“[T]he Saudi state has been globally celebrated , including by international institutions . And this is no surprise – the gender reforms announced by the state, and formulated with the help of consultancy firms , largely align with the United Nation’s women’s empowerment agenda , which adopts a liberal model of gender equality that works to include ambitious women within the existing capitalist order, leaving its structural inequalities intact. What is obvious from these celebratory accounts is that gender reforms in Saudi Arabia are almost always discussed only in relation to Saudi women, rendering their implications for non-citizens invisible.” As of 2022 more than foreign female servants and house cleaners alone numbered more than 1 million . “ This calls for a broader reflection on what emancipatory possibilities are foreclosed by liberal feminist justice frameworks that seek autonomy and equality for some, within unequal structures, rather than more meaningful forms of tran
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51