In a country where petrol costs about 46 cent a litre, Saudi women won't be constrained in their choice of cars. Big engines and big names are valued in Saudi Arabia and among the most popular cars are the Mercedes S-Class, the Lexus LS and the Ford Explorer. Women drivers, now legally on the road since yesterday, are enjoying these cars as drivers for the first time.

Saudi women are in the driver's seat for the first time in their country and steering their way through busy city streets just minutes after the world's last remaining ban on women driving was lifted on Sunday.It's a euphoric and historic moment for women who have had to rely on their husbands, fathers, brothers and drivers to run basic errands, get to work, visit friends or even drop kids off at school. The ban had relegated women to the backseat, restricting when and how they move around.

When Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday that women there would finally be allowed to drive cars starting next June, many women celebrated it as a small but significant victory. The announcement represented the culmination of a nearly 30-year-long campaign by activists to overturn perhaps the most comically absurd of the arch-conservative kingdom’s many restrictions on women’s rights. Yet at the same time, it also underscored the arbitrary, autocratic, and patriarchal way in which Saudi Arabia is governed. As recently as 2015, women were being arrested, charged with terrorism, and thrown in jail for months for openly defying the ban on driving. Manal al-Sharif, the most famous activist driver, was arrested and jailed for nine days, thrown out of her job, and forced to give up custody of her 6-year-old son for driving in 2011. Chatter and rumors about overturning the ban have percolated for a few years, but by all accounts, Tuesday’s decision took the country by surprise.

Saudi Arabia’s monarch may have opened the door for Saudi women like Shahd to start driving, but she still needs to sneak out of the house to take lessons. The 26-year-old business student knows she’s in for a battle to convince her parents because in their community, some would find it shameful to see a woman behind the wheel. Once she gets a licence, she’ll stow it in a drawer until she musters up the courage to ask. “I’ll have to be accommodating to the whole society,” Shahd said in a café in her hometown of Buraidah in central Saudi Arabia, where it’s rare to see a woman’s face exposed in public. “I don’t think it’s right to force something upon them.”

y reversing its longtime ban on women drivers this week, the Saudi monarchy won plaudits around the world. But the decree left car-rental, ride-share companies and Middle East experts with more questions than answers about what it really means for businesses and women, both Saudi and foreign. “Look, it’s obviously something we welcome, but the concern is the implication that there could be restrictions on driving that men don’t face,” said Adam Coogle, Jordan-based Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch. “A woman is very much at the mercy of her male guardian, and even if a woman may be allowed to drive according to Saudi rules, if a male guardian still doesn’t want her to, it’s going to be a real challenge for her to be able to drive a car.”

Celebrating Saudi Arabia's historic decision to grant women driver's licenses, Nissan recently offered a group of young women the chance to get behind the wheel for the first time – with a surprise group of driving instructors. The company today released an inspirational video about the initiative. It is part of Nissan's #SheDrives campaign, which encourages women to embrace the exciting prospect of becoming fully licensed drivers in 2018.

A security source at the Saudi State Security Presidency said they had "monitored an orchestrated activity of a group of persons who dared to violate the country's religious and national pillars through making suspected contacts in support of the activities of foreign circles," according to the official Saudi news agency. At least seven people were reported arrested just weeks before a ban on women driving is to end in the Gulf kingdom. Saudi Arabia did not offer details on why the activists were arrested. But Ms Al Manea campaigned for the right for women to drive before the royal family decided to lift the ban on September 2017.

The world's last remaining ban on women driving was lifted just after midnight on Sunday and the mood was upbeat as women would no longer have to rely on their husbands, fathers, brothers and drivers to run errands, go to work and see friends."I'm speechless. I'm so excited it's actually happening," said Hessah al-Ajaji, who drove her family's Lexus down the capital's busy Tahlia Street after midnight.

