Unmarried women rising in Saudi Arabia

MANAMA: Saudis have called for radical solutions to help address the growing phenomenon of unmarried women in the country.
The latest alarm was sounded this week by Mohammad Al Abdul Qadir, the head of Wiam Family Care Society, who said that around 1.5 million Saudi women above 30 were not married. The figure represents 33.4 per cent of the number of women in the kingdom, he said, local daily Makkah reported.
“We need to work on a new vision for Saudi families for the next ten years,” he said. “We need solutions that are based on the consolidation of the values of family solidarity and cohesion in order to confront several phenomena, particularly spinsterhood,” he said. Some Saudi female activists said that the figure of unmarried women in the kingdom was around two million.
“This is a huge and scary figure that indicates an ominous social catastrophe could happen if no radical solutions are found for this phenomenon,” the activists said.
However, several Saudi women have refused to categorise spinsterhood as a dangerous phenomenon, explaining that many women preferred to remain unmarried by choice.
“There are those who have refused to get married for one reason or the other and there are those who have opted to succeed in their lives over getting into marriage,” they said.