There’s probably not much of an answer for why driving, specifically, is off-limits to them beyond “the guys are just really restrictive” or the RO approach that “OMG it’s because they’re evil sexists!” (a very nice point for GD/Pit).
But, as I (often wrongly) try to think that the other guy might have some self-consistent and (to him) rational rationale for doing what he’s doing: what’s the deal with driving? Generally when I think of restrictive conservative societies, they’re either restricting the things that are fun, or that confer power, or that conduce to “immorality.”
So: no premarital sex – gotcha. Covering the female form head to toe – a bit extreme, elbows don’t do much for most people, but, I see where you’re coming from. No hanging out with men not related to you? Okay, that will cut down on a lot of hijinks.
But driving – driving just seems like a utilitarian chore, not a big privilege, not much fun. Why take it away?
Is the theory that driving makes immorality easier (she could drive to a Saudi Motel 6 as opposed to staying under the watchful eyes of the family)?
Were women allowed to drive whatever the middle eastern equivalent of a carriage is? Bikes? Ride horses or donkeys?
Is there a particular point of religious law or Koranic scripture behind the driving ban?
It makes immorality easier, it makes it easier for a woman to go out without a chaperone, what happens if her car breaks down and she’s stranded on the side of the road, what’s to keep male drivers from bumping her and then attacking her when she checks on the accident, etc.
Women are not permitted to go out in public unless they accompanied by a male relative, so presumably if they were allowed to drive, they could not do that without a male relative, either. In that case, it might not really make that much difference whether they are allowed to drive or not. My point being, that the first restriction makes it very easy to add other restrictions, like the one on driving, in order to more easily enforce the more restrictive one.
Is there an age minimum on the accompanying male relative? I mean, if the idea is that the female is escorted to either protect her from harm or prevent her from shenanigans, then the male would need to be at least a teenager. If a woman tries to go abroad with her infant son as her escort, is she given the thumbs up or the rod?
Actually that’s one of the weird things in Saudi Arabia–the drivers are hired servants, not relatives, so women frequently end up in the company of an unrelated man without a male relative along. Women agitating for their rights like to point this out, but so far it hasn’t made a dent.
AFAICT, part of it is now just tradition. It’s considered morally incorrect for women to drive there, so they don’t–even though proper Muslim women all over the world drive. However, since they live next to Mecca and Medina, Saudis are under a certain amount of pressure to be more Muslim than everyone else.
I lived in Saudi Arabia for a few years. It’s a bit odd for us today, but if we’d visited there a hundred years ago it would seem pretty normal. Why didn’t we let women VOTE right here in the good ol’ USA then? Or much else, for that matter. Saudis are not really so different from us. We were pretty much the same ourselves not so long ago.
Driving is empowering. It speaks of freedom, hardly something that’s consistent with oppression. Hell, if they let them drive, next thing we’d know they’d be burning their bras, eating ice cream for breakfast, and tipping their heads back and forth as extras in a Cyndi Lauper video.
Does it have something to do with the fact that the driver has power over the passenger(s)? You go where the driver wants to go, most of the time anyway, unless you’re willing to fight over the controls. I’m pretty adamant about this myself: if I’m driving, I’m in charge, period.
It hasn’t been that long in the USA since it was common for women not to drive. The change came about the time of WWII. I have older friends who waited until their thirties to learn to drive. My mother was the only one of five girls in her family to learn. By the 1950s it was pretty common to have a license except in some families where the parents were a little over protective of their daughters. But even now when I go out with friends, we always let the guys drive.
That is factually incorrect. 100 years ago in the US it was not “normal” for women to cover themselves from head to toe, with only a small slit to see through, and not be allowed in public without a male relative present. It would not be considered normal to completely disallow the practice any but one religion. It would not be normal for men to have multiple wives.
The restrictions in S Arabia which we all love to harp about, differ from place to place. They are extremely strict in Riyadh, less so in Jeddah, and may not really exist at all in some provincial places. As mentioned Bedouin women drive and woe to the poor guy who cautions them on that. When my father was posted with the Pakistani 7th Division in Tabuk, which is in the North, my mother drove on the base and also to the town, no problems at all.
In other news I have been attempting to teach my little sister how to drive…hmmmmm maybe the Saudis are on to something,
There is no law, rule, regulation of guideline that prohibits women from driving here. Most rules around here are whatever the official in front of you says it is. This is Very Bad.
Further, driving is not prohibited from driving by Islam. (There are rules about women riding camels in lieu of horses.) After all, no other country prohibits women from driving.
The doctrine that leads to the no-driving rule is a prohibition on those things that might lead to sin. Driving itself is not wrong, but it might tempt people to do evil.
So instead the Colonel just hired a new Pakistani guy to hang with his wife all day when he is gone. The going rate was SAR1000/month (about US$260) but the colonel is paying SAR1,500.
How having someone in your house all the time protects your family’s honor is a mystery.
I’m dipping a toe into GD territory here but it is somewhat responsive to the OP to say that in Saudi, as in many cultures with all flavors of religions, the religious beliefs or scriptures are used to justify after the fact many practices that are really cultural way down deep. People do what they want to do, then start searching for something in scripture to justify it. It is common for people to reach two diametrically opposing arguments based on the same writings. Case in point, those Muslims who describe Islam as a peaceful religion and those extremists who say that the Koran tells them it’s OK to kill the infidels.
I am not familiar with the history of Saudi culture but it would not surprise me in the least to find out that many of today’s practices that Westerners find oppressive existed before Mohammed was born.
