History Of Women Driving Car In Saudi Arabia

Culture narrative

Women driving car in Saudi Arabia Fact: Saudi Arabia the only country in the world where women are banned from driving a car.

Saudi Arabia considered as a conservative and a tribal society. The women there do not have the permission to drive, nor do they have the right to issue licenses. In a country lacking from public transportation, the families suffering from managing their daily life, simple things such as taking kids to school, going to work, or even going to market. As a result, Saudi women currently depend on a foreigner drivers imported from other countries. However, not all families have the financial ability to provide drivers for female family members, so they have to rely on male relatives driving them around,

Based on that the Saudis men responsible to take care of all family include women, and his responsibility to protect the women in the family from others. So the women raised in a society where the good women depended on the male, and it is difficult for the women to go outside the family house alone by herself, someone from the family member should combine her.

Recently, many changes happened in the Saudi’s society, the women’s education is encouraged, the percentage of female as worker increased yearly. Many women are highly educated, and some of them have a chance to complete their higher degree abroad. While they complete their study abroad a Saudi female had a chance to do many things not allowed to doing in their country, and that includes car driving.

On November 6, 1990, and during the first Gulf War, the first intervention for women driving was started. On that day group of women led by those studied abroad drove on the Riyadh highway until they were stopped by police and arrested. The trigger point for those women, was they saw a military women –came to from other countries during the Gulf War- sometimes driving while Saudi’s women

When I read the story of the activist Alice Paul, where she and her team worked during early 19 centuries to get the American’s women rights to vote, directly I link their intervention with the women driving in Saudi Arabia. The joint factors between these two stories are both about women’s rights, it is about something banned for women. The government in the Alice Paul case was banned the women from voting based on legalization and rules, while Saudi Arabia government ban Saudi’s women from driving