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DUBAI: Undoubtedly, 2018 has been a landmark year for Saudi Arabia — but even more so for women in the Kingdom, who have had a momentous 12 months enjoying newly acquired freedoms and being at the forefront of change under reforms led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
From getting behind the steering wheel, to being the driving force in prominent international, governmental and business roles, women are welcoming landmark social change.
As the Kingdom makes giant strides toward gender equality and female empowerment, international experts say progressive moves granting women greater rights seen in 2018 have barely scratched the surface as they outline how women in Saudi Arabia will help drive the country forwards.
“2018 has indeed been a year of firsts for women in Saudi Arabia, in terms of some very specific reforms,” said Emily Hawthorne, regional analyst for Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence platform. “Most notable have been youth-focused reforms, such as loosening tight restrictions on driver’s licenses as well as allowing men and women to attend music concerts.”
With the ending of the world’s only ban on women drivers on June 24, several driving schools for women opened in Riyadh and Jeddah. Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that about three million women in Saudi Arabia could be driving by 2020. The move is expected to boost women’s employment and, according to a Bloomberg estimate, add $90 billion to economic output by 2030.
Kent Davis-Packard, practicum director at the SAIS Women Lead (SWL) initiative, a global women’s leadership development program, said: “Saudi women have made phenomenal progress, and not just because of the recent reforms. It was the work of Saudi women over the past decades that sufficiently transformed the national consciousness of the country to be ripe for the changes made by...