From Guardianship to Autonomy: Mobility, Freedom, and Gender Role Negotiation Among Saudi Women Sojourners in Canada

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a really promising article with important understandings to share regarding a pertinent contemporary gender equality issue. While it addresses a specific national experience, the issues explored around mobilities and gender constraints, and the ways in which these are theorised, also have wider relevance to share in terms of developing understandings.

The article is clearly and well written and structured, and clearly located in the context of relevant theoretical literature. It addresses clearly articulated research questions; methodological decisions are reflected on thoughtfully, including around language, and power; and it is critically reflexive around researcher positionally

The qualitative data is approached analytically by the authors in a meaningful way that recognises these  identity transitions as temporal as well as spatial journeys; the constraints against freedom produced from the digital pulling of home culture and perceptions within host culture; and the fragility of these journeys.

The one key improvement needed to this article is to pull forward the contextual understanding from the relevant theoretical literature presented to make sense of the rich qualitative data presented in the Findings and Discussion. At present relevant insights from existing literature are predominantly absent from the later part of the article in which the data is presented and discussed. This is a missed opportunity and prevents the understanding of the data that is there to be had.

I would recommend amalgamating the Findings and Discussion sections so that the data is simultaneously presented and analysed, with reference to the relevant theoretical perspectives and wider literature, as is more prevalent in terms of presentation with qualitative data.

I very much look forward to seeing this important article reach publication stage.

Author Response

Comment

"The one key improvement needed to this article is to pull forward the contextual understanding from the relevant theoretical literature presented to make sense of the rich qualitative data presented in the Findings and Discussion… I would recommend amalgamating the Findings and Discussion sections so that the data is simultaneously presented and analysed, with reference to the relevant theoretical perspectives and wider literature."

 

Response

We thank the reviewer for this important and constructive recommendation. We fully agree that greater theoretical engagement within the analysis would strengthen the manuscript and more fully realize the potential of the qualitative material.
Accordingly, we have substantially revised the manuscript by amalgamating the former Findings and Discussion sections into a single integrated section titled “Findings and Theoretical Analysis” (Section 4). In this revised section, participants’ narratives are now presented and interpreted in direct conversation with the relevant theoretical literature, including work on liminality (Turner; Aguilar), regimes of mobility (Glick Schiller & Salazar), stress–adaptation–growth (Kim), transnational feminism and negotiated agency (Mahmood), and intersectionality (Crenshaw).

Specifically:

• Each thematic subsection (Sections 4.1–4.5) now embeds analytic interpretation alongside empirical quotations rather than deferring theoretical engagement to a separate discussion.
• Concepts such as liminal autonomy, the digital leash, and the racializing gaze are explicitly theorized in situ, allowing the qualitative data to be read as situated interventions in broader debates on gendered mobility and transnational power.
• Redundant synthesis has been removed, and the analysis is now cumulative across themes.

These changes can be found throughout Section 4 of the revised manuscript. We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion, which has significantly improved the clarity, coherence, and analytical depth of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an exceptionally well-written, sensitive and nuanced paper about Saudi women's agentive growth and reflexive experience of what the author describes as 'liminal autonomy' in Canada. The author puts their interlocutors' personal narratives in context and conversation with the changes taking place in Saudi Arabia following the state's pivot towards market liberalism, which necessitated the institution of socially liberal policies that enabled the limited mobility of Saudi women and their empowerment within economic frameworks. This economic empowerment entailed the lifting of the driving ban without undermining the core tenets of the patriarchy that governs private life, thus maintaining the overarching constraints over women's personal freedoms and choices. 

The paper is original and moves beyond binaries to describe the gradients of autonomy, using one mechanism that disrupts such binaries to illustrate their point (e.g. "digital leash"). Furthermore, the author was able to perceptively relay the complexity of inhabiting different spaces, and how space can impose constraints on women in ways that continue to limit their sense of selfhood, safety and freedom. This challenges the reductive dichotomies of East vs. West, and liberal vs. illiberal spaces. 

