Saudi Arabia is more interested in PR spin than women’s rights
The Kingdom of Saud may lift a ban on driving for its resident women, but you’d be foolhardy to believe it’s anything more than a well-crafted public relations exercise.
Those who are appreciative of lifting this ban on women driving must be gluttons for self-punishment, for while it’s a snail’s crawl towards progression in a repressive society, it is by no means progression for women in Saudi Arabia in a wider context.
Yes it is great women in Saudi Arabia are getting the chance to finally drive but is that a ‘win’ when women’s rights campaigners there languish in Saudi prisons? They were locked up apparently for making “contact with foreign entities with the aim of undermining the country’s stability and social fabric” according to Amnesty International. And so while they sit in jail, other more lucky-and compliant-Saudi women get the chance to hit the roads for the first time.
Does that look like progress to you?
It isn’t when the jailing of the women is further down the headlines than the story of the driving ban being lifted. Too many people are sucked in by the PR campaign of Saudi crown prince, Mohammed in Salman, who has been pushing this ‘Saudi revolution’ so successfully that even left-wing publications like the Economist are devoting covers to it.
Why they chose their cover image to be a cute picture of a woman in a hijab instead of a cute picture of a woman in a hijab amidst dead Yemenis as Saudi bombs fall down upon them remains a mystery.
The UK, for one, is loving the rebrand-all the while selling the Kingdom weapons of destruction-falling hook, line and sinker for Prince Mohammed’s glitzy ad campaign when he visited in March. Billboards and taxis beamed with messages about how he is empowering the women of Saudi Arabia, and you can see this fawning across the New York Times, CBS and glossy segments that make the crown prince sound like a true emancipator, while neatly rushing over the inconvenient images of starving children in Yemen.
Sure, the west wants to make sure this PR exercise goes off without a hitch given the trade between both parties, but can we at least drop the pretence that women are finally respected in the Kingdom? That Saudi Arabia gives a hoot about Arab women, as their bombs tear apart villages in Yemen and leave mothers watching their daughters die of malnutrition and disease?
