For decades, if a critic of Saudi Arabia wanted a simple shorthand for what he thought was wrong with the country, there was one obvious example: Saudi women were not allowed to drive. The restriction was without parallel in the modern world, and to many it showed that while Saudi Arabia was a wealthy and seemingly modern U.S. ally, its society was fundamentally stuck in the past.
As of this weekend, that example will no longer stand. Sunday will be the first day in Saudi history that women will legally be allowed to drive, a symbolic milestone for the kingdom and its 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, often known as MBS.
The move to allow Saudi women to hold driver's licenses was announced in a royal decree last September. Though signed by King Salman, it was widely attributed to MBS's influence, part of a grander plan the millennial crown prince is implementing to move Saudi Arabia into the future.
But nine months later, it's apparent that things aren't quite as simple as just issuing a proclamation. Though women will be allowed to drive, it's unclear how many actually will. A relatively small number of women have received licenses, and many more women may be nervous to join them - plenty of Saudi men are not fully on board with the policy.
"Many men have vented their opposition to the decision to lift the ban using a Twitter hashtag that translates to 'you will never drive,'" reported Margherita Stancati and Donna Abdulaziz of the Wall Street Journal. "After the ban's planned lifting was announced in September, a man was arrested for posting a video online in which he threatened to set fire to women and their cars if they dare to drive."
And in recent weeks the government has arrested some of the most prominent female campaigners who had pushed for women on the roads. As one activist told The Washington Post's Loveday Morris, the "arrest campaign is an arrest campaign against feminism in Saudi [Arabia]."
The arrests showed that for all the talk of a new, "normal" Saudi Arabia, the country's reinvention is, in many ways, skin-deep. MBS may have opened the door to female drivers and previously restricted forms of entertainment, including cinemas, but major political reform is not on the agenda anytime soon. And the changes are primarily driven by economic considerations, even those surrounding women's rights.
The country's state-run economic giant, Saudi Aramco, has long given women Western-style freedom within its compounds. As he announced the royal decree about driving last September, then-Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Khaled bin Salman said that women "need to drive themselves to work."