Saudi Arabia in June of 2018 will allow its women to apply for a driver’s license and drive cars, even motorcycles. This change is well received in the kingdom as well as outside, however, this victory has been credited to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with little attention paid to grassroots activists who started campaigning for their right to drive more than two decades ago (Begum). It started in the 1900s. The United States and Saudi Arabia joined forces against Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. The US worried that Saddam Hussein might come after Saudi Arabia’s oil so they deployed many American troops to protect the country. What happened immediately after was a culture shock. Female American troops were shocked at the restrictions placed on Saudi women while Saudi women noticed that American women were able to drive around the military base and even work alongside men (Shannon). Saudi Arabia had a customary ban on women driving but that didn’t seem to be the case for the rest of the world. Women immediately started campaigning around this with “47 Saudi women [organizing] a convoy to drive through the streets of Riyadh in protest of the ban” (Begum). This was the first of a series of protest meant to resist the ban as well as call for an end to it.
Social movement campaigns are used in different parts of the world to overthrow oppressive regimes and change the culture of a society. These movements were overlooked in the Middle East until the 2011 Arab Spring brought them to the forefront. The Arab Spring highlighted civil society in the region as well as showed the willingness of people to fight for what they believe in. What was even more shocking was that activists in the region mobilized using tactics associated with successful movement campaigns: using international actors to pressure the state, uniting followers as a means of mobilization, and countering hegemonic discourse by offering an alternative that resonates with the population (Hardig). In reaction to the 1900s protests the “Counsel of Senior Scholars Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, issued an edict—or fatwa— prohibiting driving because, it said, it could lead women to mix with unrelated men and ultimately bring about ‘social chaos’ (Begum). This made the ban on women driving, previously a social rule, an official policy. The aim was to discourage Saudi women from demonstrating for their rights, but it did quite the opposite.
Activists used social media as a medium to publicly defy the ban. In 2008 Wajeha al-Huwaider uploaded a video of herself driving, in 2011 the “Women2Drive campaign” was officially launched to unite followers, and around the same time, Manal al-Sharif—who later became the face of the movement— spent 10 days in detention for posting a video of herself driving (Begum). All of these events garnered international attention and support. This helped achieve one of the goals of the movement. Using international actors to pressure the state, activist forced the state to pay attention to them. Saudi’s trading partners were paying attention to the issue so the state had no choice but to do the same. Otherwise, they would compromise their relationship with other countries. In addition to applying pressure on the state, the movement was successful in countering the hegemonic discourse. When women protested the ban in 2013, men drove with them to show their support and in 2013, “the head of the religious police stated that there were no religious text forbidding women from driving” (Begum). This increased the support for the movement and dismantled the legitimacy of the ban. It now seemed more like a joke, than an official policy.
The ban was lifted in 2017 prompting women to take to Twitter to express their joy and hope for the future of Saudi Arabia. The movement used international actors to pressure the state, united followers under a common cause, and countered the hegemonic discourse in order to gather and mobilize followers. More importantly, this was all done nonviolently. From the first fight to the current victory, activists demonstrated peacefully for their right without directly provoking the authorities. It was a long and hard fight but many activists see it a stepping stone to combatting another brutal law, the guardianship law. Under Saudi law, women are required to get the permission of a male guardian in order to do a wide range of things such as getting a passport, job, or traveling outside the country. The success of the women to drive movement has shown the potential of organization and mobilization in Saudi Arabia. Under the right circumstances and with the right tactics, many social movements are successful. If activists in Saudi Arabia play their cards right, I have no doubt that in a few years we'll hear that the guardianship law has been overturned.
Work Cited
www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/29/brave-female-activists-who-fought-lift-saudi-arabias-driving-ban.
doi:10.1080/09557571.2012.678296.
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