27 Feb Know your enemy: the Saudi women’s driving campaign from flyers and faxes to Youtube and hashtags
“It was never about driving. Driving is just a symbol.”
-Aisha al Mana (Ambah 2005)
On September 26th, 2017, a Saudi Arabian royal decree announced the ban on women driving in the Saudi kingdom will be lifted in June of 2018. Saudi women are celebrating a long-fought movement over the past 27 years since November 6th, 1990, when 47 women drove in the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Driving was, in fact, not made officially illegal for women until after November 6th, 1990. Before then, it was just a taboo, which 47 women were determined to break. The recent announcement came amidst Saudi’s ‘reformist’ transformation project Vision2030 and the ongoing war on Yemen and the Gulf (Qatar blockade) crisis, with cynics seeing the end of the ban as conveniently and politically timed to distract from other political scrutiny. Though some have received the announcement enthusiastically—it is undeniable that the lifting of the driving ban will change all men’s and women’s lives, materially and symbolically—we must not lose site of the significant history that brought us to this point., Thus, at this historic juncture, it is important to recall the history of the Saudi women’s driving campaign since its inception in the 1990s.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2018.1436902