Melania praised Saudi Arabia for their ‘empowerment of women’. Let’s just leave that there for posterity

On his first foreign trip as President of the United States, Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia.

Joining him and making her first foreign trip as First Lady, on Sunday Melania Trump said there were 'great strides' towards the 'empowerment of women' happening in Saudi Arabia.

From her official account as First Lady, Trump was pictured with a group of workers at the General Electric (GE) Saudi service centre.

The GE Service Centre is, according to Melania, the first all female process service centre in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh.

Heading towards women's 'empowerment' in Saudi Arabia:

Official Foreign Office travel advice for foreign women visiting Saudi Arabia reads:

Islamic codes of behaviour and dress are strictly enforced.

Women should wear conservative, loose-fitting clothes as well as a full length cloak (abaya) and a headscarf.

It is illegal for women to drive.

Amnesty International's report on Saudi Arabia in 2016 records that:

Women remain legally subordinate in inferior in status to men in relation, to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, and could not access higher education.

For women living in the country, conditions have 'improved' from the brutal state in which they've existed since the Kingdom was founded in 1932.

• 2015: Saudi women were given the vote in municipal elections. This right was granted to British single rate-payer women in 1869.
• May 2016: Justice ministry ruled that women must be given a copy of their marriage certificate.
• February 2017: The Shura (consultative council) approved a proposal to allow women to have their own passports without the approval of a male guardian.
• March 2017: Saudi Arabia launched the Qassim Girl's Council. At the council's opening forum, the women were seated in a separate room from the all male council.
• April 2017: the kingdom was elected to join the 45 member UN Commission on Women's Rights.

'Great strides' indeed.

HT Mashable

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