Michelle braveness can also be seen in her decision to drive a car and dresses up like a man. In Saudi Arabia, it is forbidden for a woman to drive a car
even if the person owns an international driving license. What Michelle did is actually a crime due to the law in Saudi Arabia and she might be accused for driving.
Yet, Michelle is brave enough to still drive and to avoid being caught by the religious police of Saudi Arabia, she dresses up like a man.
The hostess greeted them wearing baggy trousers with lots of pockets and an oversized jacket gear that artfully concealed any sign of femininity
plus a bandanna that hid her hair. To top it all off, she had on a pair of colored sunglasses that gave her the appearance of an adolescent boy who
has escaped parental surveillance 2005: 14 Wearing man s clothes is inappropriate and against the law of Islam that become the
base of law in Saudi Arabia. The risk of being accused for driving by the religious police of Saudi Arabia, shows how brave Michelle is.
d. Educated
Michelle and her family live in and her family moved to Riyadh when she is in the second year of middle school. Since at that time Michelle did not have the
ability of speaking Arabic, she studies in a school that all the classes are taught in English. After graduated from high school, Michelle continues her study in King
Saud University and studied computer science there. Right after graduating from high school Michelle intended to study in a
university in America, yet her father did not give the permission that she ended up in a university in Saudi. The reason why her father did not allow her to go is because
since they already lived in conservative Saudi society he was influenced by the conservatives ideas that a woman who studies abroad by themselves will not find
anyone who will marry them when they go back to Saudi and bad rumors about her will spread.
Her father s nosy sisters had really gone out of their way in this case to stuff her open-minded father s head with retrograde ideas. They warned
him of the likely consequences of letting her go abroad all by herself to study. Girls who traveled out of the kingdom to study, the aunties argued,
found lots of unflattering talk swirling around them when they returned. And then they couldn t find anyone who would marry them Al-Sanea,
2005:46 Her father who is actually an open-minded person, got the influence from his sisters
who are very conservative. On the other hand, while Michelle is not allowed to study abroad by herself, her little brother Meshaal is allowed to go for summer boarding
school in Switzerland. The atmosphere of their home had become very bleak with her depression
and the departure of her brother Meshaal to Switzerland for his summer boarding school Al-Sanea, 2005: 112.
In Saudi society, it was a hard battle for a woman to get formal education, they only got religious education in the past. Thus, even now many conservative Saudi people
see that education for women is not needed. Amani Hamdan in his article Women and Education in Saudi Arabia, says that the struggle for women education in Saudi
Arabia is an ongoing battle Hamdan, 2010: 47 Eventually, Michelle is able to study abroad. She is depressed after break
up with Faisal that she asks her father to let her go and study in the US. This time her father let her go as a way to cure her broken heart. Her father does not give
spontaneous refusal because he knows that Michelle is in a bad psychological condition.
This time when she proposed the idea of studying abroad to her father, she did not face an immediate refusal as she had a year ago. It may be that the
weight she had lost and the paleness that taken hold of her face in recent weeks had an effect on his decision 2005: 112
Michelle continues her study at the University of California in San Francisco major in communication. In San Francisco she met her cousin Matty who
helps her taking care of anything related to her study there. Later Michelle find herself have a crush in Matty but when she tells her father, he cannot accept it since
Matty is not a Moslem. Michelle does not finish her study in University of California, she only
spent two years there because her father decided to move to Dubai, UAE. It was her father s plan from the beginning, moreover after knowing that her daughter loves her
non-Moslem cousin Al-Sanea, 2005: 135 In Dubai, she still continued her study in communication. She entered the
Departement of Visual Communication at the American University in Dubai so that her two years in San Francisco will not go to a waste. Major in communication is a
way that leads her way to success. Later she gets a chance to work in a famous TV station in Dubai and become a producer for her own TV program Al-Sanea, 2005:
185. Through the description about her, it can also be seen that Michelle is an
educated woman. Her education also influences her way of thinking because she can see things from the Eastern and Western perspective at the same time.
Mashael was a cultured, educated girl; she was a university student whose potpourri of Eastern and Western thinking he really liked and admired.
Al-Sanea, 2005: 95
B. The Gender Discriminations Revealed in the Novel
In this section, the gender discrimination in the novel Girls of Riyadh will be revealed. The discriminations are categorized into 4 categories. The first is
discrimination in social life, which reveals any discriminations against women in their interaction with people outside the house. The second is discrimination in
domestic life where women are discriminated in their home even by their own parents. The third is the discrimination in law where women cannot have the same
rights as men have in the aspect of law. The last is discrimination in politics, the freedom of women in Saudi Arabia in political life is very limited due to the
Kingdom s regulation.
1. Social Life
Social life is a combination of some components which are interactions, people, and places outside the house. A social interaction, as explained by
Jos e A. Scheinkman in his journal, Social Interactions, refers to particular forms of
externalities, in which the actions of a reference group affect an individual s preferences https:www.princeton.edu~joseswpsocialinteractions.pdf.
As mentioned before that Saudi Arabia society is a patriarchal society, the very extreme one. Men in Saudi Arabia have more power than women do. Whether
socially or domestically, women only have limited freedom. The mobility of women in Saudi Arabia is hindered by the gender discriminations. Women are not allowed
to go out of the house without their male guardian or at least the permission from their male guardian. They should behave carefully, they are not allowed to drive a
car, and in order to take care of official task or running a business they should
