Analys: Appen bara del av större tekniskt kontrollnät

During the late 20th and early 21th centuries, women's rights in Saudi Arabia were limited in comparison to the rights of women in many of its neighboring countries due to the strict interpretation of sharia law in place in Saudi Arabia. The World Economic Forum's 2016 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 141 out of 144 countries for gender parity, down from 134 out of 145 in 2015. The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elected Saudi Arabia to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for 2018–2022, in a move that was widely criticised by the international community. Women in Saudi Arabia constituted 13% of the country's native workforce as of 2015.Among the factors that define rights for women in Saudi Arabia are government laws, the Hanbali and Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam, and traditional customs of the Arabian Peninsula. Women campaigned for their rights with the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign, with the result that some improvements to their status occurred during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Women were previously forbidden from voting in all elections or being elected to any political office, but in 2011 King Abdullah let women vote in the 2015 local elections and be appointed to the Consultative Assembly. In 2011, there were more female university graduates in Saudi Arabia than male, and female literacy was estimated to be 91%, which while still lower than male literacy, was far higher than 40 years earlier. In 2013, the average age at first marriage among Saudi females was 25 years. In 2017, King Salman ordered that women be allowed access to government services such as education and healthcare without the need of consent from a guardian. In 2018, King Salman issued a decree allowing women to drive, lifting the world's only ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia.