Women Drivers Only the Start in Saudi
THE real weight of public opinion in Saudi Arabia lies among its young people, an Internet generation eager for social change. Or at least, so says one member of that cohort.
And Mohammed Bin Salman, the 32year-old who effectively runs the country in his father’s name, just placed a big bet on his millennial peers. By ending the world’s only ban on women driving cars, the crown prince has upset plenty of people in this Islamic kingdom, founded on a pact between clerics and the royal family.
He may be calculating that an even larger number of Saudis are ready to go along for the ride.
Will it work? It’s hard to gauge the mood of a country with little freedom of expression or opinion polling, though a 2014 survey found the public almost equally divided. Much depends on who wins the argument, because Prince Mohammed’s promise of a more “vibrant” society is just part of an all-embracing reform program.
Further down the road lie economic changes that are likely to unsettle many Saudis accustomed to government lar- gesse. Some measures have already met with resistance.
Pushback against the driving decision began the morning after its announcement — which came in a news bulletin on state media, followed by a press conference that took place outside the kingdom, at the Saudi embassy in Washington.
“The people reject women driving” was the top-trending hashtag on Twitter. One Saudi user tweeted the shift would be followed by women removing their veils, and Saudi decisions being issued by the White House. The top religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, commended the order but expressed reservations about the need to abide by Islamic requirements.
“Like any society, people resist change,” said Basmah Omair, executive director of the Khadijah Bint Khawilid Center in Jeddah, which lobbies for women’s economic empowerment. Her group carried out the poll of about 3,000 people in 2014, which found the public evenly divided on the question of whether women should be allowed to drive. But she says more recent work shows opinion is shifting in favor.
Opening the roads to women drivers may lift economic growth by almost 1 percentage point every year, adding about $90 billion of output by 2030, according to BI Economics.
Some potential critics had already been silenced. Saudi authorities arrested several prominent clerics and academics earlier this month who they accused of having ties with foreign powers and extremist groups.
If dissenters were cowed, Saudis who’d campaigned to let women drive weren’t encouraged to celebrate. Starting about an hour before the announcement, and continuing the following day, some female activists received calls from the authorities telling them not to discuss it on social media. The Interior Ministry didn’t answer requests for comment.
Alongside social reforms, Prince Mohammed has outlined radical changes to the economy, including a proposed sharesale in state oil company Saudi Aramco that may be the world’s biggest IPO. And he’s already upended Saudi Arabia’s tradi- tionally cautious diplomacy, sending the army to fight rebels in Yemen and leading the isolation of Qatar.
In both those foreign ventures, the Saudis have struggled to get results. And while the goals of the economic program have been widely praised, some of its measures have proved tough to implement, especially as low oil prices have brought growth to a virtual standstill.
In interviews last year, Prince Mohammed — then in the early stages of his meteoric ascent — recalled his childhood at the royal court. He said he looked ahead and saw two possible versions of himself. The first would adapt to the monarchy as it was. The second would pursue his own vision, like the great tech pioneers did.
The prince name-checked Steve Jobs, Bill Gates — and his near-contemporary Mark Zuckerberg, who famously wanted to “move fast and break things.”
“If I work according to their methods, what will I create?” Prince Mohammed asked.
The world may be about to find out.