When do they stop executing gays?
Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
61–70 of 225 posts
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#62"Low oil prices have limited the government jobs that many Saudis have long relied on, and the kingdom is trying to push more citizens, including women, into gainful employment. But some working Saudi women say hiring private drivers to get them to and from work eats up much of their pay, diminishing the incentive to work." I'm guessing that this is the biggest driver - Saudi Arabia just cannot afford to not allow th…
Cant wait to see the footage on Youtube. Still there definitely appears to be a trend to get women doing all things blokes can do, which strikes me as a sort of equality of all things.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
First time in Saudi. Women were never banned from driving in Lebanon, not sure about Iran, but I don't think so
Sorry I didn't mean driving per se, but in the 70s women had more freedom and it regressed since.
That's not exactly true. People tout those photographs of "liberated" women in Iran in the 70's but that was a tiny slice of a female urban lifestyle restricted to a small number of elite women. That was not representative of the lives of the overwhelming majority of Iranian women.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#64But do they have to be accompanied on that drive by a male relative?
It's not mentioned anywhere in the article that a male relative is required to be in the car. Also, it sounds like their police will need some training to interact with female drivers, as by my understanding Saudi women don't normally interact with people who aren't family members. The police will need to be trained to interact with women in a way that they rarely do in a society where men and women who are not relat…
Time to start recruiting female police officers!
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#65"Low oil prices have limited the government jobs that many Saudis have long relied on, and the kingdom is trying to push more citizens, including women, into gainful employment. But some working Saudi women say hiring private drivers to get them to and from work eats up much of their pay, diminishing the incentive to work." I'm guessing that this is the biggest driver - Saudi Arabia just cannot afford to not allow th…
The dual income household had an unbelievable impact on Western and Asian economies, buoying incredible growth. How the KSA handles the coming social liberalization will be interesting, Chinese women still grapple with social conservative attitudes regarding working women (ie: leftover women). It is inevitable that the people of the KSA will encounter similar difficulties.
Actually, the "leftover women" phrase refers to the relationship / marital status of some women, not their job status. Many of these women (including people I know personally) have reclaimed the term as a compliment -- there's a pun where they substitute a word that roughly means god-like or badass.
My mom and both of my grandmothers lived in a world where the dual income household is the norm, and has been the norm since the 50's, but since the 80's and 90's, there has been a retrograde shift because for a while, being a stay-at-home-mom became a status symbol. However, all of my cousins, male or female, are part of dual-income households. (They all live in Shanghai.) But that's a much longer rant and off-topic to the current discussion.
But +1 to your initial point, re: effect of dual income households on the economy.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
And renewables/EVs are just getting started. It will be interesting to see what other freedoms Saudis will allow once EVs and renewables are a significant portion of the global market.
Perhaps freedoms will be taken by force by the Saudi citizens... when the petrol money runs out, the economic situation will worsen while the ability of the ruling elite to use money to keep the regime's stability will be greatly reduced. Looks like Prince Mohammed bin Salman understands this, and that is why he's trying to reduce his country's reliance on petrol money.
Ugg, unfortunately the problem is the opposite.
If you look at what the average person believes in that area, you will see that "allowing women to drive" is a very progressive opinion that makes the Saudi government/royalty a shining beacon of liberty, when you compare them to the opinions of the average person there.
In actuality, a populous democracy revolution would probably end the same way that the Iranian or MB Egyptian revolution ended.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#67How is this helpful if they cannot be outside alone without a male relative?
It is helpful because women can be outside alone without male relatives. You realize that most women go around with personal drivers rather than male relatives.
Isn't the male relative's guardianship considered to pass to the 'servant' that accompanies them?
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> in an article on gay marriage in the US, would the NY Times really have felt the need to observe that "one preacher even claimed - with no evidence - that homosexuality caused earthquakes"? From what I know about NYT - definitely yes. Probably not in every article on the topic, but at least in some. It is a sensational claim which generates outrage - bread and butter of modern journalism.
Can you find one example? I can't.
There's an example right in this thread from WaPo and hurricanes. I don't have specific example about gay marriage (I must admit, I do not study NYT that closely to have cross-reference of every article years back, though I do occasionally read their articles) right now, but as a general principle, it is completely normal for their style to do something like that and the example of Saudi cleric is not something that is out of the normal modus operandi. I think that was the original point.
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#69> One cleric claimed — with no evidence — that driving harmed women’s ovaries. Wait. What?
I listen to Sawbones podcast and this reminds me of how primitive North American and European cultures were too. "Hysteria" being my favourite example of "I can't believe we thought that..."
You can't believe that we thought some women had mood swings that relate to their having wombs ... I might have news for you! Sure they got the level wrong, but it was basically an early endocrine based explanation for human behavioural changes?
My favourite "I can't believe" is probably homuncular theory, that ejaculate contained a tiny little man [men?], fully formed, who grew to be a baby. Presumably it was homuncula all the way down?? [Not sure of the historical verity of that theory.]
Re: Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive
#70::slow clap:: It is absolutely appalling that this type of backwardness is still a reality in the 21st century. The faster we can transition to clean, renewable energy, the better for everyone in the world.
Just wait until the 22nd century. People will wonder how crazy we were to allow humans full control of a two tonne chunk of steel, where a lapse of concentration for a few seconds could easily kill themselves and others. And let’s not even begin to think about it being propelled by controlled ignition of highly flammable fluids...