Women on the Oil Frontier: Gender and Power in Aramco's Arabia

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dc.citation.firstpage55
dc.citation.issueNumberSpring
dc.citation.journalTitleRice Historical Review
dc.citation.lastpage69
dc.citation.volumeNumber2
dc.contributor.authorJones, Benjamin
dc.contributor.illustratorWu, Xiaoyu (Linda)
dc.date.accessioned2017-06-15T13:51:39Z
dc.date.available2017-06-15T13:51:39Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.descriptionThis paper was written in Dr. Nathan Citino's history seminar, America in the Middle East (HIST 436).
dc.description.abstractThe Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), which controlled the world's largest crude oil reserve and was once the largest American investment overseas, often claimed that its petroleum extraction activities contributed to the modernization of Saudi society. Scholars have critiqued Aramco's narrative of enlightened self interest by showing how the company clung to a racialized labor hierarchy and repeatedly eschewed reforms. This essay continues that criticism by examining Aramco’s policies on women and the family. Using internal memos and publicity materials released between 1940 and 1970, this study reveals how Aramco’s American owners used gender to understand, manage, and Orientalize their Saudi employees. In its public image, Aramco claimed to be liberating Saudi women from an anachronistically oppressive society. Yet in the jobs it did (and did not) offer to women, as well as the housing options it gave to Saudi families, the company’s policies demonstrate a similarly patriarchal logical work.
dc.description.sponsorshipRice History Department
dc.format.extent15 pp
dc.identifier.citationJones, Benjamin. Wu, Xiaoyu (Linda) (illustrator). "Women on the Oil Frontier: Gender and Power in Aramco's Arabia." <i>Rice Historical Review,</i> 2, no. Spring (2017) Rice University: 55-69. https://doi.org/10.25611/m-00058.
dc.identifier.digitalJones-RHR-2017-Spring
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.25611/m-00058
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/94857
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherRice University
dc.relation.IsPartOfSeriesSpring 2017
dc.rightsThis article is licensed under a CC-BY license; copyright remains with the authors.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
dc.titleWomen on the Oil Frontier: Gender and Power in Aramco's Arabia
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
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