Well the world is abuzz about the women driving ban being lifted in KSA. Social media was crazy here upon the announcement with those who support the decree and conservatives who are vehemently against. Thankfully the latter was only about 15% of tracked conversations, per a listening study that Publicis Groupe (our parent company) did last week. There also a contingent of people who will believe it when they see it, me included. For the less than four months we’ve been in country, I’ve become a bit jaded. Yes, this is all exciting and historical but as I was chatting with my Arabic instructor yesterday, who is Syrian, I learned too that she’s un-phased by this decree. Nothing moves quickly here, plus laws and rules are not always clear.
As you may have read, women won’t be allowed to apply for a drivers’ license until June 2018. And with that there are a number of rumors flying around the driving rules. Admittedly Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and the King’s son, rebuked an important one of these already. I’ve yet to find the below published by the government. This is merely hearsay on Twitter and from people I’ve spoken with…
The minimum driving age will be 30
Women must have the consent of their mahram/guardian to drive (Prince KBS stated women wouldn’t need permission)
The driver must wear a uniform (not sure how that would be different than an abaya)
The driver cannot wear ANY makeup (because they can easily bat their lined and mascaraed eyelashes to get out of ticket?)
Will be allowed to only drive within city limits alone and outside of with her mahram
Women driving times are set 7a-8p Saturday-Wednesday and noon-8p Thursday-Friday (Saudi’s don’t do much socially until later in the evening so I suppose this would prohibit a rendezvous with the opposite sex)
Aside from getting clarity on the above. There is a lot that needs to be done between now and next summer to get the country ready for women to be on the road. Per the NY Times article, the Kingdom stated that it will 1) need time to educate women how to drive and 2) educate men on how to interact with women on the road. I guarantee the majority of efforts will be on the latter of the two. Just because women aren’t legally allowed to drive in KSA doesn’t mean they haven’t already been behind the wheel in KSA or in other countries.
Absolutely men will need to be prepared to interact with women. The biggest preparation to be done is creating an infrastructure to be get women on the road and be ready for them. It’s hard to imagine if you haven’t experienced it but there are separate lines for women EVERYWHERE you go, so there is no male-female interaction, unless it’s with a male that works at the establishment. I know, it doesn’t make any sense. There are even women’s only STC stores. We just can’t go to any STC store to buy a new phone or update our phone plan. Women have to go to a specific store! And there are only a few women only stores in Riyadh, even though women make up more than half of the population. The same applies for bank branches, where most people pay their bills. I’m imagining your perplexed face as you read this.
That being said, I’m pretty sure the KSA version of the DMV is figuring out how to plan for this with either a women only section in the DMV location or locations that are only for women...then anticipating the flood of women coming in June to take their tests.
Also, there will likely need to be some female police support recruitment as well EMTs. In a major and slightly more liberal city like Jeddah this won’t be much of an issue, but in a much more conservative province like Mecca or rural eastern province male police will have issues interacting with women.
The scary thing is that KSA is a dangerous place to be on the road. In 2016, 9,031 Saudis were killed in traffic accidents, averaging 25 deaths a day. Some think that with more women on the road there will be less accidents, but inevitably with women driving there is an increased chance for them to be involved. I'm not presuming that women haven’t already been in accidents, but there will need to be a lot of education for men to interact with or hiring of women to deal with these delicate situations. In conservative places where there may only be male EMTs this could also mean potentially delaying the care a woman should receive if her mahram isn't present. Efforts have been made in the last few years to train and recruit women for EMT roles.
Clearly there is a lot of work to be done and I’m sure I’ve only touched on a few of the areas to be addressed, but I hopefully the Kingdom succeeds in making the deadline and putting more effort into keeping their citizens safer…en sha allah.