Auto Racing and the Complicated State of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia

Source for Photo: Mille

In March, a unique motorsport event in the Arabian desert marked an intriguing milestone in the effort for women’s rights in a kingdom long known for its poor legal treatment of women. The Rally Jameel, an all-women auto race that was detailed by  journalist and rally driver Lyn Woodward in an April New York Times article, took place from March 16-19 in Saudi Arabia and featured drivers from all over the world in a competition that spanned hundreds of miles, many of them off-road and sand-covered. In the aftermath of a successful and undeniably cool event for the international women’s rally scene, the question remains: is the Rally Jameel a symbol for women’s progress in Saudi society, or does it present a false image of a country that is still far from equal?

The significance of the Rally Jameel lies in just how unlikely the race would have seemed to aspiring Saudi female rally drivers just five years ago. In 2018, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world that banned women from obtaining driver’s licenses, a prohibition that was lifted in June of that year thanks to the kingdom’s reform-minded de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The country’s legal treatment of women is based on an adherence to the strict doctrine of Wahhabism, a tradition that bin Salman has attempted to abandon since rising to power in 2017. The crown prince has launched a modernization campaign that, among other initiatives, has improved women’s rights by loosening the guardianship system that required women to receive a male relative’s permission for almost all public activities and movement.

In 2018, women were granted the ability to independently attain passports and file marriage and birth certificates. Since driving was legalized for women, driver’s licenses have been issued to tens of thousands of Saudi women and driving schools and car advertisements have been unveiled to target the new drivers. Now, following a 2021 law, women can live by themselves without the permission of a male guardian.

For all the progress that has been made, questions linger about the willingness of the Saudi regime to provide full equality for women under the law. At the same time that reforms of 2017 and 2018 were being rolled out, dozens of women’s rights activists were arrested for their political activities. In a crackdown that Human Rights Watch attributes to authorities acting under orders from bin Salman himself, many of the women were accused of trumped-up charges like “suspicious contact with foreign parties,” while others were detained without being charged. Despite earning plaudits from numerous international organizations for the country’s modernization efforts, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021 ranks Saudi Arabia 147th out of 156 countries in gender parity, indicating that reforms have not yet been fully successful in elevating women’s outcomes in the kingdom.

A cynical view of the rally considers the race to be part of a pattern of outward-facing displays that are aimed to improve the kingdom’s international standing, and strengthen strategic partnerships with countries like the U.S. without actually achieving meaningful change. In a strategy described by Amnesty International as “sportswashing,” MBS’s Saudi Arabia has invested in eSports, signed a 10-year deal to host an annual Formula One race, and is even angling for a FIFA World Cup bid in the near future. Critics characterize these moves as an attempt to legitimize an authoritarian regime with a sketchy human rights record by integrating into the global sports community. Even recent reforms like the freedom of Saudi women to travel abroad has been viewed as a deliberate decision to modernize in areas that are visible to foreign investors while daily oppression continues.

The reality of The Rally Jameel in the context of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia is that real efforts, like the desert race, are being made to provide Saudi women with opportunities that were never imaginable until recently. Despite the authoritarian nature of Mohammad bin Salman and his inexcusable oppression of political dissidents, his kingdom’s movement to bring women’s rights up to par with the rest of the world is commendable. It would be naive however, to accept the humane image of Saudi Arabia that bin Salman has carefully crafted (with the help of several prominent U.S. consulting firms), without realizing that events like the Rally Jameel leave a lot of work to be done before women in the country are truly equal.