Saudi women driven to drive

I don’t have a driver’s license. I attribute this to growing up mostly in Germany, where the legal age for this life skill is 18.

But now, having surpassed that legal limbo by two years, I’m out of excuses. And, considering the most recent events concerning women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, I may finally be motivated to get behind the wheel if for no other reason than my gratitude that it is actually within the power of my sex to do so.

It’s important to note Saudi Arabia is a notoriously oppressive place for women.
Saudi women can’t open bank accounts, work, travel or go to school without consent of their male “companions” — fathers, brothers or husbands who must accompany them at all times in public places. But I’m pretty sure, as a woman with a concentration in human rights, that mobility is something that should be afforded to all sexes.

It shouldn’t be a privilege because it shouldn’t be political.

Saudi Arabia is the last country in the world with a de facto “ban” on women driving. Irrespective of the fact that there’s no official law preventing women from possessing licenses, they’re not issued them because of a multitude of unjustifiable biases.

My personal favorite is the absurd and overreaching claim that driving “automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upward,” therefore damning these reckless heathens’ future children to “clinical problems of varying degrees.”

But primarily, of course, the most prevalent “reasoning” preventing Saudi women from driving is religious sexism.

Clerics insist allowing women to drive will promote “licentiousness.” Because of religious edicts’ pervasive influence on the Saudi monarchy, the 25 to 35 women who joined Oct. 26’s “Women’s Driving Campaign” were detained for something that isn’t even specifically illegal for them to do. These activists not only defiantly drove but also posted their equalitarian efforts to YouTube.

Several were then promptly pulled over from their errand outings for their “activities that disturb public peace.”

The protest is a continuation of the first of its kind in the early 1990s when 50 brazen women who drove through Saudi’s capital city were jailed, had their travel rights revoked and had their employment terminated.

Again, for a cultural custom and not anything actually illegal.

The action taken against the ban’s most recent “offenders” was admittedly less harsh.

The women were stopped in their cars until their legally mandated male guardians could collect them. They then signed a declaration promising not to drive again.

Some of the women claimed those passing in other cars overlooked the fact these women were driving, let alone unaccompanied. This is a hopeful reflection of Saudi Arabia’s more recent progressive views on women propagated by the current king, Abdullah.

He has made steps toward feminist reform, including the 2011 ruling that women can run for office and vote in local elections — which will be enacted in 2015. He’s also appointed 30 women — the first ever — to the Shura Council.

Eventually, such governance may overturn the opinion that women are irrational creatures with hormones as controlling of their behavior as their patriarchal oppressors.

The driving campaign itself included an explosive online petition, which amassed more than 16,000 signatures. The petition calls on the government to actually provide “to the citizens a valid and legal justification” for the sexist road restriction, AKA a better reason — like a law — for discrimination other than an alleged “societal
consensus.”

But with any luck and/or true reason, such a law will never come to pass.

­— ashhendr@indiana.edu