Saudi king issues decree to allow women to drive

Ministerial body set up to give advice within 30 days and implement order by June next year

Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz yesterday ordered that women be allowed to drive cars, state media said, ending the kingdom’s status as the only country where that is forbidden.

The royal decree ordered the formation of a ministerial body to give advice within 30 days and then implement the order by June 2018, according to state news agency Saudi Press Agency (SPA). It stipulated that the move must “apply and adhere to the necessary Sharia standards”, without providing details, and said a majority of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars had approved its permissibility.

The change was announced on state television and in a simultaneous media event in Washington.

Some said that it was inappropriate in Saudi culture for women to drive, or that male drivers would not know how to handle women in cars next to them.

Others argued that allowing women to drive would lead to promiscuity and the collapse of the Saudi family. The kingdom presently has no infrastructure for women to learn to drive or obtain driver’s licences. The police will need to be trained to interact with women in a way they rarely do in a society where men and women who are not related rarely interact.

But many of the kingdom’s professionals and young people will welcome the change, viewing it as a step to making life in the country a more like life elsewhere.

The kingdom has been opening more areas for women through the government’s modernising reforms.