Saudi Women Called on to End Driving Ban

Saudi Organizers of a campaign to end Saudi Arabia’s ban on driving by females called on women in the kingdom who have international driving licenses to defy the prohibition by using their cars today.

The plan followed an online initiative that led to the detention of one of the campaign’s activists, Manal al-Sharif. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving.

“Saudi Arabian authorities must stop treating women as second-citizens and open the kingdom’s roads to women drivers,” Amnesty International said yesterday in a statement. “Saudi Arabian authorities must not arrest licensed women who choose to drive, and must grant them the same driving privileges as men.”

A group of Saudi men and women, including al-Sharif, began organizing the campaign in May through the Facebook and Twitter social-networking websites. The organizers insisted their coordinated plan wasn’t a protest. Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s biggest oil reserves, has avoided the mass demonstrations that have toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and threaten the governments of Libya, Yemen and Syria.

Al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant, was arrested last month in the city of al-Khobar, in Eastern Province, after she drove on more than one occasion and urged other women to drive in a video she posted on YouTube, according to Amnesty International. The human-rights organization said al- Sharif was forced to sign a pledge that she wouldn’t drive again and was released 10 days later.

“Since her arrest, several women have reportedly been arrested on various occasions for driving in different parts of Saudi Arabia and released shortly after signing pledges not to drive in future,” Amnesty said.

Saudi Arabia enforces restrictions interpreted from the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. A woman isn’t allowed to apply for a driver’s license, though some drive when they’re in desert areas away from cities. They can’t travel or get an education without male approval or mix with unrelated men in public places. They aren’t permitted to vote or run as candidates in municipal elections, the only balloting the kingdom allows.

The last time a group of women publicly defied the driving ban was on Nov. 6, 1990, when U.S. troops massed in Saudi Arabia to prepare for a war that would expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudi women were spurred by images of female U.S. soldiers driving in the desert and stories of Kuwaiti women driving their children to safety, and they were counting on the presence of the international media to ensure their story would reach the world and lessen the repercussions.

King Abdullah has taken steps this year to ensure that regional turmoil remains outside his borders, pledging almost $100 billion of spending on homes, jobs and benefits. He also has promised to improve the status of women. He opened the country’s first coeducational university in 2009 and appointed its first female deputy minister, Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, the same year. He has said he will provide more access to jobs for women, who make up about 15 percent of the workforce.

A change of policy in 2008 allowed women to stay in hotels without male guardians, and an amendment to the labor law allowed women to work in all fields “suitable to their nature.”
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in January that “reforms to date have involved largely symbolic steps to improve the visibility of women.”