Women to drive movement
Until June 2018, Saudi Arabia was the only country in which women were forbidden by law from operating motor vehicles. This restriction gave rise to the Women to Drive Movement, which advocated for women to be able to obtain a driver's license and drive cars on public roads; Saudi women have historically been denied many rights that Saudi men are entitled to. In 1990, dozens of women in Riyadh who had expressed dissent by driving were arrested and had their passports confiscated. In 2007, Saudi activist Wajeha al-Huwaider, who has also been among the leading figures of the campaign against male guardianship, was among several women who petitioned King Abdullah for the right to drive, and a film of her driving on International Women's Day in 2008 attracted international media attention.
The beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011 motivated some Saudi women, including al-Huwaider and Manal al-Sharif, to organise a more intensive campaign for the right of women to drive, leading to about 70 cases of women driving being documented in the latter half of June that year. In late September 2011, a Saudi woman named Shaima Jastania was sentenced to ten lashes for the offense of driving in Jeddah, but the sentence was later overturned. Two years later, another campaign to defy the ban set 26 October 2013 as the date for women to start driving. Three days prior, in a "rare and explicit restating of the ban", a spokesman of the Interior Ministry warned that "women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate support." Interior Ministry employees warned leaders of the campaign individually to not partake in the 26 October driving demonstration, and police roadblocks were assembled in Riyadh to check for any female drivers.
On 26 September 2017, King Salman issued an order to allow women to drive, with new guidelines to be created and implemented by June 2018. Women to Drive campaigners were ordered not to contact media, and several were detained in May 2018, including Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, Aisha Al-Mana, Aziza al-Yousef and Madeha al-Ajroush. The ban was officially lifted on 24 June 2018, although many of the women's rights activists remained under arrest., twelve remained in detention.
Background
According to scholar David Commins, "In 1957, Riyadh pronounced a ban on women driving.", women's rights in Saudi Arabia were highly constrained in comparison to international standards. This included their right to drive cars and other motor vehicles. In 2002, The Economist magazine estimated that the salaries of the approximately 500,000 chauffeurs driving women in Saudi Arabia accounted for 1% of the national income.History
1990 driving protest
On 6 November 1990, 47 Saudi women in Riyadh drove their cars in protest against the driving ban. They were imprisoned for one day, had their passports confiscated, and some of them lost their jobs as a result of their activism. Religious officials called for their beheading, but they were ultimately released. The women were doxxed; their personal information, including addresses and phone numbers were made public, and death threats were made to their families.2007–2008 petition and YouTube video
In September 2007, the Association for the Protection and Defense of Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, co-founded by Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, submitted a 1,100-signature petition to King Abdullah asking for women to be allowed to drive.On International Women's Day 2008, al-Huwaider filmed herself driving, for which she received international media attention after the video was posted on YouTube. Al-Huwaider's drive began within a residential compound, where women are permitted to drive since roadways inside the compound are not considered to be public roads, but she left the compound and drove along a main highway. Al-Huwaider expressed the hope that the ban on women driving would be lifted by International Women's Day in 2009.
In June–July 2007, a Gallup poll found that the majority of Saudi men and women thought that women should be allowed to drive.
2011–2014 campaign
In 2011, a group of women including Manal al-Sharif started a Facebook campaign named "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself" or Women2Drive that says that women should be allowed to drive. The women said that their campaign was inspired by the Arab Spring.The campaign called for women to start driving from 17 June 2011., about 12,000 readers of the Facebook page had expressed their support. Al-Sharif described the action as acting within women's rights, and "not protesting". Wajeha al-Huwaider was impressed by the campaign and decided to help.
A woman from Jeddah, Najla Hariri, started driving in the second week of May 2011, stating "Before in Saudi, you never heard about protests. after what has happened in the Middle East, we started to accept a group of people going outside and saying what they want in a loud voice, and this has had an impact on me."
Subaru
In mid-2011, as Subaru vehicles tend to be marketed heavily towards women, several Saudi women groups including Saudi Women for Driving asked the parent company of Subaru, Fuji Heavy Industries, to stop selling motor vehicles in countries where women cannot drive.Manal al-Sharif
The following week, al-Huwaider filmed al-Sharif driving a car as part of the campaign. The video was posted on YouTube and Facebook. Al-Sharif was detained and released on 21 May and rearrested the following day. On 30 May, al-Sharif was released on bail, on the conditions of returning for questioning if requested, not driving and not talking to the media. The New York Times and Associated Press associated the women's driving campaign with the wider pattern of the Arab Spring and the long duration of al-Sharif's detention with Saudi authorities' fear of protests.Late May – early June
On 23 May, another woman was detained for driving a car. She drove with two women passengers in Ar Rass and was detained by traffic police in the presence of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She was released after signing a statement that she would not drive again. In reaction to al-Sharif's arrest, several more Saudi women published videos of themselves driving during the following days.Wajnat Rahbini, a Saudi actress famous in the Arab world for playing in the satirical comedy Tash ma Tash, broadcast annually during Ramadan, drove her car "in defiance of a long-standing ban on female driving" on 4 June in Jeddah. She was detained after exiting her car and released the following day without bail.
17 June 2011
On 17 June, about 30 to 50 women drove cars in towns in Saudi Arabia, including Maha al-Qahtani and Eman Nafjan in Riyadh, and other women in Jeddah and Dammam. When she drove for a second time the same day, al-Qahtani was given a ticket for driving without a Saudi Arabian licence. Al-Qahtani was pleased to receive the ticket, stating to a Time magazine journalist travelling with her, "It's a ticket. Write this down. I am the first Saudi woman to get a traffic ticket."The Guardian stated that "police appeared to be under orders not to intervene" during women's drives on 17 June.
Late June 2011
Two Saudi women were photographed by Thomson Reuters after driving in Riyadh on 22 June.On 29 June, five women driving in Jeddah were arrested. The Saudi Arabian blogger Eman al-Nafjan described the arrests as "the first big pushback from authorities". She claimed that the June drives were more significant than the 1990 protest, stating, "When actually the 1990 protest was only fourteen cars that had 47 passengers, June 17th and onwards there have been about seventy documented cases of women driving."
July–September
In July, Princess al-Taweel, niece-in-law of Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, spoke about her opposition to the women driving ban on the United States radio station NPR and called for women to have equal rights in the workforce, in the legal system, and in education. She described these human rights as more important than the right to drive. In response to criticisms of women's rights campaigns, she described her approach as "evolution not revolution".At the end of September, Shaima Jastania was sentenced to 10 lashes for having driven a car in Jeddah. The sentence was announced shortly after King Abdullah decreed that women would be able to participate in the 2015 Saudi Arabian municipal elections and be appointed to the Consultative Assembly; King Abdullah overturned the sentence.