Transportation
What Riyadh's New Metro Will Mean for Women
Public transport is coming to the Saudi city, enhancing mobility for female riders, who are barred from driving.
Saudi Arabia is infamous for being the only country in the world that does not issue driver’s licenses to women. Though Saudi women can own cars, and rural women often drive anyway, urban women commonly depend on rides from male relatives or hire men—usually foreign workers—to drive their vehicles.
When Uber and similar services began operating in the Kingdom a few years ago, they offered Saudi women another way of getting around. Uber reports that 80 percent of its users in the country are women. But to some, the arrangement feels exploitative, since women are a captive market. As Hatoon al-Fassi, a Saudi academic who teaches at Qatar University, says, “[Uber] shows the ugly practice of using women’s suffering to make money.”