Saudi women can vote! Next: driving and the end of male escorts?

Did you know that women in Saudi Arabia cannot vote? It’s true, but only for four more years. Yesterday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made a big announcement: in the next election cycle women can run for office and vote. This is major (long overdue) progress and a cause for celebration, even if Saudi women won’t see its fruition until 2015.

What’s caused this change?

Via The New York Times:

“There is the element of the Arab Spring, there is the element of the strength of Saudi social media, and there is the element of Saudi women themselves, who are not silent,” said Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor and one of the women who organized a campaign demanding the right to vote this spring. “Plus, the fact that the issue of women has turned Saudi Arabia into an international joke is another thing that brought the decision now.”

Related, the Arab Spring combined with social media and women’s determination also inspired about 30 women to organize a protest in June against the no-women drivers law and they drove cars.

Via The Washington Post:

“Maha al-Qahtani, 39, drove for 35 minutes in Riyadh with her husband in the passenger seat. ‘This is my basic right. It should not be a big deal. There is nothing wrong or illegal about driving,’ Qahtani, a state employee, said. ‘The decision to ban driving proves how backward the regime is.'”

You can follow the latest news on women working to secure the right to drive on the Saudi Women Driving blog.

Today, Saudi Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel spoke to Forbes.com about women’s rights and why women should be allowed to drive. She said:

“Other than it being an economical barrier—an average woman spends 30% of her salary on a driver—[it’s] a social barrier. She can’t go some places because of this driver, lack of privacy, sometimes safety issues. It is symbolic outside, where we are being judged as suppressed and as happy with the status quo when we’re not. No matter how many great things we do, we’ll always be judged as a country that suppresses women because we’re the only country in the world where women can’t drive.”

Good for her for speaking out!

As Al-Taweel alludes to, being able to vote or drive are not the only rights women are denied in Saudi Arabia. Saudi women also have very little access to public places, especially compared to most women (and nearly all men) around the world. This is an excerpt from my book on this subject:

“There are countries where the laws, as well as male harassment, keep women from having the same access to public spaces as men. One of the worst countries for women’s equality in public spaces—and equality in general—is Saudi Arabia. Women are forbidden from leaving their local neighborhood without the company of a male family member or guardian. Women need permission from their male family member or guardian to travel by airplane, check into hotels, or rent apartments. Even mosques and some public streets are reserved for men, and women only have limited access to parks, museums, and libraries.

Women in Saudi Arabia are also prohibited from driving cars. Abdel Mohsen Gifari, a researcher for the country’s religious police who has spent much of his career enforcing laws, such as those prohibiting women drivers, told to a Miami Herald reporter in 2009 that one of his daughters wants to drive. “I told her that driving is allowed in Islam,” Gifari said in an interview with a Western reporter. “But it is more of a cultural thing. We already have a lot of problems on the road when it comes to sexual harassment, with guys flirting with girls in the car. If a woman drives, it’s only going to bring more problems.”

Other countries that legally restrict or legally permit the restriction of women’s mobility in public spaces include Kuwait, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”

Hopefully with the right to vote and run for office secured, Saudi women can use their political voices to chip away at these severe inequalities. And in the meantime, I look forward to hearing about more protests of the driving ban as well activism around the unfair decree that women must have male permission and/or male company to go places. They have my support as they move forward to secure more rights!