'To Bless All Mankind' March 12, 2018 Issue

Saudi Arabia hands women the keys

The Monitor’s Editorial Board

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, September 27, 2017.

Most nations are in a race for higher levels of innovation and none more so than Saudi Arabia. It is desperate for investments that tap its people’s talents for new industries, not its dwindling reserves of crude oil. But to do so, it must lift the mental limits that now hinder such innovation. And nothing has represented those limits more than an official ban on women driving.

Just six and a half years ago, one woman in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to ten lashes for violating the ban. But a lot has changed in the Gulf kingdom since then—the Arab Spring, women’s protests, and, most of all, a big drop in world oil prices. More than 70 percent of the population is under 30, with nearly a third of those unemployed. In 2016, the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, laid out a bold vision to reshape the conservative Islamic society. On Sept. 27, 2017, his government announced that the ban on female driving would be lifted, starting this year.

The decision reflects not only a shift in thinking about human rights but a desire to develop modern skills among half its population, women, who are still largely kept out of the new, non-oil industries. The crown prince sees the future of the economy as knowledge-based, one that relies far less on oil and more on the traits of its people. And in today’s global economy, traits such as collaboration, openness, and flexibility—which women score highly on, according to research—are in high demand by high-tech companies.

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