RIYADH: Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements.

Since last week, Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. Manal al-Sherif, who became the symbol of a campaign launched last year urging Saudi women to defy a driving ban, began spreading the information on Twitter, after she was alerted by a couple.

The husband, who was travelling with his wife, received a text message from the immigration authorities informing him that his wife had left the international airport in Riyadh.

“The authorities are using technology to monitor women,” said columnist Badriya al-Bishr.

Saudi women are not allowed to leave the country without permission from their male guardian, who must give his consent by signing what is known as the “yellow sheet” at the airport or border. The move by the Saudi authorities was swiftly condemned on social network Twitter.

“If I need an SMS to let me know my wife is leaving Saudi Arabia, then I’m either married to the wrong woman or need a psychiatrist,” tweeted Hisham.

“It would have been better for the government to busy itself with finding a solution for women subjected to domestic violence” than track their movements into and out of the country, said Bishr, the columnist. Last year, King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in the 2015 municipal elections, a historic first for the country.

In January, the monarch appointed Sheikh Abdullatif Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, a moderate, to head the religious police commission.

Following his appointment, Sheikh Abdullatif banned members of the commission from harassing women over their behaviour and attire, raising hopes a more lenient force will ease social constraints in the country.

But the country’s “religious establishment” is still to blame for the discrimination against women in Saudi Arabia, says activist Suad Shemmari.

Shemmari said: “There can never be reform without changing the status of women and treating them” as equals to men. But that seems a very long way off.

The many restrictions on women have led to high rates of female unemployment, officially estimated at around 30 per cent.

Last month, local media published a justice ministry directive allowing all women lawyers who have a law degree and who have spent at least three years working in a lawyer’s office to plead cases in court.

But the ruling, which was to take effect this month, has not been implemented.—AFP