Projects: #women2drive Saudi Arabia's gender specific driving ban revolt.

June 17 was the day the women's driving revolution started in Saudi. Twitter was ablaze with people showing support and others tweeting their driving exploits. Bearing in mind that Jeddah's rumor mill is alive and well, up to 50 women claim that they went driving. Several had videos accompanying their automotive exploits others simply tweeted. The movement has no shortage of supporters both inside and outside the Kingdom.

Supporters in the US uploaded messages of solidarity on youtube like this one by the Honk for Saudi Women. The issue in the Kingdom has always been a tenacious one with the arguments usually being split down generational lines - older sheikhs refusing to accept the change while younger more westernized people supporting the change. That's not to say there aren't pockets of support from a diverse range of families. The outspoken critics tend to fit a certain demographic. I've been told there are more moderate families who do support lifting the restriction however these voices are not made public nor do they represent a large number of the outspoken majority.

Opposition to lifting the driving ban have said women driving in Saudi Arabia is equal to terrorism and that these women are bringing vice and evil in Saudi social circles. Legally speaking there are no laws against women driving - the ban is entirely cultural stemming from the Wahabist roots of the theocratic regime. One of the major problems with enforcement of the ban however is that police are ordered to carry out arrests of women who drive, when there is no law against it, the police in essence have no authority in the matter. The authority should fall to the religious police under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Previously women who attempted to drive police usually arrested the woman's guardian (Mahram) - women are relegated as second class citizens and are granted less rights than a child in the west. The guardian is arrested because of his woeful disregard for the country's cultural standards. Manal Al-Sharif made women driving a cause-celebre in Western media when she drove her car and posted a video online and was promptly arrested, released then rearrested and help for a period of 10 days. Al-Sharif became the face of the movement and inspired many others who allegedly were already going to drive according to the facebook group.

Opponents of the ban claim that having women not drive in the Kingdom is for their own safety for fear that they might become victims of rape. In all honesty the number of women sexually assaulted by their drivers has been a statistic that has never been reported openly. Many women I have known over the years/spoken to about this issue have mentioned some sort of sexual abuse from a driver when they were children. Many women also refuse to use taxis because of how uncomfortable they feel about taxi drivers who make suggestive comments to them. In actuality the Kingdom has a spiderweb of other problems it has to deal with and this is the tip of the iceberg. This issue is discussed more than the problem of terrorism in the country which the royal family spend billions every year trying to suppress/eradicate. The real issue many clerics are worried about is giving women in Saudi any sort of empowerment. If one rule is lifeted why not allowing women to travel outside the Kingdom without permission of their guardians? Why not dispose of the guardian system entirely?

By allowing them to have access to their own mobility they are in effect loosening the bridal of oppression which Saudi women live with everyday. The truth is that these limitations are meant to demean and make women feel less valued therefore keep them subservient and at home making sandwiches instead of becoming contributing members of society.

Here are some extracts from an article in the guardian.

That there are women in Saudi who are distressed at the ban on their driving is well known. On the other hand the religious establishment has also been staunch in its demand to maintain the ban. Some of them have even gone so far as to call the campaign western-backed "female terrorism" and "soft terrorism". Others claimed that the campaign to allow women to drive is an Iranian/Shia conspiracy to destabilise the country.

When Manal al-Sharif drove she was arrested and imprisoned for 10 days. She was charged with bypassing rules and regulations, driving a car within the city, enabling a journalist to interview her while driving a car, deliberately disseminating the incident to the media, incitement of Saudi women to drive cars, and turning public opinion against the regulations.

This has many Saudis confused: is it legal for women to drive or not? If not, then doesn't that go against Saudi Arabia being a signatory to Cedaw, the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? Why do officials make these statements about it being a ban imposed by society and then have police detain women for driving while being female?

I wonder what will happen as the women's driving campaign continues and more Saudi women get behind the wheel. Will the government ignore us until we become a common sight and society gets accustomed to the idea? Will there be a crackdown, with the women who drove arrested and imprisoned? Will the government implement a system that gradually allows women on Saudi roads?

Your guess is as good as mine. All I know as a Saudi woman is that the current situation of gender discrimination against who can and cannot drive their own cars is unsustainable economically, socially and legally. - Theguardian.co.uk