King Salman ordered the reform in a royal decree delivered on Tuesday night, requesting that drivers\u2019 licences now be issued to women who wanted them.<\/p>\n
Women will no longer need permission from a legal guardian, following the decree, to get a licence and will not need a guardian in the car when they drive, according to Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Saudi ambassador to Washington DC.<\/p>\n
Currently, Saudi Arabia is the only currently country in the world that bans women from driving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our leadership understands our society is ready,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
The move was praised around the world, with the US state department welcoming the move as \u201ca great step in the right direction\u201d.<\/p>\n
Manal al-Sharif, an organiser of the Women2Drive campaign who has been imprisoned for driving previously, said on Twitter \u201cYou want a statement here is one: “Saudi Arabia will never be the same again. The rain begins with a single drop #Women2Drive\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision is a significant change in a country with strictly demarcated gender roles, limiting the lives of women in public.<\/p>\n
Campaigners have protested the ban for many years in the Gulf kingdom, but to no avail until now. In 2014, Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, was detained for flouting the ban and attempting to drive into the country from Dubai.<\/p>\n
Last week, Saudi women were allowed into a concert in King Fahd International Stadium in the capital, Riyadh, for the first time for celebrations of the founding of the kingdom.<\/p>\n
Many activists see this as the start of a revolution in the country\u2019s laws on gender, asserting that the country remains far behind the rest of the world on equality and that there is a long way to go yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overturning a cornerstone of Saudi conservatism, the ban on women drivers is to be lifted in Saudi Arabia. King Salman ordered the reform in a royal decree delivered on Tuesday night, requesting that drivers\u2019 licences now be issued to women who wanted them. Women will no longer need permission from a legal guardian, following the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,239,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-motoring","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}