Saudi Women Renew Fight To Lift Driving Ban - Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012

Ahmed al-Omran

Ahmed al-Omran

Sep 24, 2013

Female driver Azza Al Shmasani alights from her car after driving in defiance of the ban in Riyadh June 22, 2011. Saudi Arabia has no formal ban on women driving. But as citizens must use only Saudi-issued licences in the country, and as these are issued only to men, women drivers are anathema. An outcry at the segregation, which contributes to the general cloistering of Saudi women, has been fuelled by social media interest in two would-be female motorists arrested in May.REUTERS/Fahad Shadeed (SAUDI ARA — Female driver Azza Al Shmasani alights from her car after driving in defiance of the ban in Riyadh, June 22, 2011. — REUTERS/Fahad Shadeed

A woman drives a car in Saudi Arabia October 22, 2013. A conservative Saudi Arabian cleric has said women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and bearing children with clinical problems, countering activists who are trying to end the Islamic kingdom's male-only driving rules. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are barred from driving, but debate about the ban, once confined to the private sphere and social media, is increasingly spreading to public forums too. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nass

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Elizabeth Hagedorn

In Washington, DC, reporting on diplomacy, regional politics, human rights