Well fundamentally, its main reason for backwards laws (e.g. non-equality for women) is that the House of Saud derives its legitimacy from a rather orthodox religious sect, in exchange for enforcing said orthodox sect's backwards religious rules.

Switching to a democracy would mean nobody need pander to the Wahhabi sect.

That assumes the people wouldn't vote for an orthodox religious government. I'm almost certain, for quite a while, they would.

See: http://clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-using-democracy...

Sure. That's exactly what happened in e.g. Egypt /s it didn't.

We have to face the reality here; if the "religious sect" is so powerful that it can challenge the absulotist monarch, then it's definitely powerful enough to play divide-and-conquer with different democratic parties.

I don't know. The population of Arabia is probably best placed to discuss this. (Note that calling it "Saudi Arabia" implicitly accepts the rule of the House of Saud.)

Understanding the mechanisms the House of Saud uses to stay in power is probably a small first step in the transition to something better.