After the lifting of the ban on women driving last year, the Saudi feminist movement can now celebrate its second victory: the authorities have announced that women can be granted passports and travel abroad without the consent of their male guardians. They can also register a birth, marriage or divorce. But they still cannot marry, or leave prison or a domestic violence shelter without the consent of their male guardians – often a father, brother, or other male relative.

The bizarre guardianship system is pervasive in Saudi Arabia. It stipulates that women are not legal persons, and consequently, they have to be represented by male relatives to work, marry, study, travel, and seek medical care.

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The Saudi regime has relied on a narrow interpretation of walayah (guardianship) in Islamic theology to enforce a quarantine over women for the last half century. It gave men power over women, while depriving them of their political, civil and human rights.

Throughout Islamic history, no other government has enforced such a pervasive guardianship system. In Saudi Arabia and in most Muslim countries, women cannot marry without the consent of their guardian. But in one Islamic school of jurisprudence, the Hanafi, adult women can marry without a guardian present.

Yet in Saudi Arabia, the official Hanbali school of the state’s legal system, and its Wahhabi religious scholars, preachers and judges, stipulate that the guardian is the only one who can approve a daughter’s marriage. Women can take a father who obstructs marriage to court, and if successful, the judge will become her guardian to give consent. In all cases, a woman needs the consent of a man to marry – and the recent announcement keeps this requirement in place.

Many Saudi women who pushed the agenda to be treated as equal citizens won’t be able to celebrate the recent announcement as many are either in prison – such as Lujain al-Hathloul, Samar Badawi and Nasima al-Sada – or banned from travel, like Aziza al-Yousef, Hatoon al-Fassi, and Eman al-Nafjan. Others have fled the country and sought asylum in Canada, Australia, the US and Europe, among them Hala al-Dosari, Saffaa Hassanein and Omaima al-Najjar.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The combination of reform and repression under the leadership of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman baffles Saudi feminists and outside observers.’ Photograph: Eliot Blondet/AFP/Getty Images

This combination of reform and repression under the leadership of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman – whose initiatives include increasing the employment of women and appointing them to high-profile jobs in government – baffles not only Saudi feminists, but also outside observers.

The Saudi feminist movement has proved to be the most organised and articulate civil society in the country. It operates on multiple levels. On the ground, teachers, doctors, charity workers and civil servants silently help battered women and report abuse. At another level, there are those vocal women who have taken the struggle to be free and equal beyond Saudi Arabia, securing the support of the global feminist movement. This annoys the regime as it punctures the persistent narrative that it is the only source of protection and empowerment.

Moreover, women have popularised the language of rights for all. The regime’s nightmare is for this language to spread beyond its control, which is why so many vocal and courageous women have been silenced behind bars.

Saudi Arabia’s reputation is reaching an unprecedented low ebb, following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year, and the publicity around the Saudi runaway girls who end up stranded at international airports while waiting for a charitable country to grant them asylum. These women have often run away as a result of abuse or forced marriage.

Granting women the right to travel abroad, therefore, is timely and has a feelgood factor, especially among potential foreign investors. Unemployed, educated women may start seeking jobs abroad, in nearby Gulf countries or beyond. Now there are Saudi women working as lecturers at British universities, researchers in the US, journalists such as Iman al-Hamoud in France, graphic designers and artists in Dubai, and many other highly educated women who work in finance, art and the media.

The Saudi economy itself is still incapable of absorbing the number of female graduates. Many among them are PhD students who return home after several years studying abroad to find no appropriate jobs in their fields.

There will be further relaxation of rules governing women’s lives, but several hurdles restricting both men and women remain. As the Saudi centralised economy seeks liberalisation and privatisation, many men and women may not find jobs in their desired sector – and the right of women to leave the country legally will contribute to a brain-drain, leaving the field open for a reversal of the decision to let them go without the consent of a guardian.

Saudi Arabia needs urgent political reforms to ensure that rights given now under duress are never reversed or abandoned. These rights should be enshrined in a political culture of equal citizenship to all.

• Madawi al-Rasheed is a visiting professor at the LSE Middle East Centre