Secrets of the Desert: Kuwait: Shall I Compare Thee to Qatar and UAE?

Kuwait is the third and last country we are visiting on our tour. It, like Qatar and UAE, is a very small country made recently wealthy because of oil (or gas, in the case of Qatar.) Like the other two, it is highly developed economically, yet still quite culturally conservative. It is geographically similar (desert bordering the sea).
Our group with MP Dr. Massouma Al-Mubarak

Like the other two countries, it’s past was dominated by fishing, pearling, and trading. Also like the other two, it is governed by a ruling family—the Al Sabah. It is also peaceful, stable, and relatively pro-Western. (One of our speakers said Kuwait is a compromise between Saudi Arabia (hyper-conservative, even repressive) and Lebanon (volatile).
One of the most important differences between Kuwait and the other two countries is that Kuwait City has been a sizable settlement for centuries. (In contrast, Dubai and Doha were much smaller trading villages). Another significant difference is that the significant development based on oil wealth came perhaps a generation earlier than the other two. (Development was rapid after WW II.)

As a result, Kuwait has a different “feel” to me. For lack of a better term, it feels more “real.” The other places were newer, built to a large extent through the initiatives of the ruling family, and had the feel of a “development” or someone’s “project.” (I’m putting these words into quotation marks because I don’t really know what I’m talking about; I’m just trying to convey a vague impression I get.) Kuwait has older buildings and the “feeling” of a real city, with all of its pros and cons. (This impression only goes so far; I haven’t seen much real poverty, although I’ve seen plenty of buildings in a state of disrepair.)
Another significant difference is that Kuwait has, to quote Jill Crystal, “the longest experience of all the Gulf states with constitutions and elected bodies. Kuwait’s constitution was adopted in 1962, making it one of the oldest in the region and the oldest in the Gulf. In accordance with this constitution, Kuwait has had an elected unicameral National Assembly (majlis al-umma) since 1963.” And, wonder of wonders, in 2005 women were granted the right to vote and run for office. In 2009 four women were elected to parliament. Woo hoo!
There are significant differences in the population (and thus the assembly) between conservatives (often religious conservatives) and liberals and between the “hadar” (the settled, Sunni, urban elite) and the “bedu” (the settled Bedouin tribes.)
Because Kuwaitis actually have a voice in how their society runs, the society on the surface appears to be more conservative than Qatar and United Arab Emirates. For example, unlike the other countries , alcohol is completely banned, even in hotels. This doesn’t mean that the population overall is more conservative than in Qatar and UAE. People Who Know More Than I Do tell me that if the population in the other countries could vote, they would probably ban it outright, too. However, the emirs in the other countries make such decisions in order to be more friendly to tourists and foreign businesses. Another side effect of giving people the right to vote is that they can make decisions that liberal Americans find unsettling. For example, in Kuwait, universities have been unsegregated for a long time. But a couple of years ago, something happened at one of the universities (a party? Some untoward mingling of the sexes?) that led to the assembly voting to segregate the universities by sexes. The educators we have talked to see this as a huge pain in the butt and not good for education. (One reason this isn’t good, they say, is that women tend to be much better students—not necessarily inherently smarter, but more studious and interested. When classes are mixed, they have a good influence on the male students. When the young men have their own classes, all hell breaks loose.)
Last week, we visited parliament and were able to meet with three of these four women. (The fourth one was not there.) This was one of the highlights of the trip for me. On the first day we visited, the Parliament was supposed to vote on several bills related to women’s rights. Unfortunately, because of a lack of quorum, the assembly meeting was cancelled. (Was the lack of quorum deliberate?) On the positive side, the female MPs had time to meet with us because of this cancellation.
All four of the female MPs have Ph.Ds from American universities and are considered very strong women, effective politicians. They certainly came across that way to us. (I’m still waiting to meet those submissive Muslim women we hear so much about.) They told us that one of the proposals was to pay housewives to stay at home. They were against this bill because they believed it was an attempt to “buy off” women’s participation in the public sector. (I agree.) There were also several bills related to Kuwaiti women who marry non-Kuwaiti men. Under current law, if a Kuwaiti man marries a non-Kuwaiti woman, the wife and children still get all the benefits of Kuwaiti nationals. (These benefits are considerable; Kuwait is basically a welfare state.) However, if I understand correctly, if a Kuwaiti woman marries a non-Kuwaiti man, her husband and children are considered foreigners with none of the rights of Kuwaiti citizens. (We met a woman in this situation—the one who gave the talk on the Kuwait cityscape as “etch-a-sketch.”) This week, they finally voted on the issues. Some passed, some didn’t. The “housewife bill” didn’t pass. (Good!) Spouses and children of women married to non-Kuwaiti men received some rights, but not all of them. (In my next blog, I'll reproduce two newspaper articles with details about the vote.)