Last month I published a post concerning the ridiculous assertion by a Saudi cleric that driving vehicles causes harm to women’s ovaries and pelvis. Women drivers are frowned upon in Saudi Arabia and although there’s no actual law forbidding them from driving, licences are not issued to them.
This weekend, there were reports of at least 14 women from Jeddah, Mecca and the Eastern Province being arrested for participating in a defiance campaign. It’s likely that they’ll be fined, or some could even lose their jobs.
Saudi Arabia features prominently on this BBC News World report, as a country with the least equality between men and women. The map below actually fingers most of the Middle East and large parts of North Africa as the worse places a woman could find herself. And I’m going to refrain from pointing out the correlation between degree of religiosity in these countries and the disdain for women’s rights… Oh crap! I just did!
On a lighter but welcome note, there are still good men in Saudi Arabia, as this YouTube video which has gone viral points out. Comedian Hisham Fageeh and some friends did a send-up of Bob Marley’s No Women, No Cry to illustrate just how absurd this driving ban is.
One can only hope these pathetic clerics relent and allow women to drive soon, among other human rights they’re currently denied.
Lenny Says 