Saudi driving ban on women extends to golf carts

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Saudi driving ban on women extends to golf carts

Saudi Arabia's longstanding ban on female drivers went an extra mile this week when women were barred from using golf carts to move around a cultural festival, according to Saudi newspapers.

Men were permitted to use carts during the first 12 days of the Janadriya Heritage and Cultural Festival when only male visitors are allowed to attend, but the carts were withdrawn during the last three days which are reserved for women.

"We suggested to the festival organisers that they use small golf carts for visitors inside the cultural village," Seham al-Dosary, a spokeswoman for the company that supplied the carts, told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. "The idea was to facilitate the movement of male and female visitors ... we felt that the carts would be particularly useful for the old and the disabled. They are small and easy to use."

Saudi traditionalists object to women driving. Although there is no specific law to forbid it, women cannot obtain driving licences. In remote parts of the kingdom they sometimes drive without licences, and the use of golf carts on private land is another way to circumvent the rules.

Women at some of the kingdom's all-female universities drive around campus in the carts, said Abeer Mishkhas, a Saudi journalist. They also use them at mixed-gender holiday resorts near Jeddah.

"At the resorts maybe some of the religious people would say something, but the mutawwa [religious police] can't do anything because it's private property," she said. "I rode in the back of one once when my niece was driving."

A few years ago King Abdullah - when he was crown prince - tried to stop female doctors and nurses driving golf carts to get around the vast King Abdul Aziz hospital complex in Riyadh, according to Ali al-Ahmed of the pro-reform Gulf Institute.

"He wrote a letter to the director of the hospital. I saw a copy of it. He was absolutely livid," Mr Ahmed said.