Happy Atheist Forum

General => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Dave on January 02, 2018, 10:14:03 PM

Title: The right to drive
Post by: Dave on January 02, 2018, 10:14:03 PM
Just finished listening to Lyse Doucet interviewing one of the first Saudi women to openly drive and risk arrest, twenty years ago. Now they will soon have the right to do so by law.

I am going to have to admit a degree of prejudice (?) here - I still harbour a mental image, instilled decades ago, of the women of Saudi Arabia being fsr more downtroden, meek and mild, than they actually are. Though their lives are still legally controlled in ways that would cause punlic outrage in most Western cultures. Excepting those that still hang on to Victorian and pre-Victorian values. But, as those times had their rebels so does Saudi Arabia.

QuoteLyse Doucet travels to Saudi Arabia to meet Madeha Al Ajroush, who battled for 30 years to get women the right to drive. It's a battle she's now won, as women in the kingdom will legally be allowed to drive later this year. As a Saudi woman, she says, "you'll always be treated like a child and never like an adult. And that was a problem, and it continued till this day - but things are opening up now."

This five-part series features in-depth interviews with remarkable women about the relationship between women and democracy, on the 100th anniversary of the first time British women won the vote. Lyse travels across the globe, meeting women from Afghanistan, Liberia, Northern Ireland and Iceland to discover that the victory of 1918 in Britain has continued to resonate through the century. She hears reflections from some of the world's most influential women's rights activists, including former presidents, and shares her own experiences in reporting from some of the most troubled regions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09lym9r