Saudi motor show all for women
WOMEN have flocked to Le Mall in Jeddah to check out the kingdom’s first car exhibition aimed at women, a few months after Saudi Arabia granted them the right to drive.
Pink, orange and yellow balloons hung in the mall’s showroom as women posed for photos and selfies in front of the cars. One woman in the driver’s seat fixed her face cover. Another wrapped her turquoise-painted fingernails around the steering wheel, feeling it out.
In a decree issued in September, King Salman ordered by June an end to the ban on women drivers, a conservative tradition that has limited women’s mobility and been seen by rights activists as an emblem of their suppression. Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans women drivers. The landmark royal decree has been hailed as proof of a new progressive trend in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.
Women have welcomed the change and many were keen to check out the exhibition.
“I’ve always been interested in cars, but we didn’t have the ability to drive,” said Ghada alAli, a customer.
“And now I’m very interested in buying a car but I would like the payments and prices to not be very high.”