Saudi Arabia leading the drive toward empowerment of women

Women who drive on the streets of Pakistan know that the roads are battlefields. The gender wars play out in how they are yelled at, honked at, intimidated and even cursed on the streets. To get from one place to another, they have to endure this, they have to tolerate the hundreds of thousands of Pakistani men who do not think women are capable of being good drivers or have as much right to be on the road as they do. The gender wars, the struggle to be taken seriously, to be respected, to be treated as equals, exists on the roads just as it does in the home, at work and in every other realm of life.

The lifting of the driving ban in Saudi Arabia on Sunday was welcome news in Pakistan. Pictures and videos of Saudi women obtaining driver’s licenses in the days leading up to the lifting of the ban, and then getting behind the wheel and actually driving on Sunday, circulated across the world. It was a moment of victory that was infectious and palpable and one that every woman who has fought and argued and claimed her right to be behind the wheel could share.

There are other reasons why the victory of Saudi women was important. For too long, the relative invisibility of Saudi women has been utilized as a means to impose restrictions on women in other parts of the world. Pakistan exports hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to Saudi Arabia every year. Many who return have long insisted that the driving ban in Saudi Arabia must be replicated in Pakistan. And, while they may not have succeeded in passing a law, they have personally enacted such a ban on the women they can control, meaning thousands of Pakistani women are forbidden from getting behind the wheel because their Saudi sisters could not do so. On Sunday, however, that argument against driving was eliminated, permitting Pakistani women to now say to dissenting fathers and husbands that, if it’s permitted in Saudi Arabia, it should be permitted for me too.

It is undoubted that, in the past, many Saudi clerics have opposed the lifting of the ban, issuing religious edicts that laid out reasons for keeping it in place. In recent months, since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman first indicated that he would be lifting the ban, many have changed their minds and supported the move.

Saudi and Pakistani men and women are all part of the polity, and the ability for each to contribute and be visible economic and political actors needs to be equal as well. Having the Saudi precedent of legal evolution, of approval of women’s visibility, lends empowerment to a religious authenticity that was not present before. It is no longer possible for disagreeing Pakistani clerics to discard women driving — and the visibility and mobility it entails — as merely a “Western” concept.

Finally, the lifting of the ban presents an important lesson to Pakistani men, who have never had to fight for the right to drive. Crown Prince Mohammed, who enjoys tremendous amounts of power and popularity in Saudi Arabia, did not have any personal investment in the ban. He was not affected by the driving ban, yet he championed the cause of Saudi women. Powerful men must help in women’s quest for empowerment.

Driving, commanding a car, traversing a distance that would have been otherwise impossible to cross, is empowering. Any woman, be it a mother driving her children to a school that would otherwise have been too far away, to three sisters driving to the mall, all experience the power of making decisions, being mobile, being visible in public spaces. It is an exhilarating experience; it is not of course the sum total of empowerment, but it is a sizeable chunk of it.

Undoubtedly, Saudi and Pakistani women have a long way to go — there are many legal victories to be won, many debates to be had, many hurdles to be crossed on the way to empowerment. At the same time, for countries that have very young populations, with millions looking to their leadership to gauge the flavor of their future, what happened in Saudi Arabia on June 24, 2018, is an important moment. 

The world is changing and countries must change to keep pace; they must ensure that all citizens, each and every member of society, is able to contribute and that no one is condemned to invisibility. The first keys have been turned in the ignition. Saudi women are on their way and Pakistani women are cheering them on. The roads are the first battlefields and, since Sunday, Saudi women are charging through them. 

• Rafia Zakaria is the author of “The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan” (Beacon 2015) and “Veil” (Bloomsbury 2017). She writes regularly for The Guardian, Boston Review, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. Twitter: @rafiazakaria