Arabia, women use certain technologies to be more feminine, while they are banned from using certain others. While the use of technology can create a spectrum of genders, it often contributes in making gender specifically male or female only too.
References:
- BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/subdivisions/amish_1.shtml
- http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/3348
- The Riddles of Technology, Donald B. Kraybill, pgs 57-80 and 212
- American Bedu: http://americanbedu.com/2008/03/06/a-womans-life-in-saudi-arabia/
- Story of a Saudi transgendered woman: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=55243&d=29&m=11&y=2004
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Marwa–
What a striking contrast: to set up a comparison between the one American sub-group that dichotomizes the gender roles as insistently as Saudis do, but eschews modern technologies entirely, and so avoids @ least that one dimension of increasing gender difference—takes you some distance.
Though of course there’s lots more I’d like to know. For example, your explaining that “face-to-face conversations are the core of Amish culture” seems to explain their avoidance of modern technology, which then becomes not only “unnecessary,” as you say, but actually something much stronger, and more strongly condemned, as community-destroying (as a modern technology-user, what you do think of that challenge? Mightn’t technology, in some other ways, also function as a community-builder?)
I have a similar series of questions about Saudi Arabian culture. If the ban on women driving is not religious, what is its source? Why is it, as you say, such a “deeply rooted problem”? You develop a nice contrast between the technologies that are forbidden to women, and those that are embraced by them, and show how both contribute to the constructions of what it means to be female and feminine. I’m not sure, though, what you mean by their “only adding to technological gap between men and women that already exists.” What’s that?
My biggest and final question, though, has to do w/ the matter of choice. You conclude by saying that in both of the cultures you discuss, “gender is a choice between two possibilities—male or female.” But the stories you have told suggest something very different to me: that gender, far from being a choice made by an individual, is a divinely ordered difference that is insistently reinforced by cultural norms, habits and expectations. Where’s the choice?
really this funny I never laugh so hard as I do today, I think you are Phd student in ur first year and as all you want to grap attention to women issue, but you need to make sure you use more accurate resource and do more reading update your self don’t use very old reference, and if you live in Saudi that didn’t mean you are expert, I was in Saudi last week and you may be surprise that all women I meet use technology maybe more than the American, if its about car now they have debate about it and sure think will be different, I was in university, and you may next time do ur study about female in Saudi and US or EU that Saudi female have no problem study math and science and the percentage equal to men not like western girls (read more about this issue) however, if you find pan car driving really problem and lack of using technology then you need to rethink of ur phd. sorry about that but car sometime not account as technology, but really thank you for making me laugh and please do visit Saudi some time its nice country and Saudi people have very modern life style