While I do recommend the paper be accepted in its current form, I do wish to draw the author's attention to a minute detail about the biographies of their interlocutors: the women interviewed constitute a privileged sum by virtue of their ability to obtain a scholarship and negotiate their choice to pursue an education/work overseas with their families. Only one interviewee reflects on their family's liberal sensibilities that enabled her to move overseas. It would be helpful to understand the women's backgrounds, given the underlying assumption that their families understand - and perhaps accept? - the impact of intercultural encounters and mixed-gender environments on the women's personal growth.

Another minor point relates to Vision 2030 and how the interlocutors see themselves, post-graduation, within its economic precincts. There is a case to be made for economic autonomy as a requisite for social autonomy, which I wondered whether the author had explored with their interlocutors.

Finally, I wish to thank the author for their informative and insightful research, and their demonstrable commitment to mitigating power imbalances and resisting Western saviourism. 

Author Response

Comment 1

"The women interviewed constitute a privileged sum by virtue of their ability to obtain a scholarship and negotiate their choice to pursue an education/work overseas with their families… It would be helpful to understand the women’s backgrounds, given the underlying assumption that their families understand – and perhaps accept? – the impact of intercultural encounters and mixed-gender environments on the women’s personal growth."

Response 1

I thank the reviewer for this insightful observation. We agree that greater transparency regarding participants’ structural and familial privilege strengthens the analytic integrity of the study.

In response, I have:

• Explicitly acknowledged participants’ selective and privileged mobility pathway in the Methods section (Section 3.2).
• Clarified that access to scholarships, higher education, and family negotiation positioned participants differently from many Saudi women, while also noting variation in familial conservatism and acceptance of mixed-gender environments.
• Emphasized that the findings should be read as an analysis of differentiated autonomy within a selective group, rather than a universal account.

These revisions are located in Section 3.2 (Participant Recruitment and Sample).

 

Comment 2

"Another minor point relates to Vision 2030 and how the interlocutors see themselves, post-graduation, within its economic precincts. There is a case to be made for economic autonomy as a requisite for social autonomy…"

Response 2

I appreciate this suggestion and agree that economic autonomy warrants clearer analytic treatment.

To address this, I have:

• Expanded Section 4.5 (“Imagining Return and Vision 2030”) to explicitly discuss participants’ reflections on post-graduation employability, income, and labor-market participation.
• Clarified that participants generally viewed economic participation as a necessary but insufficient condition for sustaining social autonomy, particularly in the absence of corresponding legal and familial change.
• Linked these reflections directly to skepticism toward state-led reform framed primarily through market liberalism.

These additions can be found in Section 4.5 of the revised manuscript.

 

Comment 3

"I wish to thank the author for their informative and insightful research, and their demonstrable commitment to mitigating power imbalances and resisting Western saviourism."

Response 3

I thank the reviewer for this generous and affirming assessment. I am especially grateful that the transnational feminist commitments and reflexive methodology were recognized, as these were central ethical priorities in the research design and analysis.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you to the authors for their revisions, which have really strengthened this article. I still feel that Discussion section 4.5 does also require some engagement with literature as a final step to completing this article for publication.

Author Response

Comment

"Discussion section 4.5 does also require some engagement with literature"

Response

Thank you for this final and helpful comment. In response, I have revised Section 4.5 to incorporate more explicit engagement with relevant literature.

Specifically, participants’ reflections on anticipated return, fears of “shrinking,” and conditional autonomy are now situated in relation to scholarship on reverse culture shock and re-entry (Alkhalaf et al., 2024; Asiri, 2025), state-led gender reform under Vision 2030 (Al-Rasheed, 2021; Mehra & Bhowmik, 2024), and autonomy as contextual and potentially reversible within regimes of mobility (Aguilar, 2018; Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013). These additions strengthen Section 4.5 as the analytic culmination of the integrated Findings and Theoretical Analysis section.