Women Driving Essay

The laws in my country controlled my choices and the amount of opportunities that were available to me as a woman and a girl. Although my country has progressed noticeably in the past few years, I grew up in a severely gendered system that blatantly restricted me for being a woman. Driving was not an issue to me; my family have the funds for a driver, but many women, especially single mothers, could not afford a driver or to carpool. However, not being able to drive indicated to me, on the surface, that I should not be trusted because of my womanhood; at a deeper level, as Manal Al-Sharif put it: “the struggle is not about driving a car. It is about being in the driver’s seat of our own destiny”. The debate surrounding women driving troubled …show more content…
Tribes in my country are families, usually very large, that have a deep-rooted history in Saudi Arabia before its foundation. My tribe is the second largest in Saudi Arabia, which means that I am related to the royal family. There were certain expectations that I had to follow. I consistently felt like I had no privacy. I was watched and criticized by my extended family. I was constantly reminded that I had a “reputation” to be wary of. There was a “responsibility”; I’m still not sure what it is, but I’m guessing it has a lot to do with marriage. I did not have any agency in my life. My direct family had high expectations of their daughters. They expected me to finish masters or Ph.D., work in my father’s companies, and of course, the most important gender role a woman has to do, get married to a man (of the same class as me). My mother is Syrian. I’m more connected to my Syrian family than my tribe. My tribe gave me privileges in my country; I had more choices that several other women didn’t have since I was born into this class. I don’t “owe” my mother’s side of the family anything so I am more comfortable with …show more content…
I tended to listen and observe people around me. I did something I consider radical when I was 13 years old; I questioned myself. I doubted my beliefs and opinions. I thought critically about where I developed my ideologies by challenging myself. My rebellion was through books and the internet. When I was growing up, we didn’t have any books on gender and sexuality available. Whenever I traveled, I would bring back books to read. I used the internet to gain access to feminist writers. It brings to mind reading Judith butler’s Gender Trouble and feeling like I had words to explain what I believed about gender and reading Audre Lorde’s theories and realizing that oppressions are more interconnected than I assumed they