'No Women, No Drive': Saudi Women Keep Fighting

What were Saudi women protesting in October 2013?

Saudi women were protesting the "no driving for women" ban — simply by driving, and posting videos and pictures of themselves driving on the internet. Some had been fined and warned, but the protest was on.

What did the women actually want?

All the women wanted to do was drop their children off, maybe get a cup of coffee — on their own, without the help of any man. The kingdom's clerics had made it their moral responsibility to stop women from driving. In a mass SMS campaign, women received messages on their cell phones: "O, women of the kingdom, do not get behind the wheel!"

There was no written law banning women from driving in the kingdom, but the authorities never issued them driving licenses. The women who drove in protest held licenses from foreign countries. Clerics claimed that driving would harm women's ovaries — a claim with no medical basis.

What was the "No Woman, No Drive" video?

A Saudi man named Hisham Fageeh joined the protest by releasing a funny music video inspired by Jamaican singer Bob Marley's song "No Woman, No Cry." He made a video called "No Woman, No Drive" — and he called himself an artist and activist.

The video went viral within days of its release. Some commenters questioned his motives — but the video put the campaign in front of a global audience.

Did the ban ever get lifted?

This protest was not new — Saudi women had protested years before, and nothing had happened then. But this time the story was different. After years of activism, King Salman issued a royal decree in September 2017 lifting the ban on women driving, and the change took effect on June 24, 2018. Saudi women can now drive legally — a direct result of the campaigns like the one from October 2013.

Update: the original news links and video embeds from this 2013 article no longer resolve; the events are preserved here as originally reported.