Driving To The Brink

It’s probably a fair assumption that even in Britain there remains some low-level of gender discrimination, a mark of a bygone era of patriarchies. More often than not, this continues to manifest itself in various forms of slanderous remarks, wittingly made acceptable by terming it a joke. Perhaps most prevalent amongst these ‘joking’ insults is the seemingly innocent observation that “women drivers can’t drive”.

Yet, there are places where this same phrase is taken more literally: women in Saudi Arabia are actually banned from driving as part of the law. And a law that seems without any reason to support it, with the King of Saudi Arabia repeatedly professing that “there will come a time for the law to change.”

Women of the state appear to have gotten bored with the deliberation over when to lift the ban. Today, females staged a mass protest in its most demonstrative form: those that held an international licence were urged to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and drive.

Punishment for the offence is more sever than a Westerner might anticipate. Violaters are subject to a wide range of possible outcomes, from prison sentences to public lashings. More, these women are often subject to suffer the wider implications for their actions: they can lose their jobs, receive hate mail, threats online and lose their friends. Simply for taking control.

Imagine having to find a dependent to ferry you everywhere all the time. Not exactly the violation of human rights that is foregrounded by most, but a slight on freedom none the less.

Yet, I find myself wondering whether it is not a slightly hypocritical view for the West to suddenly be outraged by actions that these very countries condoned just 150 years ago (and even more recently). The ban reads to me as though a draconian, Victorian measure: and after all the Victorian era was the golden era of modern enlightenment. Perhaps this discrepancy in gender equality is something that each region and country must contend itself with in order to reach a cosmopolitan attitude.

Of course, the reasons to leave all laws as they are strike a reader immediately. Saudi Arabia is in the centre of a hot bed of political unrest and uncertainty. The Middle East has this past year ignited with uprisings and revolts that have marred the region with destruction and death. In a country that remains prosperous and with relatively low crime, there is no sense in disrupting the current politics in case it proffers the spark for wider social revolutions. Besides, a large enough proportion of the population seem so acceptant of the driving ban that their instant reaction is to shun those who make a stand.

Indeed, the powerful Shura Council have widely promoted a highly propaganda based study on the effect of women driving in society and claim that any licence for women to get behind the wheel is a full throttle approach to an increase in divorce, prostitution, drug abuse and child baring out of wedlock. How should the women make themselves heard against such controversial views?

A starting block would be ensuring the incoming choice to vote: 2015 set to be the year in which women are included in the voting system for the first time. King Abdullah, at 87, may not live to see such an event however, and there are worries that any possible successor may revoke the right.

The worry is that anarchy can come from the smallest of changes in one of the most volatile areas of the planet at the moment. Yet surely this fevour for activism is more likely should changes not present themselves as in the offing? It will only be a certain amount of time before neighbouring action causes enough friction to instigate action, and that would bring about the very scenario the government are trying to avoid.

Whilst Saudi Arabia is not a Western country, and does not want to be perceived as adhering to Western norms or culture, some lenience may be the only way to ensure a continued peace and stable state.