How Uber Is Changing Life For Women In Saudi Arabia

An anonymous reader writes: Being unable to legally drive is hard for many women in Saudi Arabia, especially working women. With notoriously poor mass transit options, and the stigma attached to women riding the bus alone, Uber has changed the life of many Saudi women by giving them greater mobility and independence. While there are no official statistics on how many women use the service, anecdotal evidence suggest that 70% to 90% of Saudi riders are women. "A lot of them, I would say, are young women," says Saudi Arabia general manager Majed Abukhater. "We have some data to show that these women are starting to rely on Uber a lot more for their daily commutes; the proportion of trips that we see in Saudi during the weekday is actually very high relative to other locations. That's just kind of one indicator to tell us that women are really starting to rely on Uber for their daily commutes to work, or to school, or to university."

Comments

Uber is "ride sharing" ?

[jbengt]

From TFA: "for regulatory reasons, Uber in Saudi Arabia does not work with contracted drivers using their own cars—all Uber rides go through existing companies"

So Uber can follow local laws when they're forced to. Who would've guessed?

Re:Uber is "ride sharing" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop blaming any form of government instead of the real reason for the totalitarian system: Islam. It is all about Islam. Al-Qaeda, Taliban and IS are all caused by Islam. You make it sound like there were a bunch of people who wanted to bully a group of people and than just used the first religion they came up with to have an excuse. This is not how things work. First there is the religion, than there are the followers and then there is the majority who impose the sadistic religious rules on everyone. The Saudis would have never been able to stay in charge if they weren't hard line Islamic. People would stand up and revolt until they have their sharia based 'country'
 
Just look at Egypt and how the Muslim brotherhood became the winners of the 'democratic' elections. The majority (although it was more the party with the most votes which is not necessarily the majority) of the people in Egypt wanted sharia law. Even when they knew it was incompatible with the many other religions and political philosophies that have a large amount of followers in Egypt. The current Egypt is also kind of totalitarianistic, and that's not because the army thought "let's just take control of the country, because we want to bully the citizens", but because Egypt was on its way to a Totalitarian theocracy just like Saudi Arabia. Most of the other religious / liberal minded people would have lost their heads if the army didn't take control of the situation.
 
And it is not only the ideology that we call religion that can cause totalitarianism, political ideas can be just as totalitarian. But just like with religion, you first have to have the ideology and only than you might get enough people to turn a country/state in a totalitarian regime.

Hitler wasn't voted in power and than thought "Now how can I kill all the Jews? Aha, I've got it, just lets invent Nazism". No, he already was a anti-Semite that wanted to kill the Jews and he had enough followers to make it possible.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[ClickOnThis]

Treating women as property, denying them basic education, and encouraging their fathers to kill them if they misbehave is a protected cultural difference.

I'm far from being an apologist for the mistreatments of women in Saudi Arabia, but I must point out that denying them basic education is not one of them. From TFA:

While women comprise only 13% of the Saudi workforce, they make up a full 60% of the college student population

Isn't this illegal?

[undefinedreference]

I haven't been in The Kingdom (KSA) in about 7 years, but back then women couldn't go anywhere without an adult male relative (father, brother, or husband) to protect them unless there were no men there. They had massive malls that were staffed and accessible only to women, where they could freely walk and talk with other women wearing western-style clothing if they so wished.

Since only men can legally drive on public roads, how does this work?! Wouldn't they still need to bring an adult male guardian along?

Re:s/uber/taxi.

[Archangel Michael]

Government Licensing does one thing, and one thing only. It increases barrier to entry by raising the cost of doing business.

Re:stopgap

[undefinedreference]

I can only imagine that the autonomous cars will be a hit, but the driving there is truly frighteningly-atrocious. I was very glad to have ex-military drivers with special training and armor-plated SUVs, not for fear of some attack (honestly, they like us more than you might imagine), but because going out on those roads is taking your life into your hands.

Re:How come we've never "liberated" SA?

[Anonymous Coward]

A. The Saudis were friends with the Bushes.

Re:Uber is not the answer

[tompaulco]

Maybe it's the beginning of the answer.

If Uber allows women to move more freely and work at jobs and go to school, something they weren't allowed before then I would think this is a first step.

Uber is not doing it. Taxis are doing it. Uber does not contract drivers in SA, they just use existing taxi services. Uber has nothing to do with liberation of women in SA other than making a claim to be responsible.