Saudi Women Facing Resistance After Ban On Driving Lifted
Saudi Women Facing Resistance After Ban On Driving Lifted: Saudi women celebrated taking the wheel for the first time this week in a much-awaited rite of passage, but one essential issue still bothering them that is the attitude of men. Social media is packed with videos of women behind the wheel and men in the passenger seat, a role reversal that was unimaginable in the conservative petro state until a royal decree last September ended a decades-long women driving ban.
The driving reform has been widely hailed by young Saudis and no overt incidents of harassment were publicly reported in the first two days since the ban was lifted, but many are distrustful of aggression from male drivers despite warnings from authorities.
“I advise men to stay home to avoid being killed by women drivers!” said one Saudi Twitter user, echoing a torrent of similar comments predicting a surge of accidents because of female motorists.
Some social media users have advised women to “avoid putting on makeup” while driving. Others have predicted pink coloured cars and parking lots for women.
“Social media is flooded with messages ridiculing women and underestimating their ability to drive,” columnist Wafa al-Rasheed wrote this month in a Saudi newspaper. “We will drive and we will drive better than you, men.”
For now, the women taking to the roads appear mainly to be those who have exchanged foreign licenses for Saudi ones. Some 120,000 women have applied for licences, according to an interior ministry spokesman, who declined to specify how many had been issued.
But the fear of harassment is so widespread that many women are keeping away from the streets, testing reactions in a society torn between conservatism and social change engineered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Several men have shown concern that women relative who drive will be harassed, followed, chased and videoed by male drivers.
“You will not drive my mother. You will not drive my sister. You will not drive my future wife,” said a Twitter user using the #“She will not drive”.
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