Saudi Arabian Women Win the Right to Drive

By royal decree Saudi Arabia announced that as of June 2018 women will be allowed to drive. Saudi leaders hope that by lifting the ban it will help the economy by encouraging women to join the workforce. Many say this is the right step for the ultraconservative kingdom.

“It is amazing,” said Fawziah al-Bakr, a Saudi university professor who was among 47 women who participated in the kingdom’s first protest against the ban — in 1990. After driving around the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the women were arrested and some lost their jobs. “Since that day, Saudi women have been asking for the right to drive, and finally it arrived,” she said by phone. “We have been waiting for a very long time.”

But there are some opposed to this new and that male drivers would not know how to handle having women in cars next to them. Others argued that allowing women to drive would lead to promiscuity and the collapse of the Saudi family. One cleric claimed — with no evidence — that driving harmed women’s ovaries. Read more at The New York Times.