Once shunned as ‘drivers,’ Saudi women who fought ban celebrate

They were arrested, suspended from jobs, shunned by relatives and denounced by clerics as loose women out to destroy society. Their offense? They did what many in Saudi Arabia considered unthink- able: getting in cars and driving.

Their protest in 1990 against the kingdom’s ban on women driving failed, and the women paid dearly for it, with the stigma of being “drivers” clinging to them for years.

So last month, when King Salman announced that the ban on women driving would be lifted next June, few were happier than the first women to demonstrate for that right — almost three decades ago.

“I’d thought maybe I’d die before I saw it,” said Nourah Alghanem, who had helped plan the protest. Now she’s 61 and retired with five grandchildren. “What’s important is that our kingdom entered the 21st century — finally!”

The backlash against the 47 women who protested illustrates how deeply the driving ban was embedded in Saudi Arabia’s conserva- tive society, reinforced by the state and its religious apparatus.

But since then, globalization, social media, economic pressures and lead- ership changes finally created the conditions for the ban to end.

These are dizzying days in Saudi Arabia.

Women who chafed under the ban saw an opportunity when Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi strong- man, invaded Kuwait in 1990. U.S. forces flooded the kingdom, including U.S. servicewomen who drove military vehicles. Kuwaiti women who had fled the invasion also drove. Alghanem took note. “I saw that we as Saudi women were powerless,” she said.

She invited other women to her home to discuss the issue, and they decided to take action. They sent a letter to Salman — at the time the governor of Riyadh province — telling him that they planned to drive.

They never heard back, they said, so on Nov. 6, 1990, they met near a supermarket in Riyadh, piled into 14 cars piloted by women with valid foreign licenses and drove around town.

They were social outliers, backed by no political party, and other Saudi women did not rush to join them. Many came from affluent families and had studied abroad. They included teachers, professors, a social worker, a photographer and a dentist.

Most were married with children; at least two were pregnant. Some had defied their male relatives to show up. Supportive husbands and brothers dropped off others at the meeting place.

Word spread, and the women were stopped by both the traffic police and the religious police, some of whom furiously banged on the cars.

“‘I want to dig a hole to bury you all!’” Fawziah al-Bakr, an education professor, recalled one man shouting at her. “They were thinking that we were going to destroy this country.”

They were taken to the police station and released around dawn, after they and their male relatives signed pledges that the women would not drive again.

The next morning, Asma Alaboudi, a school social worker who had partici- pated, overheard her colleagues saying that the women at the protest had burned their clothes, worn bikinis and danced in the streets — all grave acts that had not happened.

King Fahd issued a decree suspending t hose who had government jobs, and preachers excoriated them during Friday prayers.

Some friends and relatives shunned the women.

The harsh response from the state and society buried the issue of women driving.

The suspended women struggled to find work.

About two years later, a princess intervened with the king, who returned them to their jobs and paid some of their lost wages.

In 2015, Salman became king, and he empowered his son, Mohammed bin Salman, who is now crown prince.

As the price of oil sank, the crown prince laid out a sweeping plan to reform the economy, including increasing women’s participation in the workforce.

Other steps followed. Women voted and ran for seats on local councils in 2015 for the first time, and some won.

Then late last month, Alghanem, who had held the first meeting on the driving ban in 1990, was playing cards when her phone suddenly began overflowing with messages, she said.

Her husband called and told her the ban was being lifted.

Alghanem — who had merely ridden along in 1990 and still cannot drive — plans to learn. “I must get a license and drive,” she said.

Many restrictions on women remain, including guardianship laws that give Saudi men power over their female relatives on certain matters.