A review by bak8382
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening by Manal Al-Sharif

4.0

Manal Al-Sharif became the public face of a campaign to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia in 2011 when she posted a video of herself driving, and she was arrested for it. It was technically not illegal for women to drive there, but it was the custom so women didn't. Instead they spend a lot of their time figuring out how to get places and paying male strangers to drive them places. This is an eye opening account of what it was like to grow up in Saudi Arabia under a fundamentalist regime. Al-Sharif dutifully believed in everything she was taught until she went to college and began working for Aramco, which allowed many women freedoms they could not find outside its gates, though still retaining many frustrating practices. Women in Saudi Arabia also need permission from male guardians to do almost everything. The blatant discrimination and oppression of women that is still happening to this day, though women have finally been granted the right to drive, is astounding. So many things that women in other parts of the world take for granted women in Saudi Arabia have to find laborious work arounds for, especially divorced women who are forced to relinquish custody of their children and return to their nearest male relatives.