Driven
On May 22, Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old single mother in Saudi Arabia, was imprisoned for nine days for the crime of driving a car in the city of Khobar. Sharif, a women’s rights activist whose arrest was filmed and posted to YouTube, has helped ignite a worldwide media storm over the Saudi government’s treatment of ...
On May 22, Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old single mother in Saudi Arabia, was imprisoned for nine days for the crime of driving a car in the city of Khobar. Sharif, a women's rights activist whose arrest was filmed and posted to YouTube, has helped ignite a worldwide media storm over the Saudi government's treatment of women. Most recently, Sharif helped create a popular Facebook page calling on Saudi women to publicly drive on June 17.
On May 22, Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old single mother in Saudi Arabia, was imprisoned for nine days for the crime of driving a car in the city of Khobar. Sharif, a women’s rights activist whose arrest was filmed and posted to YouTube, has helped ignite a worldwide media storm over the Saudi government’s treatment of women. Most recently, Sharif helped create a popular Facebook page calling on Saudi women to publicly drive on June 17.
Sharif is just one in a long line of Saudi women to be arrested for driving a car. Late in the afternoon of Nov. 6, 1990, 47 Riyadh women first decided to take matters, and the steering wheel, into their own hands. Carefully wrapped in their abayas — the black full-body robe forced on Saudi women — they drove their cars in a convoy around the capital for half an hour. The veiled drivers, who divided themselves into 14 cars, included academics, doctors, teachers, housewives, and students from upper-middle-class Riyadh families. They made sure that the woman driver in each car had obtained a driver’s license from abroad. But it didn’t take long for both the traffic and the religious police forces to halt their ambitious drive.
More from Foreign Policy

Can Russia Get Used to Being China’s Little Brother?
The power dynamic between Beijing and Moscow has switched dramatically.

Xi and Putin Have the Most Consequential Undeclared Alliance in the World
It’s become more important than Washington’s official alliances today.

It’s a New Great Game. Again.
Across Central Asia, Russia’s brand is tainted by Ukraine, China’s got challenges, and Washington senses another opening.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s House of Cards Is Collapsing
The region once seemed a bright spot in the disorder unleashed by U.S. regime change. Today, things look bleak.