Saudi women will from today drive to their freedom

 

Daniah al-Ghalbi, a newly-licensed Saudi woman driver, during a test-drive in the Red Sea resort of Jeddah, a day before the lifting of a ban on women driving in the conservative Arab kingdom. Saudi Arabia will allow women to drive from today, ending the world's only ban on female motorists. [AFP] 

Women in Saudi Arabia will today take to the steering wheel for the first time as the ultra-conservative kingdom starts sweeping economic and social reforms, overturning longstanding restrictions rooted in a rigid interpretation of Islam.

This is as sweeping social reforms pushed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman aimed at ending dependency on oil exports force the Gulf nation to start doing away with some of its traditional norms.

Loosened segregation

In recent years, the nation has opened cinemas, loosened gender segregation, curbed the powers of the religious police and allowed music to be played in public. The decision to allow women to drive has been seen as a landmark step that will put them almost at par with men.

Until today, Saudi Arabia has been the only country in the world where women could not drive. The situation is a far cry from Kenya where women have almost equal rights to men except in the conservative north.

In fact, it is a widely believed notion in Kenya that women are more careful drivers than men. Some insurance companies such as CIC and Jubilee have products aimed at women vehicle owners while some employers prefer hiring women as drivers.

But in Saudi Arabia, it is believed that the end of the driving ban will allow many more women to join the workforce in the kingdom, whose economy shrunk by 0.2 per cent last year due to low oil prices. Until today many Saudi women had been forced to employ male drivers, which eats into their income while prohibiting others from owning cars.

Accountancy firm PwC has predicted that the number of women on Saudi Arabia's roads will swell to three million by 2020. The kingdom has a female population of 15 million, and thousands of them have been enrolling in female-only driving schools.

“It may also take some time for enough driving schools that cater solely to women to be set up in Saudi Arabia, though when established they will create job opportunities for female driving instructors", says PwC.

Due to strict enforcement of Sharia law, women are not allowed to attend the same driving schools as men. As a preparation for the repeal of the driving ban, the government there has also trained its first batch of women car accident inspectors who would respond to accident involving female drivers.

But despite this shift, Saudi women are still held up by restrictive guardianship laws where men in their lives must give approval before they get basic things such as renting a house.

Saudi women cannot still mix freely with members of the opposite sex apart from in places like hospitals, medical colleges and banks. They also cannot appear in public without wearing a hijab.

Rights group Amnesty International has hailed the end of the driving ban.

“It must now be followed by reforms to end a whole range of discriminatory laws and practices," including an end to the guardianship system,” it said.  

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