By Darrin Simmons
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia-Saudi women have started defying a ban on female driving by posting online photographs and video clips of themselves driving, two days after the Shura Council rejected removing the ban.

The 150 member Council is composed of thirty women, three of whom moved to put the ban up for discussion during debate about transport ministry matters.  In rejecting the motion, the Council stated that the issue was “irrelevant” to the discussion and “not within the transport ministry’s remit.”

In March, a petition was signed by 3,000 Saudis to motivate the Council to sit down and discuss the ban.  The petition called for the Council to “recognize the right of women to drive a car in accordance with the principles of sharia (Islamic law) and traffic rules.”

Latifa Al-Shaaalan, one of the three filing members, stated, “There is no law that bans women from driving.  It is only a matter of tradition.”  While there is no law preventing female drivers, they cannot apply for licenses and are frequently arrested and charged with inciting political protests if caught behind the wheel.

One Saudi cleric posted online that women “driving would affect their ovaries and bring clinical disorders upon their children,” causing mockery on the web.  Videos have been posted on social networks showing fully veiled women driving in Riyadh as onlookers give the “thumbs up” in support.

“To drive with a license should not be against the law.  The authorities, the country, how people think has changed,” said a female activist.  She further went on to say that senior officials are becoming more open to the idea of women drivers.

Supports of the ban claim that allowing women to drive will promote mixing of the sexes in public and therefore threaten public morality.  Opponents of the ban argue that it causes families to employ expensive privet drivers, making it difficult for women to work or accomplish daily tasks.

While many are in strong opposition of the ban, some claim that lifting it would have no effect on female drivers.  Hanan al-Ahmadi, one of the female Council members, stated that she would probably not drive if the ban was removed.

“For a society that took so long to discuss this issue and has been subjected to so much preaching on the harm women driving might do, we are programmed to reject it rather than accept it,” stated Ahmadi.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are banned from driving.

For more information, please see the following: 

Ahram-Saudi advisory body rejects bid to raise women driving ban-October 10, 2013

Aljazeera-Saudi Shura rejects women driving ban move-October 10, 2013

Haaretz-Women members of Saudi Shura Council challenge driving ban-October 10, 2013

Reuters-Saudi women defy driving ban in online photos, video clips-October 10, 2013