SAUDI ARABIAN WOMEN NOW ALLOWED TO DRIVE,ROYAL DECREE ISSUED LIFTING THE BAN
Saudi Arabia’s extreme repression of women has long
been illustrated by their prohibition from driving. Some women who have
protested that restriction — or flouted it — have been harshly penalized or arrested.
Until today.
Late Tuesday night local time, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman issued a royal decree declaring that women will soon be allowed to apply for drivers’ licenses and drive legally.
In a historic Royal Decree, women will finally be issued driver's licenses & allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. This is a proud day for KSA.
The decree is a win for women, but it’s also a tactical win for
the state. Refusing to allow women to drive has been a public relations
disaster for the Saudis for years. Giving them the keys, they hope,
will not only ease public international pressure but also give women the
chance to contribute more to the economy.
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. The ban on women
drivers has long been explained as being religiously motivated, but it
is the only country in the world, of any religion, that had instituted
such a ban.
The drivers’ licenses won’t be issued immediately — the
decree explained that the rollout will take place in June 2018, after
government ministries have had a chance to work out the details of
implementation.
Of course, Saudi women will still be subjected to the repressive male guardianship system,
which requires women to seek permission from a male relative (father,
brother, husband, son) to do almost anything, from getting married to
working outside the home to even basic freedom of movement within and
outside the country. Saudi women were only given the right to vote in December 2015.
A step in the right direction but as long as the male guardianship system exists #Saudi women will still lack true freedom of movement. https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/912752248366796800 …
But for some time now, there have been rumblings that
this one particular form of repression might be eased. Last November,
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal tweeted, “Stop the debate ... time for women to drive.”
The tweet was accompanied by a link to a longer argument
posted to his website in which he mapped out the monetary benefit of
letting women drive. Not allowing women to drive, he explained, has
created a fully paid chauffeur class composed of thousands of (largely
foreign-born) drivers taking up funds that might otherwise be funneled
into the Saudi economy.
For years, Saudi women activists have lobbied and
protested for the right to drive, sometimes doing so at their own peril.
“We are looking for a normal way of life,” Madiha al-Ajroush, a trained
psychologist, told the New York Times
in 2013, “for me to get into my car and do something as small as get
myself a cappuccino or something as grand as taking my child to the
emergency room.”
Read tweet from one disgusting cleric on why he thinks it is sinful for women to be allowed to drive cars
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