RIYADH – Saudi Arabia’s monarch may have opened the door for Saudi womenlike Shahd to start driving, but she still needs to sneak out of the houseto take lessons.
The 26-year-old business student knows she’s in for a battle to convinceher parents because in their community, some would find it shameful to seea woman behind the wheel. Once she gets a licence, she’ll stow it in adrawer until she musters up the courage to ask, Bloomberg has reported.
“I’ll have to be accommodating to the whole society,” Shahd said in a caféin her hometown of Buraidah in central Saudi Arabia, where it’s rare to seea woman’s face exposed in public. “I don’t think it’s right to forcesomething upon them.”
Even as the kingdom ends the legal ban on Sunday, Shahd’s conundrum showshow daunting it will be for many Saudi women to suddenly transcendingrained traditions that have limited their freedom during decades ofstate-imposed patriarchy. Guardianship laws bar them from traveling orgetting married without approval of a male relative, usually a father orhusband but occasionally even a son.
Change has come abruptly since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman charted outplans to wean Saudi Arabia off oil two years ago, which will be tough todo if half its population is disempowered. Yet at the same time asexpanding women’s rights and social freedoms, he’s jailed women whocampaigned to drive for years and come down hard on opponents to his reformagenda.
Saudi families are torn between embracing or resisting changes that clericsand government officials had spent years portraying as sinful. Some areconcerned that their rulers are pandering to the West in a way thatviolates their traditions and religion.
“Our problem now is shame and customs, not Islamic law”
“In itself, the fact of women driving is likely to become normalizedrelatively quickly,” said Graham Griffiths, a senior analyst at global riskconsultancy Control Risks in Dubai. “However, as part of a broaderrevolution in gender roles in Saudi society, this will have longer-termimplications for society, which could still cause considerable socialupheaval by creating deep divisions.”
Prince Mohammed has opened cinemas, loosened gender segregation, curbed thepowers of the religious police and allowed music to be played in public,overturning longstanding restrictions rooted in a rigid interpretation ofIslam.