Saudi women can finally drive
Saudi Arabian women can legally drive for the first time in decades as of Sunday, when the cancellation of the national ban on women drivers officially went into effect. Riyadh announced its plan to lift the ban last year, and since then, women have obtained driver's licenses but were not yet able to use them.
"I feel like I'm surprised — am I really driving in my own country?" said Mona Al-Fares, a doctor. "I feel happy, relieved. I feel like I'm free."
Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world to prohibit female drivers. Most Saudi women have yet to obtain licenses, and wait lists for gender-segregated driving classes are long. Watch a few delighted early adopters take their first legal drives below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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