Even as Prince Mohammed opened new doors for Saudi women, critics pointed out, some women who had campaigned for those rights remained in jail or on trial for their activism.

At least some of the changes to the guardianship laws are to take effect by the end of the month, the government said in a statement. But they will likely take longer to flow through the Saudi bureaucracy to individual households, and some women said they would only be truly equal once they received other rights they still lack, such as the ability to marry or live on their own without a male relative’s permission.

Even so, the changes were pivotal.



“These new regulations are history in the making,” Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States and Saudi Arabia’s first female ambassador, wrote on Twitter. “They call for the equal engagement of women and men in our society.”

She added: “Our leadership has proved its unequivocal commitment to gender equality.”

In recent years, Prince Mohammed has loosened restrictions on women’s dress and pushed for more women to enter the work force, billing the social opening as essential to build the insular Islamic kingdom’s economy.

It was not clear why the new regulations were announced now, but the news was likely to draw some attention from the mounting foreign criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

The murder of Mr. Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year drew global condemnation. Saudi forces are bogged down and accused of war crimes in Yemen, leading to growing calls by American lawmakers to cut support for the Saudi war effort. And waves of arrests have scooped up clerics, intellectuals, royals, businessmen and activists who had campaigned for an end to the guardianship system.