A month before the movement’s start date, 12,000 followers on Facebook had signed on to participate. Early in 2011, al-Sharif joined a number of women on Facebook to create a number of Facebook pages and events, whose titles included “Women2Drive” and “Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself.” The main point of these pages was to organize a movement starting on June 17 of that year, in which female participants would break the law by driving cars around Saudi Arabia. Disgruntled, she and another female employee illegally rent an apartment in a nearby city, placing a pair of men’s shoes at the door to deter any questioning. She found that Aramco had canceled its housing program for female employees. She immediately faced many obstacles unique to women, such as the inability to find housing without the approval of a male member of her family.

She went to work at the prestigious oil firm Aramco and was well-known for her professional excellence in IT. She relocated from the United States, where she possessed a valid driver’s license, to her home country, hoping to convert her license to a Saudi driving permit. Al-Sharif begins her memoir shortly before the beginning of her driving protest in 2011. It also testifies to the power of social media to organize mass movements and democratize access to information about global political events. The issue of women’s right to drive has, since 2011, come to symbolize a wider discussion about gender inequality in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, and has resonances with feminist movements around the world. The memoir traces the evolution of al-Sharif’s grassroots coalition to fight for women’s right to operate motor vehicles in Saudi Arabia, a country whose government has systematically oppressed the basic rights and dignities of women since its establishment in 1932. Daring to Drive is a 2017 memoir by Saudi Arabian writer and women’s rights activist Manal al-Sharif.

Daring to drive