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| Financial Claims Analyst | ||
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| Carrara | Joanne | |
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| Esposito | Nicholas | |
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| McKenzie | Prince | |
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| Donovan | Leilani |
Some Saudi Women Rejoice Over New Right to Drive; Others Dread It
As a barrier to women’s freedom is smashed, some women worried; what about rush-hour traffic?
A Saudi woman enters the back seat of a car outside a mall in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia will allow women to drive starting in June. PHOTO: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—As the reality sank in Wednesday that Saudi women would be allowed to drive, many celebrated the removal of an enduring barrier to their freedom while others confronted new challenges to getting behind the wheel, like buying a car and navigating rush-hour traffic.
“It’s a good first step; We are becoming kind of equal,” said 18-year-old Filwa al Hawas, who like most Saudi women who can afford to has a driver. “But the streets aren’t good enough for women to drive in. A lot of people drive like crazy in Riyadh.”
Late Tuesday, King Salman lifted the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world where the government had maintained such a restriction. The driving ban became a major flashpoint in the struggle for women’s equality and a test of wills between the kingdom’s moderates, who wanted Saudi Arabia’s strict social rules to ease, and conservatives, who viewed such changes as attempts to Westernize their society.
Kingdom Rises
Saudi women are increasingly entering the workforce but still at lower rates than many other places.
Source: The World Bank
Saudi Arabia’s top clerical body supported the king’s decision to lift it, saying it complies with Islamic law. Still, the announcement provoked a backlash among ultraconservative Saudis.
“I’m a woman and I reject women driving cars,” said a Twitter user, Hanan al Harbi. “Where are you taking the country? This will take our youth on a path toward temptation and corruption.”
Some women worried they could become an easy target for conservatives if they drove. “We will just have more problems,” said Moudhy al Mishal, who is 30. “The people are not very open-minded.”
Based on a royal decree, women will be allowed to obtain licenses by June, after a government panel decides on procedures. The logistical challenges range from establishing driving schools for women to enforcing traffic regulations more strictly.
The king’s announcement followed a campaign to allow women to drive that started in the early 1990s and that was led by Saudi women, some of whom weredetained for defying the ban. Many of them celebrated Tuesday’s announcement, and drew praise from other Saudi women.
But the Saudi government warned them against raising their profile. Saudi officials have called several of the women who led the driving campaign and warned them not to comment either positively or critically about the decision or face questioning by authorities, said Saudi women activists.
“They don’t want to give any credit to the activism,” one of the women, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday. “They don’t want people to realize that public pressure does bring change.”
Saudi government spokespeople didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The right to drive marks an important improvement in the status of women in the kingdom. But challenges remain: legally, women are considered forever minors, requiring the permission of a male guardian to marry or travel abroad, for instance. Saudi women activists say the male guardianship system is an even bigger barrier to social equality than the driving ban, and are fighting to abolish it.
“We ask for nothing short of full equality for women,” said in a statement Manal al Sharif, a leading activist who was arrested in 2011 for challenging the ban and now lives in Australia.
While women are increasingly entering the workforce, in 2016 only around 15% of adult women were employed, according to the World Bank. The Saudi government wants that number to go up to 30% by 2030 as part of its long-term plan for economic reform, which is aimed at ending the country’s dependence on oil revenue and at shrinking the state’s role in the economy.
Allowing women to drive, instead of having to pay for drivers, will make it more financially sustainable for them to work in low-paying jobs. There are around 1.4 million foreign drivers in the kingdom, according to the research firm Capital Economics, and their salaries are around $500 a month.
For many women in Saudi Arabia, however, the debate is now less about politics than it is about traffic.
On Wednesday, throngs of women dressed in head-to-toe black gathered at a women-only career fair in downtown Riyadh, carrying bright pink bags with the words: “There is no gender in success.”
Kholood al Mishal 26, sensed a business opportunity in the announcement: since women will drive, why not open a car store that target them specifically? “The cars could come in many different colors, and they would have space for makeup, a coffee cup holder,” she said, enthusiastically.
Fatima Suleima, a 33-year old whose background is in information technology, said that as soon as she finds a job, she’ll start saving money to buy her own car. She has her eyes set on a Land Rover.
Above all, she says she wants a car because she is tired of wasting money on taxis or cars from Uber, the car-hailing service. “We need to drive in our everyday lives,” said Ms. Suleima, who was standing next to the Uber booth at the career fair.
Uber staff at the booth said many women, in jest, had asked if they were already recruiting women drivers.
Ms. Suleima said she would consider that only as an option of last resort. “In the first year, let’s drive. The following year, we’ll think about it,” she said. “If I can’t find a job by then, then I will work for Uber.”
—Dahlia Kholaif contributed to this article.
Write to Margherita Stancati at margherita.stancati@wsj.com
Appeared in the September 28, 2017, print edition as 'Saudi Driving Shift Worries Some.'
