Women Will Be Allowed Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia

Saudi-owned Elaph online magazine recently announced women may be permitted to drive in the kingdom within two months, Women in Saudi Arabia are required to cover everything but the hands and face in public, but more conservative women opt for a niqab or a burqa, which covers the eyes as well.Keeping women in the passenger seat has been a hold-out practice for the conservative Gulf country. Reports that women may soon be permitted to drive have surfaced in the past, but Faruqui says the "recent progressive changes" in Saudi Arabia makes the prospect of putting women in the driver's seat much more likely.

Council of Foreign Relations senior fellow Isobel Coleman says the change is likely because public opinion on the matter is softening. Saudi Arabia's appointed and often ineffectual Shura Council has spoken in favor of lifting the driving ban since it was imposed in November 1990.

Prior to 1990, there was no formal law against women driving - it was a socio-cultural norm that women did not drive, Reem Jarbou explains. Jarbou along with 48 other women from affluent Saudi families took to the streets in 15 cars that November, and the event was so shocking and embarrassing to the government that a law banning women from driving was passed and the drivers were labeled "portents of evil" by the state. "The entire attitude towards female emancipation is difficult to adjust to in patriarchal societies," Jarbou says.

47% of women in Saudi Arabia own a car, but they are dependent on men in their family or hired drivers to get anywhere. Susie Johnson Khalil, Faruqui notes, has two cars in the relatively liberally city of Jeddah, but since her husband's heart surgery, getting the grocery store has become difficult.

The driving ban also contributes to traffic accidents, Faruqui says, noting a boy - "no more than 13" - driving a beaten-up van in Mecca. A traffic officer stopped him, and the boy explained that as the only man in the house, he was obliged to take his other to the holy mosque for umrah despite his age. The boy was let go, and "this leniency," Faruqui says, "may have something to do with why road accidents claim 16 lives daily in the kingdom and 275,000 are left injured yearly."

Women are becoming gradually more emancipated in the kingdom, however. Saudi women are pursuing the legal profession and college educations along side men - preposterous ideas ten years ago. But incrementalism is the name of the game in the kingdom. When King Abdullah took power in 2005, the king said lifting the driving ban was "imminent." Five years later, he could be right. Faruqui says the increase of women in the work place will most likely push lifting the ban in major cities, and change will be at first like a graduated license - women can only drive to certain places during certain hours. Those restrictions, Faruqui says, "will slowly fade away as society becomes accustomed to the change."