Saudi Arabia: Saudis Debate Ban on Women Drivers

The New York Times
By Robert Mackey

Updated | May 8 A young Saudi woman has launched an online campaign using YouTube, Facebook and Flickr to get Saudis to discuss, and possibly reconsider, the ban on women drivers in the Kingdom.

As an article published last month in the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News explained, the project, called “We the Women,” was started by Areej Khan, a 24-year-old Saudi woman currently studying design in the United States. According to Arab News, she started thinking about how onerous the ban was when she saw that her retired father was forced to spend much of his time “chauffeuring her, her mother and three sisters.”

The core of the campaign is a set of stickers, in the form of speech bubbles and bumper stickers, which Saudi men and women are encouraged to download from Flickr, fill in with their thoughts, and then display. Some people are also taking pictures of what they write on their stickers and then adding those photographs to the project’s Flickr set of “Declarations.”

Printed at the foot of each sticker is the simple message: “To drive, or not to drive, that is the question.”

As the project description on Flickr explains, Ms. Khan wants to hear other voices, not just amplify her own:

We the Women is a campaign that aims to raise the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia and to start a real, public conversation. The We the Women declaration bubbles and bumper stickers were created as a space for self expression. Feel free to fill it out with your opinion on the issue and stick it wherever you feel it needs to be.


An image posted on the We the Women “Declarations” set on Flickr.
The images of the speech bubbles posted on Flickr so far have already sparked debate. Here is part of an exchange Ms. Khan had in the comments thread beneath a speech bubble that said, simply, “I don’t like the backseat!” with two other Flickr users, calling themselves Mac Moo and Mr. Nice 2009 (web punctuation intact):

Mac Moo says:

lol….my dear….u are goood at writing,,,but its for your own safety… women must not left alone…in islam…and thats for good of both man and women…. you know how exactly west world is…..i think the government is doing it rite.

N7nu - We the Women says:

just to clarify…This is a user submission. I did not write this. Secondly, do you think that if women were allowed to drive we would be westernized as a society? How come women in the time of the prophet were allowed to ride camels. Isn’t that the same thing?

Mr. Nice 2009 says:

how pleasure it’s to be drived. the roads in the kingdom need fast driving and braveness. if u got some1 to do for u the driving, u should be proud of. i am against that if woman drive there is alot of dangers, but my confidence in saudi women is high. not driving does not mean u r denied right, but means u r well cared of. Thank ur creator for that.

Other speech bubbles posted on Flickr include: “God did not say I can’t drive” and “I saved 1500 SR by driving myself around Saudi.”

In addition to the back and forth on Flickr, the campaign’s Facebook page has 1,100 fans, who are engaged in an active debate of whether the ban should be lifted, and comments have appeared on the promotional video for the campaign posted on YouTube (the version embedded above is in English, other are in Arabic). The video was shot in Oregon, but Ms. Khan told Arab News “I had to make look like it was in Saudi.”

According to Arab News, there is apparently wide support in Saudi Arabia for ending the ban: “Although there are no specific statistics on the number of people who are for or against women driving, most women believe it is their God-given right to drive.”