Saudi women at the wheel... a sign of things to come?

It has been a long time coming, said The National (Abu Dhabi), but on 24 June, the historic moment finally arrived: Saudi Arabia, until last month the only country in the world to make driving a vehicle a male prerogative, has finally allowed women behind the wheel. Female diplomats celebrated the moment by driving and tooting their horns alongside Saudi women; traffic police handed out roses to female drivers. More than 120,000 women have already put in applications for driving licences. The change is part of “Vision 2030”, a package of sweeping social and economic reforms introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) that are designed to modernise Saudi Arabia.

As well as being allowed to drive, Saudi women can now attend sporting and recreational events, said Hala Aldosari in The New York Times. They’ve also been granted greater access to jobs. All of this will boost the economy: only a fifth of Saudi women are currently part of the workforce, despite making up more than half the country’s graduates. The reforms will also boost Saudi Arabia’s image abroad. But these changes remain, for now, fairly cosmetic. The lifting of the driving ban is nothing more than “a PR stunt” prompted by economic necessity, said Hana Al-khamri on Al Jazeera (Doha). Saudi women may be allowed behind the wheel, but they still have the legal status of minors and need the permission of male guardians to study, travel, work or marry. It’s clear from the Saudi regime’s recent persecution of feminist activists that this isn’t “a genuine reform movement aimed at strengthening women’s rights”.

Give MBS a chance, said Rafia Zakaria in The New Republic (New York). He has to tread a fine line in a country where female empowerment has long been cast as a subversive Western notion. Only last year, Saudi’s most senior cleric, the Grand Mufti, declared that driving was “a dangerous matter that exposes women to evil”. Cracking down on feminists while “implementing the most feminist reform of the kingdom in the post-colonial era” is the prince’s way of covering his back. Saudi’s once-feared religious police no longer wield much authority, said Roger Cohen in The New York Times, but reactionary forces still abound, “not least in the sprawling royal family”. So MBS needs to take care. He only has to consider the fate of Egypt’s assassinated Anwar Sadat or the toppled shah of Iran to see what can happen to “tradition-trampling Westernising leaders of Muslim Middle East states ”.