Saudi Arabia is now the only country in the Middle East where men can vote but women cannot.
Women may not drive, stand for election, mix with males who are not relatives or travel abroad without a male relative's permission. They must have a mahram (a legal, male guardian) when appearing in court and may not become judges.
They are obliged to wear the abaya with a separate veil to cover the hair. In Saudi, many women also veil their faces in public, although the eyes remain visible. They live under strict supervision until marriage. Forced marriage is commonplace among traditionalist Saudis, which may explain why about half of all marriages end in divorce. All household chores are done by women (supplemented by female domestic staff from the Philippines and elsewhere) and domestic violence is thought to be widespread.
However, the application of the rules varies hugely in severity, from Jeddah, which is relatively liberal, to the capital, Riyadh, where the religious police still make regular appearances; and between traditionalist and liberal families.
But change is happening, even if in many cases, it is driven by economic and post-9/11 security imperatives rather than natural justice.
In 2001, women were issued with their own ID cards for the first time (as opposed to appearing as "dependents" of their menfolk on a family card); sensationally, these cards included a picture of their uncovered faces. With Saudi now in the World Trade Organisation, hard economic realities are forcing a review of the nonsense that although more than half of all Saudi graduates are female, they make up only 4 per cent of the workforce.
Up to 2004, women could only work - officially - in the health, education and philanthropy sectors.
But there is a sense of a slow-moving but unstoppable tide. A women's college here has just announced its first engineering degree course. Two businesswomen were elected to the board of the Jeddah chamber of commerce last December, and two appointed to it, signifying high level approval of women in business. The female head of one of Saudi's largest companies has become a board member of a major Saudi bank and a well-connected Saudi prince has employed the Saudi's first female pilot. Government directives are seeing women being employed in the civil service for the first time.
The catch-22 is that women's jobs within Saudi are not supposed to be in an environment where men and women mix. This results in ludicrous situations whereby female customers are obliged to deal with all-male shop assistants (even cosmetics and lingerie), while the reverse cannot apply.
But as with many things in Saudi, all is not as it seems. Arab News, a Saudi newspaper, reports that there are plenty of workplaces where men and women interact freely. Women have no doubt that the new 83-year-old King Abdullah is serious about reform. He has told Saudi businesswomen change will happen, but not so quickly as to provoke a backlash, and they accept this.
Despite his awesome power, however, the king has his work cut out. Last October, he said he believed "the day will come when women drive" in Saudi, despite a 1990 ruling by the top religious body that it was a violation of Islam.
Last December, the publication of a newspaper poll claiming that 60 per cent of Saudis believed that women should be allowed to drive was clearly a pre-approved softening-up exercise. But last Tuesday, when the proposal was put to Saudi's non-elected parliament, it decided it wasn't even entitled to debate the ban, as it had been decided by religious edict.
There is still a long road ahead for the women of Saudi Arabia.
... Kathy Sheridan