OUTSIDE a sprawling mall in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, young single men and women walk through an open-air exhibit where Saudi women and traffic police explain the ins and outs of handling a car. Just four years ago, this government-sponsored event was an unthinkable scene in the deeply religious and socially conservative country.But the most visible sign of change is coming Sunday, when women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to drive, ending a ban that had stained the kingdom’s reputation globally, kept women subjugated in the back seat and hindered the full potential of the country’s economic growth.

The lifting of the ban is just one of many changes planned by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who assumed power one year ago this month. The 32-year-old prince is regarded as a risk-taker, and has begun a sweeping campaign of liberalization in the kingdom, which has been ruled by the House of Saud since 1932. Saudia Arabia's transformation, including allowing women greater freedoms and equality, may be essential to its economy. Experts say that as the nation shifts away from an economy predominantly reliant on oil, more households will need dual incomes.

Saudi Arabia is known to be one of the most conservative regimes in the world. So why is this general easing of societal control over women taking place right now? In a recent research paper, I argue that it’s foremost out of necessity to boost the economy by making both women and men more productive at work.

The new law allowing women to drive removes a lightning rod for critics and allies who have long derided the Saudis, a bastion of conservative Islamic orthodoxy, for following a repressive practice embraced by groups like the Taliban and the Islamic State. The new law also dovetails with the monarchy’s ambitious economic changes that aim to wean Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s top producer, from dependence on oil and to diversify the economy — shifts that require women to be workers and consumers.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia follows a particularly strict brand of Islamic law known as 'Wahhabism'.It says that men and women should be kept separate and what women should wear veils to cover themselves. It's also the law in Saudi Arabia that every woman must have a male guardian. This is often a relative or the woman's husband.Some people there think women don't need to drive, because they don't travel without a man who can drive for her.

From the very first day 31-year-old Salma Barakati got behind the wheel of her car after Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on women driving, the men in her village near Mecca would gather around her and unleash a torrent of insults. The insults soon turned to threats. Then, less than 10 days after women were allowed to drive, a neighbor woke up Barakati in the middle of the night: Her car was on fire.

Reema al-Bawardy, 28, took her 10 cousins on a drive across Jeddah at midnight as soon as the ban was lifted. They packed the big black SUV again on Sunday afternoon for another drive to an upscale coffee house in the Rawda neighborhood. Out of the 11 people in the vehicle, two had driving licenses. The celebratory rides will go on for a few days, she told CNN. "After that they have to learn how to drive."

On 26 September 2017, King Salman issued an order to allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia, with new guidelines to be created and implemented by June 2018.[16] Women to drive campaigners were ordered not to contact media and in May 2018, several, including Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, Aisha Al-Mana, Aziza al-Yousef and Madeha al-Ajroush, were detained.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and as Sarah Wildman wrote for Vox, the ban on women drivers has long been explained as being religiously motivated. But it is the only country in the world, of any religion, that had instituted such a ban.

Giving women the right to drive also seems to have been a highly strategic move by the Saudi government. First, barring women from driving gave the country a bad reputation. Saudi Arabia, ranked the seventh most gender-unequal country in the world by a World Bank metric, was under international pressure to rescind the longstanding ban for years.

The change, which will take effect in June 2018, was announced in a royal decree read live on state television and in a simultaneous media event in Washington. The decision highlights the damage that the ban on women driving has done to the kingdom’s international reputation and its hopes for a public relations benefit from the reform.Saudi leaders also hope the new policy will help the economy by increasing women’s participation in the workplace. Many working Saudi women spend much of their salaries on drivers or must be driven to work by male relatives.

“Guys honk their horns and give me a thumbs-up,” she said recently, during her 25-minute commute home from work in her gray, Toyota Camry. “[There were] five kids packed up in a car, and they’re all peering through the window and waving like they’ve seen a celebrity or something.”Walker was treated like a celebrity because the kingdom had just lifted its decades-old ban on women driving.

"It's a dream come true that I am about to drive in the kingdom," Rema Jawdat, who received a licence, was quoted as saying by the ministry."Driving to me represents having a choice - the choice of independent movement. Now we have that option."